The Arcadia Club
01 January 2010

Welcome

Welcome to the Arcadia Club, formerly known in its various incarnations as The Arcadian Commonwealth, The Arcadian National Conference, The Arcadia Society and, finally, The Arcadia Club.

In the course of two centuries the Arcadia Club was one of the most important institutions of Cascadian society. Its name is a long established and reputable brand, its members were amongst those who helped to shape Cascadian culture into what it is today, and its history is inseparable from that of Cascadia itself.

Founded by seemingly unrelated and socially different groups of people, it served as a meeting point for many great and original minds, pioneers of thought in artistic, literary, theatrical, scientific, legal and political circles, providing an amicable environment for their recreational and creative pastime as well as a testing ground for novel and controversial theories and approaches to the issues equally important to Cascadian society and all of the mankind.

There was a considerable amount of beer involved in these endeavours,

Et Ego In Arcadia Vixi

There were hills which garnished their proud heights with stately trees; humble valleys whose base estate seemed comforted with refreshing of silver rivers; meadows enamelled with all sorts of eye-pleasing flowers; thickets, which, being lined with most pleasant shade, were witnessed so to by the cheerful deposition of many well-tuned birds; each pasture stored with sheep feeding with sober security, while the pretty lambs with bleating oratory craved the dams' comfort; here a shepherd's boy piping as though he should never be old; there a young shepherdess knitting and withal singing, and it seemed that her voice comforted her hands to work and her hands kept time to her voice's music.

As for the houses of the country - for many houses came under their eye - they were all scattered, no two being one by the other, and yet not so far off as that it barred mutual succour: a show, as it were, of an accompanable solitariness and of a civil wildness.

"The New Arcadia" by Sir Philip Sidney, 1580