Oregon Encounters

I spent the week in the Central Willamette Valley last week.  My base was in Corvallis, home to Oregon State University. Oregon State University has been endowed with major gifts for building a center for families, scholarships to first generation college students from rural areas and to promote parenting education throughout the state of Oregon.  The Ford Family Foundation has been a leader in the process and has joined forces with other foundations in Oregon, including the Oregon Community Foundation and the Meyer Trust.  The Oregon Parenting Education Collaborative (OPEC) is coordinated by Denise Rennekamp at OSU.  Doris and I were fortunate to be abler to meet with Denise at her office in the lovely Hallie E. Ford Center for Healthy Children and Families.

Pictures do not do justice to the beauty of this building.  The wood all came from Oregon as a condition of the funders who made their fortune in the timber industry.  

It was a pleasure to catch up with Denise who both Doris and I know from our work.  Doris earned her PhD in Human Development and Family Studies at OSU and I know Denise from a multi-state collaboration in which we were both involved for a number of years.   I spent most of the time listening to her share about the evolution of the OPEC Hubs and the real expectation that the hubs are about developing community based sustainable collaborations and not to fund programs long term.  She shared some success stories and some not so successful examples.  I admire the work OSU and the greater statewide community of funders have tackled the need to support parents of young children.

I had contacted Denise early in my sabbatical planning about making some program visits and she recommended several exemplary programs.  The one program I connected with is Adelante Mujeres based in the city of Forest Grove in Washington County, Oregon, west of Portland.  I was able to travel to Forest Grove after landing at Portland Airport and before I drove to Corvallis through the verdant orchards of the Willamette Valley.  I was a little familiar with Adelante Mujeres because I had done research on their programs on Denise's recommendation and had met the director, Bridget Cooke, at a WSU event some years before.  

I drove into Forest Grove, a sleepy little college town (home to Pacific University) on Monday morning.  Thanks to my trusty GPS I had no trouble finding my way to the Adelante headquarters.  I was immediately charmed.

Adelante Mujeres: Education, Empowerment, Enterprise

Bridget Cooke, co-founder and director

Adelante Mujeres (Forward Women!) was founded by a small group of low income Latina immigrant women and their allies to improve the quality of life for themselves and their community in 2002.  I highly recommend you visit their website and learn more about the mission and the amazing work that is being done.  Two of the programs Bridget told me about that I wanted to return to visit are the Chicas Program and ESPERE.  I took the descriptions right off their website.

• Chicas is an innovative youth development program empowering Latina girls to develop their leadership potential, adapt healthy lifestyles, develop cultural identity and achieve academic success with high school graduation and college enrollment.
• ESPERE stands for Escuela de Perdón y Reconciliación (School of Forgiveness and Reconciliation) and is a workshop that helps people develop proactive strategies to address and overcome conflict and learn the power of forgiveness. ESPERE trains families to manage conflict with compassion and understanding in a way that leads to healthy, violent-free relationships.

The Chicas program is an afterschool and summer program and soccer camp for girls from 3rd-12th grade.  It currently operates in 13 schools.  The program began in 2008 and has grown exponentially. Bridget shared that the big event everyone was getting ready for was the soccer tournament for the girls teams that were drawn from the different Chicas programs.  Chicas works with girls in the following age breakdown: Grades 3-4, 5-6, 7-8 and 9-12.  Some of the graduates are now on staff with the program.  The Spring 2015 newsletter that Bridget shared with me features the inspiring story of one such young woman.

I am also very intrigued by the ESPERE program.    The six sessions are taught within the context of a a leadership class for Latina women and focuses on letting go of fear, sense of danger, desire for revenge and related feelings that come from historical trauma from being victimized.  Many of the Latinas who have come to this country in recent years have experienced sexual assault, domestic violence and other forms of abuse.  ESPERE provides a space to explore and release the feelings of shame, anger, fear and more.  Bridget reports that it has been very powerful for the women who participate.  I want to know more and to talk with both participants and facilitators.

Adelante Mujeres takes a holistic approach to their work with Latinas.  I have not addressed the other projects they operate.  A visit to their website is worth the time.

