Family

Make new friends while having fun with your child!
Brattleboro Area Jewish Community is excited to offer a Jewish-based drop-in playgroup for parents/caregivers and their infants and toddlers (0-5 years).

Our next playgroup is March 5th from 1-3pm. Join us for a Purim party! Make masks, eat some hamantaschen (yummy Jewish pastries), sing some songs, and hear a story. Come in costume or use our play clothes for dress up!

Every family has secrets. Mine had more than its share. If there were a way that my mother could have avoided telling me about Aunt Rose, I am sure that I would never had found out about her.

Rose had been in Rockland State Hospital since the 1930s when her brief marriage failed, and she lost custody of her only child. Now, in 1956, her three sisters (Aunt Fanny, Aunt Yetta, and my mother) were planning a visit. We went in two cars: Uncle Irving’s DeSoto Deluxe, and Uncle Mac’s Oldsmobile Rocket 88. 

KIDS MENORAH WORKSHOP
Build and paint your own Menorahs! Enjoy donuts, hot cocoa, and chocolate Chanukah gelt! Sunday Dec 18th, 1-3 pm
FREE OF CHARGE

Brown and Roberts, 182 Main st, Brattleboro
Rsvp requested: Rabbi@ChabadSouthernVT.com
or call :802-933-1314
www.ChabadSouthernVT.com

You have to get buzzed in. This is not so much for security as it is to keep the memory care residents from slipping out. In the case of my mother flight was not a concern. Once fairly athletic she was now barely ambulatory, and mentally, more of her had already vanished than was present. Still, enough consciousness remained to converse, sort of, and to allow her to think to ask me what all the fuss was about.

I had to dig, and of course she didn’t understand agitation needed a source. Perhaps it was just in the air. I wondered, was her distress from a person living in the facility, something she was thinking?  She couldn’t say. Through a roulette wheel approach I hit upon the idea that the television was involved. Somehow. And by further inquiry, sussed out it may have been the news which droned in the background that was the culprit. “Things are messed up, I offered.” Then out of the blue she blurts, “We’re Russian, aren’t we?”

Make new friends while having fun with your child!
Brattleboro Area Jewish Communityis excited to offer a Jewish-based drop-in playgroup for parents/caregivers and their infants and toddlers (0-5 years).

Bagels and Blocks is a facilitated parenting group as well as an activity group for babies and toddlers. These fun and friendly gatherings feature songs, stories, crafts, snacks, and free play.

Thank you for your commitment to keeping your fossil fuel intake to a minumum. You are all awesome. We appreciate you and many of us envy you! I’ve enjoyed seeing more and more of my friends peddling around town doing errands and commuting to work. This is a great example of people working together for our collective future.

14th Annual Day of the Dead Celebration and Community Altar on November 4th

The 14th Annual Day of the Dead (Dia de los Muertos) Celebration and Community Altar will take place during November Gallery Walk, November 4th, from 5:00-7:00 at Experienced Goods Thrift Shop, 77 Flat St. in Brattleboro. Inspired by the Latin American holiday when families gather to honor loved ones who have died, staff and volunteers from Brattleboro Area Hospice create an Ofrenda, or large community altar. You’re invited to bring an item to lay on the Ofrenda to honor a loved one.

(Please use photocopied pictures and objects of no great concern since items cannot be returned.)

It’s almost time for Halloween, and here on Cedar Street that means hundreds of kids in costumes of all varieties.

For many years, we’ve kept a list of the costumes that were worn to our door. If you are having trouble thinking up a costume, perhaps a look through some of the older lists will spark some ideas. I’ve provided some links below.

Fittingly enough, it was during this election cycle my mother received her dementia diagnosis. Thanks to her stroke, she’s moved fairly quickly through the levels, like a pro-gamer unlocking ever more complex realms of challenge. When she was unable to feed herself or attend to hygiene, memory care became inevitable. My periodic visits have become studies in both specific and general cognitive atrophe, in addition to whatever else it is when a son becomes the elder to his parent.

As a way of holding on to the rail when the seas get rough, I have begun to look at the memory care facility, and mental disability, in an anthropological light. I’m always on the look out, in my mother’s case, to see what parts of personality persist, and which patterns remain as a kind of behavioral bedrock. Observing which of her symptomatic responses were there all along in nascent form. Seeing her surrounded by her ‘peers’, each with their own expeditions underway, it forces me to wonder about the so-called sanity of us all.

SEVENTH ANNUAL WINGS OF HOPE BUTTERFLY RELEASE FLUTTERS ONCE AGAIN ON SEPTEMBER 10
Purchase of Butterflies Raises Money for Hospice Programs

Lebanon, New Hampshire, August 29, 2016 – On Saturday, September 10th, hundreds of majestic Monarch butterflies will take flight simultaneously during the Wings of Hope butterfly release event to be held in Colburn Park in Lebanon from 1-3 p.m. The annual fundraiser, now in its seventh year, is presented by Visiting Nurse and Hospice for Vermont and New Hampshire (VNH) and is the biggest fundraiser of the year for the non-profit organization. Purchase of a butterfly for release is $20 and proceeds help support hospice care programs, patients and their families.

