Contributed by Marian Fuchs
December is one of our community’s busiest months. In the past handful of days, for instance, we’ve had the following three memorable events:
A Taste of the Holidays – a special event put on by Kim Rivers, our Vitalize 360 coach, the Culinary Services team and Corinne Pearce, our dietician.
The purpose was to present residents with healthy options for party food for the holidays. In addition to a range of foods and a punch drink, there were talks and printed information and some useful recipes. Some 60 – 70 residents attended.
Here are Kim, Corinne, and three of the ‘healthy nibbles’: endives with walnuts and blue cheese, crispy spiced chickpeas and a Margherita Flatbread from the Landing.
A Talk about a Lovely Boat Collection
Sue Regen talked to a group of about 30 residents about the charming collection of boats from around the world that she and her husband Rich and their families had collected over the years. This collection has been delighting viewers for many weeks now.
Here are Sue, Rich, and a tiny part of their collection.
MaCCRA Meeting with Collington’s Local Government Representatives
Lorrie Rogers, Collington’s MCCRA leader, organized this meeting, introducing our four representatives. They are State Senator Joann Benson, and State Representatives Erek Barron, Jazz Lewis and Andrea Harrison, shown below.
Each representative spoke about their priorities for the coming session, and answered audience questions. The newest representative, Andrea Harrison said the least, stressing that she was on a learning curve and would have to read bills and talk to others before making pronouncements. All the others shared progressive agendas, with plans to try to craft bills and win support for all of the following:
- tackling the unreasonably steep rise in the cost of some prescription drugs
- Education funding, especially for school construction and maintenance
- Cutting health care costs, by e.g. cutting out middlemen, and advocating for a State-wide individual mandate for the Affordable Care Act.
- Making a dent in opioid addiction, by e.g. strengthening the legal uses of the existing database on overdoses
- Treating substance abuse in jail, seeking to build on a successful project underway in Rhode Island
- Making major changes to the juvenile justice system in Maryland
- Reducing the use of solitary confinement in prison in place of mental health treatment
- Making efforts to reduce drunk driving in Maryland by strengthening the existing NOAH program
- Providing tax incentives to lure one or more grocery stores to the ‘food desert’ in the part of the country inside the Beltway.
- Capping the premiums on long term care insurance policies.
This was a lively and informative meeting, with much goodwill between audience and speakers. Thanks to Lorrie Rogers, this was the third visit to Collington of this group, which augers well for future good relations with our representatives.