Day 97

After my massage yesterday I was more than a pancake, I was an amoeba! I told the dogs to fix their own dinner and could hardly wait for bedtime. Today I am rarin’ to go. Massage is medicine for me. Today I’m looking forward to farmer’s market with Hollie. Hoping for strawberries from the farm. They were wonderful last year. The market turns out to be a social event with lots of conversation and hugs. I enjoy it.

June Senior News

Way back in 1996 or so, whenever it was that I joined RSVP, I found a notice that the Senior News needed a distributer for Crescent City. As I was already planning a visit to my friend Alice Thrap in Eureka, I suggested to her that we find Barbara Clark’s office and learn more. There she was in her tiny office behind the pool tables in the basement of Humboldt Senior Resources on California Street. We talked a while and I said that some Del Norte news would create a readership and she said OK, you do it. In all these years, I have distributed 400 copies of the Senior News each month to various locations where seniors are likely to be and written essays about life with an emphasis on aging well and productively. I had written pieces for the Times-Standard’s Focus on 60 plus column and shared my writing with Barbara. I had to learn some computer skills that I hadn’t needed before then and how to send writing and photographs too.

Barbara and I became play friends with weekends of paper lanterns, banner books, altered books, all kinds of playing with paper and color. We shared our interest in dream work and Barbara came here to develop a dream group that included people that would not have otherwise had guidance in dreams. We shared journals and wrote together sometimes sitting on a log at the beach. We often decorated out journals with mandalas and poetry

Knowing Barbara as an editor and learning to follow her themes and word count were parts that I often violated and she patiently led me back. I like 500 words more than 400, feeling that I was leaving out an idea and learning to be concise as a reward. I do play with her themes. She says write about pets and I wrote pet peeves and pet projects. Well, it’s about pets, isn’t it? I will admit that I thought about retiring with her and am wondering if the new editor will put up with my foolishness. It would be a difficult transition except that I know it will mean that Barbara will have time for more play times. She wants to go along when I distribute the paper so she can see the places and people who look forward to the receive each new month’s issue. Here are exactly 400 words.