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About The Blue Mountain eagle. (John Day, Or.) 1972-current | View Entire Issue (May 9, 2018)
Seniors Blue Mountain Eagle Wednesday, May 9, 2018 A7 G RANT C OUNTY S ENIORS John Day Seniors Nicky Essex I’d like to take a minute here to give credit where credit is due. If you read our news reg- ularly, you will know that the Step Forward group appears here just about every time there is home delivery of meals. They step up every week, twice. This is great enough, but they have now taken on the delivery for all of the meals once a month, and last Monday that was 27 regular and 24 frozen meals. That route takes them from Canyon City, through John Day and then to their regular route in Mt. Vernon. Thanks, David Gill, Rodney and the rest of the crew! We appreciate you. Thanks to Step Forward for supporting the senior center in this way. Thanks to the First Christian Church gang, Ron and Ro- berta Dowse, Pat Amling and Karen Barrietua, for taking such good care of us at the ta- bles, and thanks to Jean Willey for helping with set up. Curt Pereira opened our time to- gether by leading us in the flag salute. The drawings produced winners. Pat Amling was the winner of the Len’s Drug gift card, and Gene Essex won the free meal. Ron Dowse gave the blessing for our food, and we enjoyed a wonderful baked fish meal with rice pilaf, veg- gies and homemade bread. As always, Lisa wowed us with one of her very special des- serts. Welcome back, Larry and Jan Sanderson, who are here for their annual camping trip. We also welcomed Floyd Rasmussen and Nancy Vig- gers. After lunch, we had a tai chi session, and welcomed a new member. We are learning lots of neat moves each week and are putting them together to create a complete “form” or routine. This is to help us relax, deep breathe and gain better balance. On Thursday, May 3, Ol- ivia Cornell and Everett King greeted a large turnout for our “Cinco De Mayo” celebra- tion meal sponsored by Blue Mountain Chiropractic. We were served by the John Day Church of the Nazarene: Trace and Duane Andrew, Dale and Corinne Stennett, Everett King, Jessie Elliott and RoseAnn Palmer. The home deliveries were made by Joan and Joel Tayles, who delivered to John Day and Canyon City, and the Mt. Vernon route was deliv- ered by David Gill and Rodney, from Step Forward. Altogether, they delivered 33 regular and 30 frozen meals. Our menu in- cluded sour cream chicken en- chiladas, Spanish rice, refried beans, chips and salsa and our birthday-of-the-month cake sponsored by Driskill Memori- al Chapel. We served 57 diners here. Thanks to Duane for lead- ing the flag salute, and to Dale for giving the blessing on our food. We welcomed George and Susan Sintay’s granddaughter, Allena, Elder Bollinger and El- der Ginther, Pat Porter, Gloria Stratford and Robert Rex, who filled a table, as well as Wanda and Bruce Kaufman. Philippians 4:6-7 “Do not be anxious about any- thing, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your re- quests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.” Monument Seniors Soo Yukawa We are in the month of May already! I can’t be- lieve it. Spring is definitely here and summer is literal- ly just around the corner. I have been a busy little bee planting, pulling weeds and weed-whacking. I’ve got lots of raspberries planted, and I’m so excited to see them grow, yippee! Our first lunch meal for May was created by our great chefs for our enjoy- ment, a tasty meal of spa- ghetti, garlic bread, fresh green salad, sliced pears and cookies for dessert. We thank our chefs Terry Cade, Carrie Jewell and Teawna Conklin. Our greeters were Deb- bie Reid, Linda Blakeslee and Judy Harris. Judy led us in the flag salute and made the announcements. Yours truly prayed the blessing of our meal. Debbie and Linda collected and counted the money. We had a total of 50 guests on the books along with two takeouts. My brother Richard and his girlfriend Valerie joined us from California. The Len’s Drug gift card went to Don- na Campbell. The free meal tickets were won by Max Breeding and Valerie K. Ty- ler Stoneman, our tai chi in- structor from John Day was also present. Tyler informed us that the tai chi class has received some extra funding so that the program will now con- tinue till the end of the year instead of ending in August. That is good news for all of us. It has been very good for a few of us to be able to