What's in a name?

This is an experiment in distance, and we realize it. Book clubs aren't supposed to be like this. They're supposed to be intimate. They're supposed to be close. In book clubs, relationships are formed and strengthened around discussing words and ideas, and for some reason, that just works better when people can see each other.

It's why people will travel for miles to hear a lecture. It's why kids from all over the state come to Chapel Hill for college. Correspondence courses have been around for years, and the internet makes that kind of relationship even easier, but nine times out of ten, we choose to learn in person. As if the physical presence of a mentor, a teacher, a friend makes it easier for us to process information, to learn.

We're turning that relationship on its head. We're in different places, doing different things. That's true. But for the first time, for as long as we can remember, we aren't in school. There's no structure, and no one's forcing us to continue our intellectual development. Thus, we are choosing to forgo the traditional way of things because we refuse to go it alone. We are going to use the resources at hand to do something special.

Which brings us back to a name. 270 miles is the physical distance between Linda's Bar and Grill in Chapel Hill and Hank's Oyster Bar in Washington, DC. And the choice to have our book club bookended between two bars is a conscious decision. Bars and book clubs aren’t that different, when you think about it. Each is an iteration of the idea that socialization is what pulls us up and makes us humanity.

Like coffee shops were for England in the Enlightenment, so too this place will be for us. A place to meet, a place to learn, a place to know each other.