We were up at Garrod's on Friday night for the major donor thank-you event thrown by the Saratoga Education Foundation. Bill and Doris Cooper were pouring Cooper-Garrod wine. Food included stuffed potatoes, salads, chili, sliced-while-you-wait roast beef sandwiches, cookies and brownies. Music by Les Landin and his Skillet Family group. Lane Weiss, the superintendent, gave a short talk. Shinku Sharma and Terrie Creamer said thanks for the dough and announced that this year the foundation raised $1.25m dollars and the major grant to the school district is over a million dollars..

Nice evening, good wine.

Years back, when I was on the Board and the guys were in the schools, his nibs and I'd go to events like this and know almost everyone there. Friday, I knew some of the administrative staff, including the new superintendent, whom we'd met last year at the same event. Cindy I knew, but she was there for just a dash and go. I knew the Coopers and knew Pat from Club meetings. I'd met Shinku before and Terrie and Kelly at other events, but other than that I saw very few familiar faces, so I mixed and mingled and did the how-old-are-your-children thing and drank the Cooper-Garrod cabernet franc and felt ... odd.

Where are the faces of yesteryear? Where are the friends who were on the Board when I was on the Board? Here I was with my youngest child twenty talking to people with a five-year-old, a three-year-old and a six-month-old. Do the old-timers not come because they know they won't know most of the other folks there? Do they not come because they don't give money to SEF anymore, now that their kids are out of school? Do they not come because there's some better, conflicting blowout to which I'm not invited?

*sniff*

   posted by Sal Towse at  9:22 AM|| |