par- ticipate. Hope you all can make it. The class is held after our Tuesday meal. I received a few more baby rhubarbs and planted them. I shared some with some friends too. I am so happy that in a few years I will hopefully have rhubarb coming out of my ears. I also received some aspara- gus starts. Thank you to my generous neighbors Carolyn and Roy Peterson for shar- ing, and I got to pass along their blessing to others as well. My big rhubarb plant has been producing some nice rhubarb for me, and I’ve harvested some of it. I was informed by someone that I had to “pull them out” in- stead of cutting them at the base. I did not know that be- fore! Learn something new every day. I hope I will have a bunch of frozen rhubarb to use for later and make some pie filling and some straw- berry rhubarb jam. Yummy. I’ve got a lot of weeding to do in the next few weeks. I am not looking forward to that. Weeding is not one of my favorite things to do, but it does feel good to be able to yank out a pesky weed and stop its growth. I’ve got quite a few strawberry plants that have really taken off too. I found out that it is good to plant mint with them; it makes them sweeter, I think? May- be it will help keep the nas- ty slugs at bay too. I hope to transplant for bigger patch- es later. Won’t that be nice? John 14:15 “If ye love me, keep my commandments.” Prairie City Seniors Rose Coombs Ah, spring, spring, beauti- ful spring. Achoo. The spring allergy season is in full swing. It usually doesn’t affect me, but this year, oh, my goodness. Is there something different in the air this year? Or have I just gotten old enough to be suscep- tible to the little pollen grains? If so, phooey. And so much for that. Delores Scott led the flag sa- lute, and Jack Retherford asked the blessing. The winner of the $5 in trade donated by Len’s Drug was Jan Ellison. Our an- nouncements included the fact that there needs to be another helper in the kitchen. Tom usu- ally does that, but he was called away to a plumbing emergency on his primary job so Marjean and Joy were scrambling to get everything done. If you would like to be a kitchen helper, let one of us know, and we’ll point you in the right direction. Speaking of Tom, he fin- ished the mudding, taping and priming in the new office, and I got it painted. So that phase of the work is done. Back to dinner. There were 57 names on the registration book that Carl was in charge of, due to Pam’s absence. Carla was able to get in a few hands of pinochle with Gwynn, De- lores and me. People that stop to watch fall into two catego- ries: those who know how to play the game and those who don’t. Those who know how are called kibitzers. Those who don’t are called confused. I ex- plain to the latter that the game is hard to learn unless you have grown up with it. This was our Sunday afternoon entertain- ment as a child. If our family visited friends, they played pinochle, and the children watched. If no visiting was planned, we stayed home and played with our parents. How many families do that nowa- days? End of sermonizing. Our dinner included spa- ghetti with Italian sausage sauce, green salad, garlic bread, fruit cocktail and carrot cake for dessert. Great meal. You should come and see for your- self. There is no age limit, and the cost is only $4. Do you know why there are such enti- ties as senior meal centers? The government, bless their little pea-pickin’ hearts, start- ed this program over 50 years ago so that seniors could get a hot meal at least once a week. The program has gone through changes through the years, but that is still the main reason. Each center operates in such a way to benefit its particular community. And that is the American way, right? If you want to know more, ask Nancy Viggers. Speaking of help in the kitchen, we also could use help in the after meal clean up pro- cess. Ken and Del have been our faithful two lately on the washing down of the table cov- ers and sweeping of the floor. Bonnie and Leone have their hands full with the silverware pre-wash, and we appreciate them doing it. Lorna and Krystin brought Thelma Kite, Marilyn Ran- dall, Virginia Moore and Bud Salisbury from the Blue Mountain Care Center. Fran- ces Fannon joined them, also. Proverbs 15:15,17 “… the cheerful heart has a continual feast. ... Better a meal of vege- tables where there is love than a fattened calf with hatred.” Church Services In Grant County Come Worship with us at 54393
