U3A in London Update – 21 September 2020

This information was published on: September 21, 2020

From Gilli The Monday Talks

The Autumn Programme opens with Richard Fitzwilliam discussing the Honours System.

Richard, film critic, royal commentator and public relations consultant edited the International Who’s Who from 1975 to 2001. He has a unique perspective on the Honours System, its beneficiaries and the way it works. He discusses its role in the current age and asks ‘The Honours System – do we need it?’

Next week it is the turn of Sarah Shaw to overturn your perceptions of the Secretaries of the 1970s. Sarah worked as a secretary in London throughout the 1970s, and invites you to come and find out why everything you thought you knew about secretaries is wrong.

Recordings

Recordings of the Monday Morning Talks will be available for a week or two afterwards – email Gilli. Recordings of other courses may also be available. Please check with the coordinator to request a copy.

The Autumn Timetable

There are now so many classes for you to choose from that I have lost count!

It has been a mammoth task to prepare this timetable and it will be a miracle if it runs initially without a hitch. Please be patient if there are hiccups; they will be put right – soon, I hope. The classes shown with links have no restriction and you just click to join them. The others are shown with the email address of the coordinator and you should get in touch by this method if you would like to join. Some classes are fortnightly and you will be told the starting date by the coordinator if it is not already indicated.

N.B. Monday 28 September is the Jewish Day of Atonement, Yom Kippur. Some coordinators may prefer to cancel their class on that day. If you are one of those, please let Gilli know so that we may indicate it on next week’s timetable. Some of you may already have let her know.

From Naomi

Welcome to the new term. I would so much rather I was greeting you from the office in the Town Hall but that is not to be at present. Despite this, I hope that you find our virtual timetable to your liking, with something for everyone. Just as always, our timetable will be developing and changing over the term. As always, Amalia will be informing you of such changes.

Our programme for this term’s Monday Talks is very exciting. Click here to see it. I’m pleased to announce what I hinted at in my Chairman’s report, namely that members of a few local care homes will be joining us as our guests for these talks for a trial period of this term. If successful, we may be able to offer more to those who are less mobile than ourselves.

Herbie, Anthony and I have been overwhelmed by your enthusiasm to renew your membership fees. We truly appreciate how willingly you’ve taken the opportunity to pay. If we appear a little slow in responding, it’s because we’re trying desperately to keep up with your requests, so please be a little patient in waiting for your form to arrive.

Hopefully, it will not be too long before you will be able to pay online, if this is your preferred method. The only way for you to renew your membership at present is to email the Office and ask for your pre-printed form to be emailed to you. (If you have printer problems, ask for it to be posted to you When you have made sure everything is correct on the form, you need to sign it and post it back to a member of the committee. If you pay by cheque, you need to include that with the form; if you pay directly into our bank, you still must post back the signed form to that member of the committee.
If you want to pay by this method, I will send you all the necessary information when you apply for your form.
Take care everyone.

From Gerta

The weekly Quiz is having a break and observing the Jewish New Year. It will return next week.

From Wally Howard
(Lovely to have you back, Wally!)

I just want to confirm that from this week I will resume my talks on Miscarriages of Justice. In these talks we discuss issues relating to Black Lives Matter ,The Lynching of Black America ,The Case of The Martinsville Seven , Blood Libel and many others. Here is the Vimeo link to my talk on the case of Emmett Till :

I have recently started to record on Vimeo my “Reflections and Memories at 95”. These are about 20 minutes long and I have completed the first five if you think they might be of interest. The links are:

Hoping to return to room 1.22 one day.
Kind Regards. Wally

From Ralph Bermudez (Drama Group Coordinator)

The U3A Drama group is working on a small production entitled A Talk in the Park, which we hope to put on YouTube for our members to enjoy at their leisure.

This one-act play is a light comedy written by Alan Ayckbourn. The play deals with the failure of human communication, obsessions as well as isolation. At the beginning of the play, there are four strangers sitting on separate, adjoining benches in a public park. They all have their own problems . . . . . .
We will inform you all as soon as we have finalised the editing and uploading on to YouTube.

From Pieta Ruck Keene

Embodied anatomy classes start again on Tuesday 22 Septemberat 11:30am, continuing on Sept 29, Oct 6, 13, 20, 27 and so on (all at 11:30am).

