Keeping Current The Current Events Club, A Group Dedicated To Keeping Up With World Events, Turns 100 This Year

The members of the Current Events Club are gathered in a restaurant meeting room, tackling the week’s news stories.

The conversation flows around the luncheon table:

* “Have you heard about that plan to turn the Mir space station into a hotel for tourists? I’d go up there in a heartbeat.”

* “I’ll tell you what bothers me about the America Online/Time-Warner merger. We’ll be getting all of our information from just one source.”

* “With the Information Explosion, we’re flooded with information all of the time. Too much information. But it’s the quality of the information that’s important.”

This month’s meeting has come to order in the Steam Plant Grill, a restored downtown power plant dating back to 1916.

Which makes the Steam Plant somewhat of a young pup. The Current Events Club goes back to 1900.

This Spokane institution is celebrating its 100th birthday this month, making it one of the oldest continually operating clubs in Spokane. Members began by discussing topics such as the King of Serbia; now they’re discussing Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic.

None of today’s members are original members, of course. Yet they’re not exactly youngsters.

“I’m one of the younger ones in the group,” said Ruth Miller, the club’s treasurer. “And I’m 81.”

The antecedents of the Current Events Club stretch back to 1896, when a group of cultured Spokane folk formed a club called Kindred Spirits, a name chosen by Bruce Blake, a young member who later became a Washington State Supreme Court Justice. This club included both men and women, and was dedicated to discussing literature and poetry.

However, within a few years the men “became indifferent,” as the club annals put it. So the ladies decided to revive the club with a new name, the Current Events Club, as well as a new purpose.

Here’s how the club was founded, as recorded in the minutes of the club’s first meeting, on Jan. 9, 1900: “Discussion followed as to what kind of study should be pursued, most of the ladies agreeing that Current Events would be the most profitable and agreeable.”

The club’s constitution specified that the discussion topics be divided into three classes at each meeting: foreign, political and literary.

At each meeting, a member was assigned to write and deliver a paper in each category. That first year, the topics included “The Bubonic Plague in Honolulu,” “The Indian Congress,” “Affairs in Newfoundland, “Charles the Great,” “Gladstone,” and “The Life and Writings of Sir Walter Scott.”

The members were educated and erudite - or at least they aspired to be.

“All of a sudden the mines were productive, and a lot of these women had money for the first time,” said Ruth Hammond, a member since 1983. “They wanted education and culture - they had a hunger for culture. This was the same period when the Chautauquas were thriving.”

Chautauquas were educational and arts assemblies, wildly popular throughout the country. The Current Events Club was like a mini-Chautauqua, held every two weeks in someone’s parlor. Often, one of the members would play a piano sonata, or perform a vocal solo. Then, that week’s chosen presenters would read their papers. Discussion would ensue.

In addition, every member was expected to answer roll call by reciting one capsulized news item. Those who failed to come prepared were fined the sum of one nickel.

This club fit neatly into the social fabric of turn-of-the-century Spokane, which was crowded with clubs of many varieties. Spokane had a Good Government Club, a Waltz Club, a Whist Club, an Irish-American Society, a British Benevolent Society, an Olympic Club (for athletes) and a Criterion Club (for gentlemen sportsmen). Most common of all were the “ladies’ clubs” devoted to gardening, literature, music, culture, art, charity, “good works,” or simply to luncheon conversation. These clubs numbered in the dozens.

The Current Events Club’s minutes have been meticulously recorded in large folio volumes, and they show a club slowly evolving over the decades. Early club meetings were posh by today’s standards, with 25 women being served afternoon tea in parlors by uniformed servants. Even as late as the ‘60s, the style remained proper.

“When I first joined in 1964, the meetings were quite formal,” said Helen Olsness. “We had luncheons and a lot of the ladies had help that came in to serve.”

“Later it became more simple,” said Miller. “You could tell everyone to brown-bag it.”

However, the purpose of the club never changed. The club was founded as a haven for intellectual, topical discussion and the members have always fiercely protected that ideal.

“When I joined in 1983, they told me, `If you come, you have to study, because you have to give papers,”’ said Hammond, who was looking for intellectual stimulation after retiring from teaching.

“Your papers had to be accurate, too, or the ladies would let you know,” said Olsness. “In a nice way, but they would let you know.”

This rigorous devotion to knowledge is exactly what appeals to most of the 13 women who belong to the club today.

“One of my friends said, `It’s so nice to go someplace where there’s something interesting to talk about,”’ said Hammond.

“It’s a chance to talk about something serious, and not just gossip as many women’s groups are prone to do,” said Miller. “You have to exercise the old brain cells.”

The topics have evolved over the decades, too. The early subjects tended to be heavy on European history.

“As time went on, the club went more for contemporary subjects,” said Miller. “In the mid-‘60s, we had a program on `The Role of the Negro in Today’s Society.’ In 1984, we had a program on `The Information Explosion’ and what it means to society as a whole. We were one of the first groups to have a millennium speaker, back in 1988.”

Even on the club’s 100th birthday, and even with the average age of the members only about 20 years younger, the group remains remarkably up-to-date. They indulged in only one nostalgia-oriented topic for their centennial celebration this month (“A Century of Memories”), but they’ll go right back to current events next month.

“We’ve just found that those are the most interesting meetings of all,” said Hammond. “Sometimes, when we do a current-events roll call, the discussion gets so interesting we spend a whole meeting on that.”

But what about the club’s future? Will they still be discussing the current events of 2010, or 2050, or 2100? The golden age of women’s clubs may have already passed.

“When I first moved to Spokane in 1947, the garden clubs were everywhere,” said Hammond. “It’s not the same now. Younger women are so busy, they don’t have as much time. I would have loved to have brought my daughter into the group, but she’s so busy. She works, and she volunteers for the Girl Scouts.”

“In 1964, we had a maximum of 25 members, and we had a waiting list,” said Olsness. “And now we’re dying on the vine, you could say.”

Maybe so, but they’re already tackling the new century with relish. So, ladies, how about that AOL/Time-Warner merger?