Encore offers a two-session course on how to plant your garden. Scott Thompson, owner of Blackberry Bog Farm, is teaching a gardening class Tuesday April 23 at the senior center and an on-site tour of his farm in Svensen on Tuesday April 30. Scott will cover gardening and landscaping as a hobby and will include the basics: preparation, design, soil and fertilizers – all the necessities to grow your own tasty vegetables, herbs, and fruits.

Class Days and Times:
  April 23 @ 10 am to 12 pm in the senior center.
  April 30 @ 10 am to 12 pm at the
      Blackberry Bog Farm, 40271 US 30, Svensen
Carpooling is available.

If you are interested in attending these sessions,
please RSVP via text or phone message
to 907-302-1054.

Happy Growing!

Seven classes to explore the many varieties of grief experience and explore the questions that emerge. By addressing these different circumstances, we will become braver about the subject and our own experiences. And we will be grief ambassadors to those we know going through their own grief.

1. Ancestral Grief. This is sometimes called Generational Grief. The experience of one generation will impress upon the next generation certain problems, attitudes and concerns, even though they did not live through those times. It has been said that an event can impact the following 7 generations or more.
2. Planetary Grief. Wars, unrest, natural disasters, pandemics all cause people to lose parts of their lives and people in their lives. They can drastically change the life experience.
3. Loss of Loved One through death.
4. Loss through Circumstance (job, house, school ending, divorce, family feud, end of friendship, illness).
5. Loss of What Never Happened (not being recognized, part of self never recognized by their parent, missed opportunities).
6. Expressions of Grief in society and cultures. How a variety of cultures cope with death and loss. What is the American experience of death and loss?
7. Personal experience of grief. Stages of grief. Coping and acceptance. Questions that we will consider along the way: How do people experience grief and what is normal? Why do people run away from grief and bury it deep inside? Why do people not like to talk about dead family members? What kind of relationship with grief do I want to have for myself? Is it really possible to Accept Grief as part of Life?

Class dates: Friday April 5, 12, 19, 26 May 3, 10, 17 – Time: 10 am to noon.

After 20 years of teaching for ENCORE, I did not renew my membership in 2023, but the trees kept on growing. I unabashedly love trees and have tried to learn about them whether in Germany, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Wisconsin, South Dakota or Oregon. Trees are important to man and the entire earth. Trees enhance our environment and supply jobs and raw materials. We must protect our trees.

For this Spring term, I will offer another course in Tree Identification. For the first three hours, Thursday May 9, 2024, 1 to 4 PM, we will meet at our house at 36410 River Point Drive to look at cuttings and the local trees where they come from. This will be followed by visits to the trees in the neighborhood and the State Forestry Center.

The second meeting of the class will follow Thursday May 16, 1 to 4 PM. For this meeting we’ll meet behind the old train station of the Columbia River Maritime Museum. After viewing various species of trees along the bank of the Columbia, we’ll proceed to the biggest Giant Sequoia in Clatsop County and its relative, the Coastal Redwood on Bond street. Near the County mCourthouse, we’ll discuss dendrochronology and what it can tell us about history.

Please share this information with your friends and bring them along.

Awaken the Writer Within You!

Share your memoir, short story, poem, or novel chapter
and receive kind, constructive feedback.

If you prefer, sharing of your writing and its constructive feedback can be recorded into audio and/or video format for later review by you.

ENCORE Spring 2024’s Writing Exchange Online Short Course begins Tuesday, April 2, (and runs just 8 weeks till Tuesday, May 21) from 9:45 to 11:45 A.M.

For more information: please email the instructor, Eric Anderson, at EricCAnder@aol.com or call (503) 325-3131.

Humanist Discussions is a group effort on Zoom in which we explore various aspects of the human condition. Each week we nominate and select a topic to discuss the following week. Over the intervening week, we exchange websites and articles pertaining to the topic selected. There is no requirement to review them, but the discussion is much improved when members of the group have made an effort to inform themselves about the upcoming topic. All are welcome to join.

Classes are held Monday mornings from 10:00 to noon. To join, send an email to todlundy@gmail.com with “Humanist Discussions” in the title of your email please.

Tod

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