I am returning to the old (but favourite) topic of the lower back and pelvis. Some of you have met our amazing pelvic bones many times already. I find that each time I revisit this material my understanding deepens and I hope the same happens for you. To keep some things fresh though, I may do a session on the pelvic organs. Please let me know your thoughts on this -I’d be thinking about the rectum, the uterus, the prostate and the bladder. As things stand, next week will be an exploration of the lumbar spine.

I will send a reminder email to those on my list on Monday but the zoom link is below:
https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/tZUvd-qgqj0oHtLYOYmtsBpjFMNMzewRIc22/ics?icsToken=98tyKuGprDspEtCTsh2BRpwcAIigb_zwiCFBgrdxpTDcDjRAQBP8EM9sH6h6B-r5
I look forward to seeing you on Tuesday;
Best wishes, Pieta

News of Members

I have just heard that Peter Gotlop who was admitted to hospital with a gastric problem, is now much better and is at home again.

And some really sad news. Anne Maslin has died. Anne has been a mainstay of our Office for a very long time and in charge of ordering our stationery supplies – long before they ran out! We could always rely on her to keep us well stocked. Anne was totally reliable and in spite of having a tough time dealing with medical problems she never failed to turn up on a Monday as cheerful as ever. We send Chris, her husband, our deepest sympathy.

And again, I have just heard that Varda Malmed has also died. Varda was the charismatic coordinator of our Modern Hebrew (Ivrit) group for many years and will be sadly missed by those who knew her.

Diaries 2021-22
People who would like a U3A diary for next year may like to know that it is possible to buy a pack of 5 for £15, including postage, from U3A National’s “shop”. Just go to their website www.u3a.org.uk, click on Resources and scroll down to “shop”.

To Make you smile
Seven Important Facts to Remember as We Grow Older
7 – Death is the number 1 killer in the world.
6 – Life is a sexually transmitted condition.
5 – Good health is merely the slowest possible rate at which one can die.
4 – Give a person a fish and you feed them for a day. Teach a person to use the Internet and they won’t bother you for weeks, months, maybe years.
3 – Health freaks are going to feel stupid one day, lying in the hospital, dying of nothing
2 – All of us could take a lesson from the weather. It pays no attention to criticism.
1 – Life is like a jar of chilli peppers. What you do today may be a burning issue tomorrow.

From Ron Tucker – More Ozzie sense of humour

The missus said she’s leaving me because I invade her privacy too often. At least that’s what it says in her diary.
After too many beers, my mate asked if he could crash out on my sofa. I had to explain to him that I’m married now, so that’s where I sleep.

From Denis Evans: Gardens: A patch of land
Here, is all the World
in a patch of land.
A sacred space.
The glory of an Autumn morning;
and gaunt winter days
All the world is here unfurled
with a life sustained
throughout the seasons.
All the World,
in a patch of land.

From Ealing U3A A repeat.
Ealing U3A have purchased a large Zoom licence. This means that we are able to offer more of our talks to a wider audience.
We are finalising the details of two other talks which we plan to open to other U3As, one on Shakespeare and another on the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust, but to give you plenty of notice, below are the details of the first talk:

Thursday, 24 September 2020 at 10.30 a.m. Professor Philippe van Parijs, guest professor at the University of Louvain and Leuven, will talk on Universal Basic Income and the Corona Virus. Professor van Parijs will be talking to us from Belgium. If any members from other London Region U3As would like to join us for this lecture, we would be delighted to see them. Please could they get in touch with our Chairman, Derek Atkinson, email: Chairman@u3aEaling.org.uk after 14 September, so that we can send them the Zoom link.

Best wishes,
Sylvia Stirling, Secretary to Ealing U3A

London Region of U3As Another repeat:
Family History Talks Friday afternoons in October 14.00-15.00
Click here for further details and registration form. Select up to four talks.
2nd October: Family History at The National Archives
9th October: Online Family History Resources at the London Metropolitan Archives
16th October: Layers of London
30th October: The Future for Family History Research
London Region website: The above information is also available via the Events page of our website. Recordings and available presentations can be found in the Talks Archive which is accessible via the Events page.