The Continuance Institute

The Circles · C-01

Bangor Circle

The oldest circle, meeting in a library room a mile from the building where the Thursday gatherings began.

Place
Bangor, Maine, United States
Recognised
1991
Affiliated house
North House
Assigned steward
Mara Evensen
Convener
Doreen ChalmersSchool caretaker. Term began 2025; second and final consecutive year.
Ordinary meeting
Every Thursday evening, and the first Saturday morning for the repair rota
Typical attendance
14 to 22
Access
Open to visitors

Local history

The Bangor Circle predates its own recognition by twenty-two years. People who had attended the Thursday gatherings and did not move to the North House went on meeting in Bangor after 1974, first in a member's front room and afterwards, when the front room became too small, in whatever hall would have them. When nonresidential gatherings were given standing in 1991 the Bangor arrangement was registered first, largely for administrative tidiness: it was the one everybody already knew about.

It has met in the present library room since 2004. The room is booked a year at a time and the booking is renewed in September, which is the only annual ceremony the circle has. The rent is entered in the Circle Book and is the largest single figure in it.

The delivery round is older than the circle's recognition too, having begun as two people with a station wagon in 1988. It is now eleven households and has been eleven households, give or take, for a decade. The circle has twice declined to expand it on the grounds that it could not be sure of keeping a larger one.

The outward obligation

Food

Thursday delivery round, held with the district food pantry.

Two cars, eleven households, and a standing arrangement that the round happens whether or not the circle meets that week.

The forms it carries

  • The Quiet Twelve

    Twelve minutes are kept before the reading. Nothing is assigned to the silence.

  • The Repair Table

    A table, a bench, or a marked shelf where ordinary objects wait to be mended.

  • The Weather Entry

    Before the first shared meal of the month, one person writes the weather in the house book.

Local variation. The twelve minutes are kept at the end rather than the beginning, because the library room is not free until quarter past.

The shared forms, as they are kept in the houses

Also attached to North House

Elsewhere in North America