Wrekin U3A – “Making life-long learning a reality for all third-agers in the Wrekin locality” FROM THE CHAIR Following the AGM Wrekin U3A starts another year and the new committee, while not having a full membership, has a very positive view of the year ahead. The Committee has decided that, in addition to the day to day support for current Wrekin U3A activities, to undertake the following initiatives: 1. Make an early decision about adopting the Beacon computer system, developed by the Third Age Trust (TAT), for all U3A membership and accounting activities. Following a demonstration of the system in May a decision on whether to adopt the system will be made by the Committee. 2. We are making a Broadband link available in the Shifnal Village Hall which will enable access to the internet and therefore to the Wrekin U3A and TAT websites. Members will be able to use this access at the Monthly meeting. 3. Undertake a review of our Constitution and recommend any changes which would improve the working of Wrekin U3A. Also changes to the Objects of our U3A, suggested by the TAT will be presented to members, for approval, at the May Monthly meeting. 4. As you will be aware at the AGM in March there were insufficient candidates to fill all of the positions on the Committee. This inevitably increases the workload of the elected committee members and may impact the routine running of our U3A. From a membership of nearly 1 300 we should be able to fill ALL committee positions. We are looking for ways to always fill all committee positions. 5. The TAT has provided a comprehensive policy and advice guide covering all aspects of U3A activities. The Committee has agreed to review the “Committee Reference File” and determine if and how we should formally adopt the advice and guidance. So a busy twelve months ahead! We have vacancies, help would be appreciated. Why not come and join us! Alan Cartwright – Chairman. CHANGE OF EDITOR Following publication of this issue the Wrekin U3A Review will have a new editor, Anne Tranter. After 8 years helping to edit the Review our current editor, Barry Stimpson, and his wife, Gill, are moving away from the area this summer. Anne looks forward to receiving your articles, preferably in electronic format, sent to [email protected] (note the two r’s) ALL MEMBERS’ ANNUAL GET-TOGETHER, Shifnal Village Hall, Tuesday, 16th May 2017, 10.30 am – 12 noon All members are invited to share coffee and cake at this social morning. It will be an opportunity to talk to our new Committee, Interest Group Leaders and each other, to find out more about our U3A and to share your ideas about how our organisation can move forward. You are welcome to bring friends who are interested in our U3A. For more information, contact: Sheila Purbrick: [email protected] or Marilyn Higson: [email protected] 2 SPUTNIK 60 Traditionally the June Groups are celebrating general meeting has this anniversary in ways taken a different form, suitable to their areas of and this year is no interest to be published in exception. A good the Wrekin Review or number of our Interest appear as exhibitions at Groups have been the June meeting. working together to Following the successful create a presentation on the theme and memorable Shakespeare of the 60th anniversary of the presentation, this promises to be launch of the Sputnik in 1957, the another imaginative way in which first man-made satellite and the our Group members show that it is culmination of many strands of fun and productive to learn in the scientific investigation. Other third age. ALL CHANGE (well, just one letter, but it’s important) Our Wrekin U3A website uses a piece of software called, ‘Site Builder’, but increasing security standards mean that our website address will shortly automatically be changing from: http://u3asites.org.uk/wrekin to https://u3asites.org.uk/wrekin Full details can be found on our current web site by going to the MEMBERS page - scroll down to USEFUL LINKS – Web Site Address Changes. Why the change? There are three important reasons, all of them beneficial to us: It provides a reasonable guarantee to your website editors and visitors that they are communicating with your actual U3A website and not some other site that is pretending to be a U3A Site Builder website. 