What's coming up in May and shortly after.
Next Meeting: 30thMay
Heather Lucey is coming to tell us all about Zentangle. On her website, she says: “Creating a Zentangle tile – a 3 ½ square – is a form of artistic meditation as you become completely engrossed in creating an ensemble of simple structured patterns (tangles). The Zentangle method can help increase focus and creativity, provide artistic satisfaction and can support a sense of personal well-being.”
It promises to be a really interesting, fun evening!
Resolutions: We are now at the last local stage of the resolution process for this year. Dianne will give us a brief reminder of the two resolutions that are going forward to this year’s Annual Meeting and then we will vote on each one separately. Each resolution will need two rounds of voting. The first is our decision for or against making the resolution NFWI policy. The second is a bit more subtle. Our representative will be taking our votes forward to the AM on our behalf. At that meeting, she will listen to presentations about the resolutions that may strike her as very important in casting our vote. We can either give or withhold the option of her changing our vote on our behalf if she feels we would vote differently in light of the new information. We only have one vote for each issue for the whole branch, so our votes on Wednesday will define our position finally. You can find out all about the resolutions in WI Life or on the NFWI website. The Committee have discussed them and feel that the one about the Smear Test is a good resolution but we had some concerns about the drafting of the Local Buses one.
Garden sale: The Committee have decided to cancel the garden sale planned for this month. We hope to hold something later in the year.
Managing our meetings: Eileen, Barbara and the Committee have been thinking about how we manage our meetings. We are wondering about trying to manage q&a and chatting a bit more actively, so it’s easy for members and visitors to know when it is OK to chat and when to listen, and also trying to help q&a to flow a bit better. We are such a lively, interactive bunch and it can be quite hard to know how much to let things run along and how much to intervene. This meeting might be a good chance to think about it a bit as it’s an activity meeting, so we imagine there might be quite a lot of flow between activity, presentation and chatting time.
Advance warning of Alma Vale Fayre: This year the fayre is on Sunday 14thJuly. Once again, we will be holding a stall. We just hope the weather is a bit kinder to us than last year! We will need loads of contributions to make it go with a swing. From past experience, cakes, and biscuits go down best, with preserves less popular than at the Christmas Fair. Craft items are a bit of an unkown, but would be very welcome. Please can members bring their contributions to the June meeting (if they will keep), deliver them to the organisers, Sally and Val, the night before or bring them along on the day, preferably earlyish. Please remember that anything edible has to have a full list of ingredientsso that we are compliant with food safety regulations. You can put the ingredients on a separate card, to be placed next to the item. We will also need volunteers to look after the stall through the day and will be sending round a sign-up sheet soon. When the weather is good, this is a really nice event and a good recruiting ground for us.
Future special activities: After much debate, the Committee have decided to hold a big Raffle at our Annual Meeting, with the prize of a significant contribution towards a trip to Denman. More about this soon.
Bookworms:We have heard from Lorna that our joint book club with Westbury Park is going well. Anyone interested in joining, please talk to Lorna.
Committee: We are still looking for new committee members. We will need several new members in October, but you don’t need to wait till then! If you are interested, please talk to any of the Committee and you are welcome to come along to a Committee Meeting to see if you like it. We’re a nice bunch and meetings are fun!
