Hi, it's Manoosh and this is New Text City and I'm going to visit the writer Bruce Filer.

He lives in Brooklyn Heights about a 15 minute walk from my house and the reason I wanted

to visit him is because every Sunday he and his wife Linda Rottenberg and their two

eight-year-old daughters have a family meeting but it's not just any family meeting.

Hello, I'm Eden E-D-E-N, tidy, T-Y-B-E.

When the Filer Rottenberg clan gathers around their oval wood dining room table,

they begin with a ritual to get everyone focused.

Okay, who's calling at the order? Me.

Thank you for coming to the family meeting.

And then they talk about what the family did well last week.

So I think that for Daddy's birthday, everybody participated in making him cards

and giving him homemade birthday presents.

And what didn't go so well?

What do you mean by Morningston?

What about them? Do you think didn't work well?

Especially the bedmaking and the breakfast.

Okay, Morningston, what else besides Morningston work?

To some, this family get together might sound more like a business meeting than quality time.

And yet it's got planning, deadlines, even minutes.

One of them is taking notes in a fabric-covered notebook.

So you're writing it down. Mornings, read it out as you write it.

So we all can, so I can hear it.

...