Upcoming Event: The Essence of Care

Mark your calendars! I have been invited to present at the Del Oro Caregiver Resource Center event The Essence of Care – a retreat designed to provide family caregivers with respite, rejuvenation and renewal.

Please join us on Saturday, November 5, 2016, at Town and Country Lutheran Church, 4049 Marconi Avenue in Sacramento from 10:00am to 3:00pm.

Registration begins at 9:30am | Retreat 10am – 3pm
COST: $40 (snacks, lunch and materials included) NOTE: If cost is a concern, limited scholarships are available.
RESPITE: If you need someone to care for your loved one in order to attend this retreat, free in-home respite care is available to qualified caregivers.

REGISTER/QUESTIONS: Please contact Del Oro Caregiver Resource Center (916) 728-9333. Space is limited – Register today! Deadline to register – October 28^th

More information is here: http://www.deloro.org/upcoming-events/2016/11/5/the-essence-of-care and you can also download their registration form there.

SPONSORS: Del Oro Caregiver Resource Center, Elder Care Management of Northern California, Senior Care Solutions, Triple-R Adult Day Program, Colleen Watters Attorney at Law, and LPL Financial

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If I Were Judge part II

Judges do hear us. Once I wrote to a Third Circuit Court  Judge about how he was handling youngsters who came before him as juvenile offenders. I accused him of practicing elitism. His sentences were to prepare these youngsters for college…had to do college prep in school, to apply to colleges if you were out of high school. I reminded him of that kid who wants to be a waiter, a flight attendant, drive the garage truck, etc. That in our daily lives, we rely on blue collar workers more than anyone else and why are we by-passing these workers by this message that college grads are the only ones worthy of a respectable place in our society?  We had a dialog and he began to send these youngsters into the community to do work for the needy. When he was mayor, I had him pave our gravel road in Pahoa. So yes, one squeaky hinge gets the oil can if we squeak it loud enough.

If I were Judge…

If I were Judge, I would not use punitive sentences to those who are not of danger to our communities, instead, I would sentence them to acts of human kindness.

For  a year or two or three, go out into the community and conduct acts of kindness to strangers. If guilty of a hate crime, adopt a family of your “hate” and aid them in becoming a part of our community. Work with the children and help them adjust to our schools. Punitive actions do not seem to alter negative human nature…Studying our history of human injustice has not made much of a dent. Perhaps,we need to use human kindness instead of intellectualizing with history and dialogs.

from Jr the cat

Some of Wordsworth’s fans don’t really believe I can write poetry so here is one I wrote a minute ago. Well? What do you think? Can I be called a cat poet?

 

I don’t live in a hat,

Nor do I run with rhymes

 

An occasional dat, since I live in the isles

Where Pidgin turns that into dat.

 

So, no cat in a hat am I,

No bat,sat,rat, or any of at.

 

Just a cat without fame,

And Jr. is my name

 

 

Jr the cat concedes…sort of…

You want me to read this story about a mouse poet? You must be kidding!

Hmmmm…not bad for a mouse.. . although I think my poetry’s better.

Irony at its best

So here I am, reading Wordsworth, It’s In Your Pocket. Wordsworth is in deep grief because his friends are all addicted to their electronic devices. How can he get them back into the real world of friends? An old mouse tells him the answer is in his pocket.

During the reading, I heard a woman say the battery to her phone had died.

A man in the audience later said, “I felt I was transferred to a new dimension…it was so surreal. While you were reading, many were so busy with their electronic devices, they weren’t hearing your story at all. Amazing!”

Yes, Wordsworth has his job cut out for him.

Thank you Christine Reed of Basically Books in Hilo for the standing room only event.

 

Why We Teach

My heart kept busting all over. Four of my Kindergarten students from Laupahoehoe School came to my book signings, all grown up. I was a green teacher at age 25, when I had the privilege of being their K teacher. I followed them up to first grade. Thank you, Harvey, Sandra, Doreen at my Hilo signing and Sandi, at my Honolulu signing. Harvey was quiet who looked at me with soulful eyes, Sandra W came into the classroom like thunder, Doreen sat like a lady with her long eyelashes. Sandi smiled shyly. ( Her dad remembers me as a quiet teacher).

It was from this class that I got the title of my book: Teacher, You Look Like a Horse. I had spent all morning fixing my hair in a French braid when one of them rushed into the classroom, looked at me and said, “Teacher, you look like a horse.”