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.”
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