I left Forest Grove wanting to return and spend a couple of days there. 

I drove from Forest Grove through the lovely Willamette Valley and was surrounded by hazel nut groves, vineyards and rolling green hills.  It was a great way to travel to Corvallis.  My long journey to Arizona and back has diminished my already lukewarm feelings about interstate freeways.  I arrived in Corvallis to meet Doris at the Multicultural Literacy Center.  The center was filled with color and textiles from around the world.  I was right at home with al those fabrics. I met with the director of Casa Latinos Unidos de Benton County (CLU), Erlinda Gonzales-Berry, and Doris Cancel-Tirado, my host for the week.  Erlinda is the founder of CLU and has returned to be interim director. The purpose of CLU is to provide connection, education, support for Latinos in Benton County.  They nurture leadership in the community.  Erlinda said that two things were currently occupying her time - a Festival (Summer Fiesta) that will be held this Sunday, June 21st, and labor issues.  They have worked with the Oregon Bureau of Labor and Industries to solve wage and other labor disputes.  The event will be a fundraiser.  CLU works on a very low budget and is looking at ways to create sustainable funding paths, perhaps charging for translation services.

This lovely display was in a storefront window in downtown Corvallis.  I went twice to photograph it and was unable to get a great shot but you get the idea from this and the poster.  I love the embroidered cloth on the table.

I met and interviewed the president of the Organization of Latinas Unidos (ULO), a women's group that are supported by CLU.  Felisa Torres was featured in the Corvallis Gazette Times yesterday for her work as a community volunteer.  Felisa was also recognized by Benton County Health Department with a "public health service award."  Felisa, Doris and I had a great conversation about the development of the ULO group.  It grew out of a group of women who came to Zumba and Cooking classes offered (through a grant Doris wrote) at their children's school.  Once the grant ran out the women who had grown close organized themselves to be able to pay for on-going classes and childcare.  Two of the women became part of the founding board for the ULO.  The original group focused on planning and organization.  The Women's Group meets weekly and they educate themselves and support each other.  Felisa shared with me that most of them had minimal schooling in Mexico and felt the need to grow with their children.  They also wanted to feel better about their lives so they worked on self-esteem and leadership.  The group has been very empowering for each other and have contributed to the community.  About 10 women belong at any given time.  They are cultural ambassadors for health, families and the school and community.  The women were recently asked by the school board to meet with candidates for the superintendent position and their feedback was taken seriously in making the decision.  This group also wanted to be able to talk with their youth about sexuality so they started by taking a class with a trusted community member who helped them create a workshop for the teens.  The idea that a trusted person is delivering information that they understand and feel comfortable with is the secret to their success.

Doris and I had an interesting conversation with Felisa and afterwards about a statement that I have heard from several sources, that Latinos do not volunteer.  Doris and Felisa and Adelante and many I had seen on my journey belied that notion.  Doris pointed out that the word "help" was more characteristic of what happens.  Latino culture has a more communitarian (as opposed to individualistic) orientation to life.  Helping the family, the school, the neighbor all happens because it helps the community in which the families live and work.  Both Felisa and Doris stated that the community needs us.  Doris also pointed out that a shift in frame of reference is important for understanding the phenomenon of helping.  She stated that volunteering is something that often comes from a place of privilege.  Having time and/or money to volunteer is often something that is a condition for doing worthy work.  It gave me much to think about as I prepare to return to my usual duties where so many of the volunteers who work with our programs have time and money.  

Doris and I traveled to Eugene the next day to visit an agency that has been serving Latinos in Lane County for 42 years!  Centro Latino Americano started as advocacy group and is now a multi-service center.

Service Directory for Centro

Trevor and Doris

Doris and I met with Trevor Whitbread, Program Manager, who gave us an overview of all the services the agency offers. He spoke passionately about the services they are providing for "minority" at risk to keep them out of the juvenile justice system and for those who are already involved with the system.  They have developed a successful mentoring program and work with a number of community partners.  They have developed a community impact model in which many sectors of the community (education, health, parks and recreations, workforce preparation, social services) team up to help steer the youth towards positive futures.  Both Doris and Trevor spoke to concerns about Eugene being a center for Human Trafficking which is a concern statewide.  I was surprised to hear that Eugene was a center in the state where issues of forced labor, sex trafficking and ongoing issues with coyotes and immigration paths arise.  I wonder what the landscape is in my state?  

