Showing posts with label Buns gand Roses. Show all posts
Wednesday, 1 April 2015
This month we were joined by the lovely Jo Cheetham, Specialist Nurse in Organ Donation from the Yorkshire Organ Donation Services Team who was speaking to us with tear jerking honesty about organ donation in view of the WI’s 2014 Resolution to promote this worthy cause.
Jo told us how that final shared action between yourself and your family in donating your organs after death can go on to change and save many lives, whether they be corneal transplants to stop a teenager going blind or the mother of three and toddler who shared your liver both being given a future to look forward to. One donor can save 8 lives and change many many more!
She shared with us heart-breaking true stories of something positive coming out of tragedy where families have donated lost loved ones organs and emphasized the importance of making sure your family knows you wish to donate your organs and of adding your name to the donors register.
Furthermore, standard myths about donation were dissolved -a diabetic can donate organs, and so can a smoker, the only religion that expressly forbids organ donation is Rastafarianism-who would have thought it!
Thanks to Jo from all of us here!
You can add your name to the organ donors register here:
Tuesday, 7 October 2014
Buns and Roses Book Club meets roughly every six weeks or on Sunday afternoons at 2.30pm admidst the victorian splendour of the Tiled Hall Cafe (just inside Leeds Art Gallery on the Headrow) We decide at each meeting what date we meet next and what book we're going to do.
Book choice is determined by suggestion or by placing suggestions on paper and then pulling them out of a bag. There are no strict rules about having to have finished the book to attend a meeting. We don't mind if you've only seen a film adaptation (if there is one) or just read the Wikipedia entry about it - in return though you have to not mind when we talk about the ending.
After the start of the year we took a decision to read books by female authors and which ideally featured feisty female characters and it's a brief we've stuck to so far. I doubt you'll find anyone more feisty than Scarlett O'Hara. The other rule we have is that the books we pick have to have multiple copies available from Leeds Libraries though it's up to each person whether they buy their own copy, pay for a download or borrow a copy.
Sometimes our conversations stick very closely to the book and sometimes we wander down all sorts of conversational avenues from best nail varnishes to how to train partners but it's fair to say whatever we end up talking about there will be always be a laugh and tea involved too and of course cake as the cake on offer at the Tiled Hall Cafe is very scrummy indeed.
So far this year we've read Silver Linings Playbook by Matthew Quick, Gone With The Wind by Margaret Mitchell, Enchanted April by Elizabeth Von Armin, Miss Pettrigrew Lives For A Day by Winifred Watson and The Guernseay Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Burrows.
The last book we read was Frankenstein by Mary Shelley - the female characters in the book aren't especially feisty we all loved the fact that her nightmare tale was born out of a ghost story telling competition and that she beat the male writers she was with at their own game, we all hated Viktor and his self obsessed and selfish pursuance of his goals and his abandonment of the creature who we all agreed was more sinned against than sinning.
Next up is Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte - a dark brooding romance that has been variously described as page turner, a moving and heartwarming tale and a love story with an erotic sub text - so come along on Sunday November 23rd at 2.30pm and tell us what you think of it too :-) You can also help us decide what will be our first book choice for 2015.
