Capture AAUW Moments!

Our interest groups have had a great year. They have visited a lot of dynamic art installations and galleries, walked to a lot of great lunches, played lots of fun games, eaten a lot of tasty dinners, read many thought-provoking and entertaining books, learned about policy issues around the world, planned interesting trips, watched sad and funny movies, and more.

The one thing that has been missing in many of our articles about the different interest groups and what they do is photographs. So now I challenge you: Take some photos of what you’re doing at your interest group meetings and send them to me to be published in the newsletter.

For your book group meeting, devise a tableau that would illustrate the book you are reading, or wear a hat or make a food dish and take a photo of it and send it to me. Find a graphic to go with a report of a particularly interesting book. Take a neat photo of a painting you all liked. Angela and Kim, our hard-working editors, will be thrilled! Thanks!

Anne Rhodes & Lisa Carpenter at Halloween Scrabble

The Showcase meeting was a big success. Members tell me they appreciated learning more about our outreach programs. They also enjoyed learning more from our guest speaker, Reva Wittenberg, about how the rising number of sexual assaults on college campuses and their effect on women students are being addressed. Many thanks are due to Sharon Norris and Jane Cooley who brought refreshments and to all the people who helped set up for the meeting or helped clean up afterward.

Quite a few women signed up to participate in interest groups, but it’s not too late to add your name to the list of one of the groups that is seeking more members. These are Board Games (day or evening), Couples Dining Out, Cultural History, Great Decisions III (day), Readers’ Theater, Scrabble Just for Fun and Walk-to-Lunch.  Three other groups have plenty of members but can take more because most members don’t attend on a regular basis, and they don’t meet in members’ homes.  They are Art and Architecture, Film Fans and Singles Dining Out. You can find descriptions of all of these groups in your 2016-17 Membership Directory and Handbook.

We tried to get several new interest groups going and had mixed results. Three of them – Charades, a couples dining group for Millennials and Gen Xers, and an additional evening Great Decisions group – did not make the cut. Opera Buffs and Women of the World had several sign-ups each, but none of the women who signed up expressed willingness to be the leader of either group, so these groups cannot proceed. The Opera Buffs group would attend Metropolitan Opera screenings together at local theaters, and the Women of the World group would hear presentations from women who have experienced other cultures.

If you are interested in participating in one of the interest groups that is accepting new members or if you might be willing to chair either the Opera Buffs or Women of the World groups, please contact me at capeabody@comcast.net or 916-973-0821.