There’s another planning meeting for the 30th high school reunion of the progressive Upper West Side high school that no longer exists on Monday.

The e-mails have started up again. I detect a pattern. Soon after the meetings, there are always a flurry of them. Then they die out for a few weeks. And in the week before a meeting: flurry, flurry, flurry.

Our wonderfully eccentric and interesting principal turned up and sent out an e-mail to the group. It sounds like he may be coming to the reunion.  He lives in Tuscon, Az., and just retired as headmaster of a school out there.  I was very fond of him for the long, fascinating stories he used to tell about his moutain climbing expeditions and travels to exotic places. He took a group of us on a backpacking trek to  Shenandoah National Park and I think it was one of the most incredible experiences I had in high school. We stayed in the woods for three or four days, ate freeze-dried food, hiked difficult trails, and saw some of the most spectacular scenary I’ve ever seen.

It looks like the director of the school will be attending the next planning meeting. I remember her best for leading the Women’s Consciousness Raising Group, that met on Thursday nights during 11th and 12th grade  in her apartment (this was 1974-5). I know we staged an International Woman’s Day event and had many talks about why the boys seemed to dominate classroom discussion.

So the pyramid scheme seems to be working. The reunion group keeps growing as more people tell people, etc.

Haven’t heard a thing from PROM QUEEN – we’re guessing she doesn’t want to go back to high school. MAGAZINE PUBLISHER is bringing Japanese sake to the event. GRACIOUS HOST is once again providing "exotic food."

An email went out that another classmate is having a housewarming party this weekend and wants to invite all of us. I almost sent out an email that said: Hey let’s all crash this party, forget about the reunion, and call it a day.  But I didn’t.

There is a "the plot thickens" aspect to the reunion. A real narrative arc. Classmates are surfacing; long lost friends reunited; old grudges uncovered; forgotten moments recalled; thirty years ago is seeming more and more real. Everyone seems to hold a different piece of the memory puzzle — it’s like we’re re-constructing that time again bit by bit.

And it remains to be seen what this event will be. Where will we have it? What will we serve?  What will the program be? Who will come?

Questions remains. The planning continues.