No television, no radio, no music, no video games. Just conversation. What!? Every First Friday of each month at the Carenen Cottage in northern Greenville, my long-suffering wife and I host an informal gathering of people beginning at 6:30 PM and lasting until the National Guard moves in and make us disperse. We provide beer and wine and pizza and maybe brownies, and people show up and sometimes bring snacks and hang out and have conversations in the cottage, around the firepit, on the front porch and, when it gets warmer, we'll probably find folks on the deck in back. It is a beautiful setting, especially now with blossoms all over the place. Crabapple, azaleas, dogwood, tulip trees, hyacinths, and many others adorn our little spot up against Paris Mountain. And what do people do there? Converse. That's it. Oh, we occasionally burn a heretic after dark, but there is no other entertainment. Just people talking.

The Oxford English Dictionary defines conversation as "a talk, especially an informal one, between two or more people, in which news and ideas are exchanged." We are informal for sure. And we talk and laugh and tell stories and lies and converse about politics, religion, sports, cat-choking, and a general love of dogs.

No television. No radio. No video games. Conversation. Imagine that.

Curly, Larry, and Me