Trevor also spoke about a successful women's support group that has grown out of the Alcohol and Other Drug treatment program but is not focused on addictions as much as support for life.  

I asked Trevor for what advice he might share with others and that I would add it to my blog.  He said that is very disappointed in the inequities in education that still exist and that any way we can tell the stories of of the "other side" (realities of life in the Latino immigrant community) we should.  We need to make the message about the life challenges that these generous people face accessible to both politicians and the general public.

I think I will stop for today.  I will write one more time about my visit to Oregon and some insights Doris shared with me that I think need to be recorded.

As always, thanks for reading.

The Importance of Family

Francisco, almost 3

Eva, aged 1

I visited Oregon last week and stayed with a friend and her family in Corvallis.  My friend, Doris and her husband, Juan Pablo (J.P)., have two young children, Francisco, almost 3 and Evangelina, 1.  Doris is a professor at Western Oregon University and J.P. is a successful winemaker at Silvan Ridge Winery near Eugene.  (I have written more about them in my post on June 19th.) They were very gracious about hosting me at their lovely home in Corvallis.  I enjoyed staying with them and sharing life with them, their darling children and Doris's mother, Doris.  It has been a long time since I have spent time with such young kiddos on a daily basis.  It humbles me to think about the hard work child rearing is.  I returned home exhausted and grateful to know these darling and beloved children!  The circumstances of this family are very different from the families that I read about in the book I will describe.  My week with Doris and J.P. and their family is very similar and very different from the families I have been studying.  The values of familia and respecto were very evident in their home and in the way they are raising their children.  The core values seem to stretch across Latino groups and are present regardless of the circumstances.

I have been struggling with how to write about an amazing book I just finished and have decided not to take the book review approach on the blog.  I was oozing details when I first wrote about the book on this blog and saved it to think about as I traveled back from Oregon.  I will give impressions and save the book review for a different venue.

One of the questions that I asked at the beginning of my sabbatical was how immigration and specifically the status of being undocumented impacted parents and children.  I know there is not a simple answer to that question.  Dr. Rebecca White, faculty with the ASU Latino Resilience Enterprise group, recommended a book to me when I was with her in late March.  I have been reading it and am finally finished.  The book is Immigrants Raising Citizens: Undocumented Parents and Their Young Children by Hirokazu Yoshikawa, Russell Sage Foundation, 2011.  Dr. Yoshikawa is now Courtney Sale Ross Professor of Globalization and Education, Steinhardt School of Culture, Education and Human Development, and University Professor, New York University.  The book is based on longitudinal studies of 380 young children and their parents in New York City.  The children were part of two birth cohorts.  Case studies of seven families informed this book.  The families represented by country of origin are China (1), Dominican Republic (2) and Mexico (4).  Most children were between three and thirty six months and the rest were between ten and thirteen years.  The authors found it was not possible to study young Chinese children immigrants because they were sent to China to stay with relative caregivers, usually grandparents, during the years between birth and 5.  The whole story of how that happens and what the impact is on the parent-child relationship is not part of what I will share.  I highly recommend the book to those who are interested in learning more about the Chinese families.

Skilled field workers visited the families 6-12 times over a six to nine month period.  Visits alternated between structured interviews and participant-observation methods.  The complete methodology is described in the appendix.  

Yoshikawa starts the reader out by describing three mothers on New York City's A Train, famous for the song many of us know.  He describes three of the mothers in the study, one Mexicana, one Dominicana and one Chinese.  Two of the three are undocumented immigrants.  The Dominican mother is documented and the other two are not.  He is able to paint a rich picture of the lives of all three women and the conditions under which they raise their children.  A conceptual model is presented in the first chapter that is outlines the parental (un)documentation status and the developmental contexts of children (p. 18).  The author examines the impact on child development by looking at:

• Premigration factors as they impact undocumented status 
• Involvement with (or avoidance of) Legal and Illegal Authorities.  The legal authorities may be gatekeepers for publicly funded programs for which their citizen children may be eligible or labor regulators or even law enforcement for protection.  The illegal authorities might include smugglers, coyotes, etc.  
• Social ties and work.  The networks include grandparents and the presence of older adults/generations, the proportion of adult contacts who are undocumented and the social support available.  Work issues examined are wages, benefits and job duties.
• Home environment and parental involvement and child care (home or center and quality)
• Children's developmental trajectories for learning, cognitive development, social-emotional growth and health.