3 It ensures that communications between the user and the website cannot be read or forged by a third party, which is particularly important when one is using usernames/passwords or login names. It will avoid browsers issuing warnings that the page you are viewing is insecure. Sheila Purbrick – Website Co-ordinator. ___________________________________________________________________________________________ The Beginning of the Space Race This year Wrekin U3A are celebrating the 60th anniversary of Sputnik I which was the first man-made Earth satellite launched by the former Soviet Union. It was put into an elliptical low Earth orbit in October 1957. Sputnik means ‘travelling companion’ in Russian. However we know that many words have Latin origins and the Latin Group decided to look into words relating to this event and to space more generally. Without too much effort, we came up with: satellite: satelles, satellitis; attendant orbit: orbit; track, path, from orbis; wheel, circle, rotation velocity (of escape): velocitas, velocatis; speed, from velox; rapid lunar: luna; the moon, from lucere; to shine extra-terrestrial: extra; outside, beyond, free from and terrestris; earthly, on earth, from terra; earth, land. A little more research revealed: module, capsule astral, stellar, nova, supernova, solar and more. These I will leave for your own delectation as I’m running out of space! The ultimate aim at the time was to develop nuclear missiles (nuclear, of the nucleus from nux, nucis nut and misslis missile, mittere to send ,to throw). 4 I had wanted to learn Latin for many years and Wrekin U3A gave me the opportunity, not only to do this, but to join a friendly group where we have fun too. It’s definitely not the boring Latin that most of my contemporaries seem to remember. Jan Bradley, Latin Group (with input from other members of the group). Bibliography The Chambers Dictionary Ninth Edition, BCA 2003 Collins Latin Dictionary, Harper Collins 1997 ___________________________________________________________________________________________________ Scrabble was invented by an American, Alfred Mosher Butts, in the early 1930s. He was a resident of Jackson Heights, New York and he is memorialised there by a street sign at 35th Avenue and 81st Street using Scrabble-style letters, with their values in Scrabble as a subscript. A key to the game and its long-lasting success was Butts' analysis of the English language. He studied the front page of The New York Times to calculate how frequently each letter of the alphabet was used. He then used each letter's frequency to determine how many of each letter he would include in the game. 5 TEACHING PEOPLE HOW TO THINK On Thursday 24th November 2016, all the members of Wrekin U3A’s Science Reading Group went to Wolverhampton Civic Hall to hear Professor Brian Cox speak. We did not know what to expect – perhaps a few generalities from this TV personality while the supporting act (Robin Ince) filled in the rest of the evening. What we and the other 2000-strong audience received was a mind-blowing tour of the galaxy, a summation of of accepted research and an introduction to current thinking about what happened in the first few seconds after the Big Bang. Standing in front of a few superb visuals, Brian Cox delivered 2 hours of riveting information without any notes and demonstrated why he is so well regarded by both fellow scientists and the general public. At the same time, Professor Cox societies’. 13.8 billion years after featured on the front page of the the Big Bang, 4.6 billion years Big Issue. He is using his status after the Earth was formed and and celebrity to promote greater 200,000 years since humans emphasis on education. He says ‘I started plodding around the am beginning to think that planet, we threaten to end it all education is a national security every time a big vote comes round issue. What you rely on in an – e.g., Brexit, Trump, European open democracy is the ability of elections in 2017. He does not people to take an informed blame the teachers, schools and position, but we are not teaching universities, but identified issues people how to think and we are that need to be faced: becoming unstable as democratic The education system is not keeping up with the increasing complexity of living in a democratic society. 6 There is more information and more opinions available to us which we need to judge or assess, which is a skill we need to learn and practice. Opinions tend to be polarised reflecting a lack of thought and are led by social networks. Finally, popular culture is sidelining and devaluing the intellectual side of society and living. Let’s continue to uphold and promote the values of U3A where we continue to learn, develop opinions and think. Marilyn Higson. ___________________________________________________________________________________________ On 19th January we met at the Café, Apley Farm for a Planning Meeting. The café was very nice but too noisy for us to hear each other. We managed to plan our programme for 2017 in spite of the difficulties. We had coffee and then we all stayed for lunch and a catch up. A very nice Café and the Farm shop had a wide variety of food.