Sunday, December 20, 2015

Day Twenty of Blogging Challenge

     Yesterday the Women of Westside, better known as WOW, held our monthly meeting at Westside UU church. What a great bunch of gals!!! We started meeting about a six months ago, set a date ( third Saturday of every month), and a very broad agenda. We decided we do not want to be too formal or rigid..no mission statement....no bylaws....etc.
     Our sole purpose in meeting is pure  and simple...to get together to discuss..... whatever..... in a safe environment where anything can be said without criticism or debate. Each month one of us volunteers to pick a topic and is moderator for that meeting. We bring a sack lunch, then begin the meeting with a "check in", a brief statement on what has been going on in our lives since we last met. Then the moderator introduces the topic and  the discussion begins. Very frequently, after we have gotten into the topic, we will get off on unrelated tangents! But that is ok! It is interesting to see where these discussions take us!
     Some topics we have covered are: 
- a prominent female family member who was a strong leader over one hundred years ago.
-what woman should be represented on the twenty dollar bill?  (Many came with and campaigned briefly for their choice, then we voted) Eleanor Roosevelt was the most popular choice)
One of my Heroes...Eleanor Roosevelt
     Other topics we have discussed are:
-how to talk about serious topics (those topics you know they are going to disagree about) with friends and family (and strangers!) without alienating them.
- the history of women's fashions....how and why changes occur
Our moderator, Jerri, had some great books to share!

     We get some topics from TED talks...brief vignettes or comments produced by PBS which are great conversation starters. And today, we are having a Christmas potluck and one of our members is going to present the background  of several of our Christmas traditions...the basis for them and the myth that surrounds many of them!


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