Traditions of the Cognoscenti

Twilight has fallen on the work-week; it’s four o’clock Friday at the Toad and Ostrich. I drop into one of the leather Chesterfields with a long stem glass of purple coffee as the other Cognoscenti step onto the quarterdeck from the fire escape. Moments later they step through the porthole doorway and down the stairs to listen to music and tell stories of things unknown.

You’re invited if you want to come.
But please don’t bring any problems to solve.
We already have enough of our own.

This is the Toad and Ostrich.
This is Friday afternoon.
This is decompression time, a time-tested tradition among the cognoscenti for at least 400 years.

In the late 1800’s “The Tuesday Group” met in the house of Stéphane Mallarmé in Paris: writers like William Butler Yeats, Rainer Maria Rilke, Oscar Wilde, André Gide and Paul Valéry. Artists like Manet, Rodin, Degas, Gaugin, Whistler, Renoir and Munch.

Tuesdays were later abandoned in favor of Saturday nights as the Lost Generation gathered in the home of Gertrude Stein: Ernest Hemingway, Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Sinclair Lewis, Thornton Wilder, Carl Van Vechten and Apollinaire quietly gathered to discuss the meaning of life as the earth continued its orbit of the sun.

In the 1920’s a specific table in the dining room of New York’s Algonquin Hotel became the official meeting place for renegades and mavericks like Dorothy Parker, Robert Benchley, Alexander Woollcott, Tallulah Bankhead and Harpo Marx.

In 2015, it’s the Toad and Ostrich on the campus of Wizard Academy.
But you’ve got to slip out of your office early to join us because the music begins at 4:00.

We head for home between 5:15 and 5:30.

Once in awhile Brittington is off campus on Friday afternoon so you’ll want to call or email him before you come. There is no Toad, there is no Ostrich, without Br’er Brittington.

Daniel@WizardOfAds.com   512-720-8801