The Brattleboro Area Jewish Community will be hosting a “Coffee Break”  all day Friday September 2, 2016 at the Welcome Center in Guilford, Vt. on I-91 to kick off the Labor Day weekend holiday.   Starting at 7:30am, we will offer hot coffee and tea; bagels; hot oatmeal, apple cider donuts; an assortment of homemade muffins, pastries, and other home-baked goods; egg salad, tuna salad, and cheese sandwiches; tastes of various flavored challah; Vermont-made yogurt;  a variety of cold drinks, including freshly squeezed lemonade. 

Expand your family’s horizons this summer by welcoming a student from Spain into your home through the STEP-to-U.S.A. program. The boys and girls, who range in age from 14 to 17, will arrive on June 25 and spend 3 1/2 weeks in New England, departing on July 20.

The students are all from the Basque region of Spain and are at an intermediate English level. Host families provide a warm and safe home environment for the student, as well as meals and transportation to a meeting spot on the days there are field trips ( Boston and Six Flags–host families are invited to come along).

Youth Services will host their Annual Summer Camp Fair on Friday, April 1, on Gallery Walk Night from 5:30 p.m. – 7:30 p.m. at the River Garden in downtown Brattleboro.

Many summer camp providers will supply activities and entertainment for the children. The public is encouraged to take advantage of this great opportunity to arrange a fun-filled summer while being entertained. To entice the public to stop in, Youth Services is holding a free drawing for $100 credit toward a camp of the winner’s choice and giving out free balloons.

A message from one of our time trade members:

For many parents, our days are filled with putting food on the table, wrestling limbs into snow gear and checking in on school work. Often our busy lives prevent us from taking a leading role on the larger issues at play in the world in which we are raising our children – racism, climate change, gross economic inequality.  

Many parents share a profound sense of despair in the face of climate change and other big issues, yet feel powerless to act. Time Trader Abby Mnookin is working from Brattleboro with 350Vermont as part of a new team project: “Mother Up! Parents Exchange for Change.” This team believes parents are powerful voices in fighting for the health and safety of our children’s future!

Hosting an event for parents and other members of the Brattleboro community to come talk about what they have experienced and what they might need for the future/what might be useful to them to trek through the daily life. 

We are trying to collect information to decide what to do with a grant; the end result being we better family and educational life in children.  

Wondering if anyone has any thoughts on this…

Dear Brattleboro Time Trade,

I am writing to thank you for the BTT scholarship which provided myself and my family access to BTT Membership. I am a single mother of four young children and would not be able to join BTT and benefit from its work coordinating time exchange within our community without this scholarship. I look forward to finding the help I need within the BTT community and the extensive services it’s members offer while being able to offer my time without the burden of financial exchange. Thank you for providing this opportunity to myself and the many area families in need.

Sincerely,

Busy Mother of Four

Hi there! I wanted to share the link to my blog, which I hope to keep a bit more active (that will be easier when I am a bit less active but details..)!  My newest topic discusses my experience with working and affording childcare. 

Brattleboro, VT—Bereaved families that have experienced the death of a child now have an opportunity to meet with others on a regular basis who have endured similar tragedies.

The Compassionate Friends (TCF) of Brattleboro, a national self-help organization for families that have had a child die, will hold its next monthly meeting Sunday, November 15th, at 2:00 PM at 541 Black Mountain Road, Brattleboro, VT. Meetings will be held each month the third Sunday of the week at the same time and location.

“A bereavement organization like TCF where families could talk about their loss publicly without feeling out-of-place is invaluable to those of us whose children have died,” said new chapter leader Beverly Miller. “After your child dies, most people do not want to talk with you about your child probably because they are afraid of making you feel bad. The irony is that talking about your child helps you–no one wants their child forgotten. And studies have proven that sharing our stories and tears is an emotional release that helps us.”

Well, maybe not desperately but thought I’d throw this out there. If anyone in ibrattleboro land has any used legos that their kids have outgrown and they’d like to sell, I’d be interested in them. My grandson has just gotten into them and new sets are crazy expensive. I’d like to do a combination of some new and some used. Amazon has many “used’ legos but, as I sadly discovered- they are more often than not rip offs of actual Legos and don’t even fit with the real ones. Or they are being shipped from Malaysia or Tokyo- we’d be waiting months and who knows the quality.  I’m not looking for any rare or collectible Legos – they’re for a 6 year old- just thought someone might have a bag of them hanging around – waiting for someone in bare feet to step on them. Thanks!

Don’t miss the 34th annual Design-a-Plate workshop on Saturday October 17. Stop in any time between 10:00 a.m. and 4:00 p.m. to make a 10-inch melamine plate or 20-ounce melamine bowl.  Each item costs $6.00. Cash and checks made out to Brooks Memorial Library are accepted. Plates and bowls will be ready for pickup in December, just in time for holiday gift giving. Design-a-Plate is great for children of all ages and a fun measure of your child’s changes through the years. The workshop will be held in the Meeting Room. For more information, please call the Children’s Room at 802-254-5290 x110.