• Did reading about Rolf Fehlbaum and Vitra fuel your furniture frenzy? Explore Vitra's site or check out the curvacious creations of Italian furniture design house Edra. Many museums and galleries have a decorative arts or furniture collection. To find out about local museum collections, see Musee, an internet directory of international museums which you can search by category or location. Ask about group discounts for your cell or organization's visit. Try out a furniture expedition treasure hunt: visit a flea market, swap meet, antique fair or vintage shop. All offer some great deals as well as a fantastic group shopping adventure. Plus it is the holidays and who doesn't need some idea brainstorming on gifts with character. For a listing of antique dealers, fairs, shows, go to Antique Searcher which has an international database of information. The French and English site trib u-design has a listing of auctions and vintage shops. Or look for flea markets and swap meets in the U.S. and Canada at . A special note for southern Californians would be the R. G. Canning site which lists their organized flea markets, the Rose Bowl Flea Market in Pasadena being one of the largest and best known markets in the world.
• Did Talk is Cheap. Let's Have a Conversation move you to consider having 'new conversations'? Looking to start a conversation? Check out Salon.com with news, hot topics, and discussions. Another site, Spark-online, dedicated to exploring the electronic consciousness, offers interesting articles as food for thought. For some on-line resources to how to start a book club, see the Canadian Book Club's tips, particularly the sixteen tips on how to set an agenda and purpose to the group in the first meeting. Look at what other groups are reading and how they run meetings check out the listings of local and publisher's reading groups at the Open Directory Project. Your local library is another helpful resource for guidance as well as a source for the essential ingredients of your group. To find a library near you, see the international listings of libary websites on the World Wide Web Library Directory.
• Did Weathering the Internet Storm excite your curiosity? Don't know what a cumulous cloud is? Learn about cloud patterns at Australia's Bureau of Meteorology's site. Interested in learning more about weather? One adventurous way to learn is to volunteer with the U.S. National Weather Service's SKYWARN or Canada's CANWARN program, in which thousands of volunteers are trained in reading weather, spotting storms, and serve as the eyes and ears of weather forecasters. Aspiring to be a storm chaser? Get some advice from StormTrack, the Storm Chaser Homepage. Or head out to a local weather observation center -- find one to visit atYahoo's Climate Center listings. For an exciting example, see the the Mount Washington Observatory site, full of scientific and educational information from the weather center atop the highest mountain in the northeastern United States.

Ann Karash contributed this month's Next Steps.

December 2000 Connexus | Flash Points | Next Steps

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