FUTURE MEETINGS
GA Greg Atkins: At our next meeting on 24th May, Don Reed will give a presentation on a recent best-selling book, “The Dawn of Everything – A New History of Humanity” by David Graeber and David Wengrow. This book puts forward some new and revolutionary ideas about human prehistory and evolution, and how modern society compares to prehistoric society; it is available from Amazon. More about that nearer the time, but you may wish to purchase and read this in the meantime. Be warned though that I have found it a difficult read as it is written in a very intense manner!

On June 28th myself and Graham Stride from Wincanton will debate the arguments for and against Assisted Dying. ” the legalisation of voluntary euthanasia.”.

Planned Visit to the Met Office Exeter

I have been in touch with the Met Office in Exeter about arranging a visit to them on July 26th. This will be a day trip and hopefully will involve a talk on Climate Change and a guided tour. If you want to go please let me know now as the Met Office has asked for an estimate of the numbers. We also need people to volunteer their cars, so please also let me know if you can do this. If sufficient people want to go we could also consider hiring a coach or minibus. I intend that we should have lunch in a local pub. It is important that you let me know now if you intend to go, this will not be binding. The cost at the moment is just to contribute to the cost of lunch for your driver.
Blind Copies for ANVIL  circulars
Several people have asked to be blind copied for these circulars. On reflection, I have decided to do this for everyone. If you wish to contact a member and want their email address, please write to me and I will ask their permission.
60 Members
For your information, we now have 60 members on the circulation list, but this is probably an underestimate of our membership as I know of several couples who share an email address. This is much better than I had hoped when myself and John started this venture; only a minority of these are members of the former u3a Science and Philosophy groups (although they are also very welcome). We are obviously fulfilling a need not met in Martock and surrounding area by any other organisation. I am gratified also that we are learning orientated, gender balanced, having almost equal numbers of men and women, and do not have a burdensome bureaucracy. The capacity of The George Function Room is 60, so if we were to get much bigger we will have to consider a move to the Parish Hall. At present though I don’t see this happening as experience shows that not everyone will turn up. Also, the facilities at The George are better quality and better organised than those in the Parish Hall, and a smaller group makes for better discussion.