NEWS - updated 3 January 2012
This page will contain news of general U3A interest, interest groups newly forming, and a short note of what went on at the last 3 monthly meetings. See the Notices page for updates for existing groups.
IMPORTANT! AGM 6 MARCH 2012
Official notice of the AGM was issued at the 3 January monthly meeting. The AGM papers include a section for
the nomination of new Officers and Committee Members.
The following are due to stand down at this year's AGM as their terms of office will end:
- Lynne Geldart, Chairman
- Sonia St John, Editor
- Margery Ashby, Group Coordinator
- Marilyn Jordan, Membership Secretary
All these positions will need filling, or the U3A will find it difficult to function. So will members please consider putting themselves forward or, at least, try to persuade someone else to stand. Generally speaking, each position is held for a limited period: 2 years, with an option to stay on for a third. Job descriptions were posted at the 3 January meeting and will be diplayed again in February.
TEA & COFFEE AT MONTHLY MEETINGS
Will those people who have put their names down to do the teas/coffees please turn up at 9.30am, so
that you can be well prepared before the masses arrive. PLEASE NOTE A new 'Refreshments Supremo' will be required after the
AGM - Lis Barnes wishes to hand on this small job after having done it for the last 7 years.
DISPLAY BOARD FOR GROUP NOTICES
The cloth that is hung up in the corner of the room at monthly meetings was OK when we met at the Town Hall, but is not
working well at Church House. So if anyone has, or knows of, some old display boards on which notices can be pinned, could
you please get in touch with Chairman Lynne or Secretary Anne McKane.
OUTINGS
Members are reminded that any member can propose an all-U3A outing to any place they would like to go. However, that
member would need to organise the outing and invite others - announcements can be made at monthly meetings.
On the subject of outings or visits made by individual groups in cars, the Committee suggests that, if people want to share
cars and contribute to the costs, a figure of 20p a mile to be split among all in the car, would be approptiate. Thus,
if a round-trip journey of 84 miles (e.g. Welshpool-Barmouth-Welshpool) would cost £16.80 to be shared by all in the car.
INTEREST GROUPS
See the Notices page for updates and urgent changes.
The Writing Group now has a page on this website. Click here to discover it.
The good news is that there are currently 30 (yes 30!) Interest Groups in existence. Would Group Leaders please remember to let David Geldart (01938 850394) know as soon as they have any changes to report (e.g change of name, venue etc.) so that they can be put on this website, as this is the only place such changes can appear between meetings. Thank you.
New Groups in the process of forming are
- Daily Life in Art Sylvia Sparrow is staring this Group with a meeting in Montgomery on 17th February at 2pm. Contact number 01686 668322. See Notices page for details
- A new slant on Jewellery Penny Vingoe wants to explore the making of buttons/jewellery using polymer clay and wirework. Details to follow.
WEBSITE NEWS
If your Group wants a page on this site, please contact David Geldart.
PICTURES PLEASE! Have you got some nice photos of your Interest Group's activities? Why not get them shown on our website? Email them to David Geldart and it will be done (size limit 500Kb please).
RECENT MONTHLY MEETINGS
JANUARY 2012 - TREVOR COLLINS: FINDING YOUR ROOTS
Trevor lives in Oswestry and is what one might call a genealogy expert and gave us the low-down on how to
make a serious start researching one's ancestors. You need a name to start with, but even that can be tricky if
your ancestor came to Britain (as, for example, a refugee) and anglicised or simply translated their name.
Next you need a place and an occupation. Certificates of birth, marriage and death date only from 1837 and were not
made compulsory until 1875. Prior to that, churches (including RC and non-conformist) kept records at each parish -
using christenings instead of births which are now kept at diocesan centres. Not all certificates are able to be
freely viewed by the public, but there are indexes of where certificates are kept (alhough they cost a bit!).
Population Censuses can be viewed (at a cost) but the full UK census containg name, address, occupation etc. did
not start until 1841. Trevor has a smal business helping people with their researches and he can be contacted on
01691 655284.
DECEMBER 2011 - IOLO WILLIAMS: MONTGOMERYSHIRE WILDLIFE
We were honoured to have Welsh TV wildlife presenter Iolo Williams as our guest speaker. Iolo grew up in the
Lake Vyrnwy area and now lives near Newtown. He gave us some insights into his career and many anecdotes from his
activities. His main theme was the wildlife of Montgomeryshire, about which his knowledge is profound. A packed
hall hung on to his every word, and he seemed to many to be the best guest speaker we have evr had.
NOVEMBER 2011 - PENNY VINGOE: MEMORY TRAINING
Among her other talents, Penny is an NLP (Neuro-Linguistic prgramming) trainer and wanted to show us a few tricks
to help us remember things. Every experience we have is recorded in our memories in our unconscious, the problem is retrieving those memories.
Sometimes, however, we can fail to hold things in our memory because the mind is stressed or perhaps we are not living 'in the
moment'. Also, the conscious mind can only hold 5 to 9 pieces of information at any one time.
To remove stress, we need to change our emotional state, which may be as simple as lifting our heads and looking up,
moving to a different room in the house, or (re)create in our minds a time when we felt brilliant, good about ourselves and
pleased with some achievement. There is also the question of belief - if we believe we can't remember, remember we won't.
One trick is to use an auditory, kinesthetic or visual association with a particular action: suppose you come home and, instead of
hanging you car keys on the hook where they belong, you drop them on a table. If you train yourself to associate that with
a sound (how about a police car siren), it will bring your attention back to what has happened and you will remember where
you left them. Penny's talk was more of a practical session - she had us doing practical things and entering into
discussion with her. This was the first interactive monthly meeting the U3A has ever had, so congratulations to Penny
for getting us so joyfully involved!