The father had a painted stick and people would take the stick and give
"testimonials??" about their knowledge of the children, or the father
would arbitrarily hand the stick to a table and they would be forced to
say something. It worked well, broke the ice, humanized the rather stiff
gathering and got everyone into a festive mood, while making it memorable
to the newly marrieds. The father said it was an old "Indian" custom but
I have no idea.
It seems to me it might be a good thing on small lists to have an
automated "stick" where a 'bot would troll the list--selecting at random
Eaddresses to ask for a contribution to the discussion. Maybe to get
things going or just to move things along the listowner might do the job
manually until someone invents the software.
Mikeg
(BTW that should be trawl not troll--although "trolling" the list is fun
too--(in Netspeak trolling is to send something outrageous to a list to
see what kinds of responses one can elicit)).
On Sat, 22 Oct 1994, Richard Karash wrote:
> Would someone familiar describe the talking stick? How to... and how it
> affects conversation? I've been impressed by the impact I've seen in a
> couple of instances.
>
> On Sat, 22 Oct 1994, Mike Gurstein wrote:
>
> > ... it appears that it is my turn with the talking stick.
>