Through detailed descriptions of the lives of the seven families he highlights in the book he explains the differences and similarities these mothers, fathers and children have in growing up in the margins in New York City.  Each of the families have a number of co-ethnic adults in their lives but only the Dominicans have extended families who are very involved in the lives of their children.  The Mexican families co-exist in the same residence but often are not involved with the children or each other if they are not the actual parents and couple.  They share space, work different shifts, come home very tired each day after very long and underpaid work days.  The Chinese infants leave for China and the parents work crazy hours at subsistence wages to pay back loans for the cost of coming to the US.  

Yoshikawa presents data that compares not only the children in the small sample of seven but also data from the study of 380 children.  His conclusions are as follows:

• All of the parents studied deeply cared for their children and all were interested in helping their children learn.  The field workers found that parents with less resources had less toys, books, etc for their children than parents with more resources.  Previous work the author had done showed the impact of psychological distress and depression on parental behavior.  The group measured for that in this study and did find a small effect, more noticeable at 24 months than at 36 months.
• The overwhelming differences noted in cognitive development at three years of age between the children whose parents were documented and those whose parents were not documented were related to working conditions and whether or not the child went to center based child care.  To put this another way, poor working conditions (lower wage jobs and lower job autonomy), and the type of care the child experienced (home vs center care) made a difference in the cognitive development of the child and showed differences at 36 months of age.  The children of undocumented parents who were unable to access center based care and child care assistance because it required proof of identification scored significantly lower on test of cognitive skills than the children in the study whose parents earned more and who attended child care in centers with trained and certified staff.  

There are many details that I would love to share but at the risk of losing you in them I will say that having undocumented parents has a distant impact on children's cognitive and emotional development.  Not only do the children exist in settings that are less conducive to cognitive development and success in school, they can also suffer anxieties about their parent's lack of papers and/or be concerned about their parent being deported.  I witnessed such anxiety in two children of a woman we have had the pleasure to work with in our county.  I will never forget the faces of those boys as I was trying to hire their mother.  No one on our team knew the status of this mom.  It was an embarrassing and potentially threatening situation.  When I realized she did not the paperwork I needed to hire her I quickly assured her I would not tell anyone in authority.  Her boys were hanging on our every word and the looks on their faces told the story of fear and concern they had for their mother.  This was one of the experiences that led me to studying immigration and its impact on the family.

Time to go for today.

Practicing selfies to make Francisco happy about me taking his picture!

Thanks for reading!

Local Heroes

Dear Readers and Friends,

I have been taking time away from the blog to read and write non-blog projects lately.  The book I am reading is a scholarly and well written book about the impact that being undocumented has on children's development.  I will dedicate an upcoming entry to that.  I am almost finished with the book and want to do a complete review on this site.

I have been working with a group of colleagues on digesting some data we gathered from youth alumni of our Fortaleciendo Familias program.  We conducted focus groups with youth at three sites.  Overall 512 youth completed the program.  We managed to pull in 17 for follow-up focus groups.  It was a learning experience for all of us and as we have digested the meaning of the transcripts and explored the themes expressed by the comments, we discovered consistency across the sites.  Our youth expressed increased understanding of their parents and conversely, that they were able to communicate their thoughts and feelings with their parents with more trust.  My writing group (AnaMaria Diaz Maritinez, Jennifer Crawford, Irene Overath and I) identifies four major themes that emerged from the data.  We saw that the youth acknowledged the changes that occurred in their family systems as a result of participating in our program, we saw a number of competencies that lead to positive youth development emerging in the youth, the youth told us about scenarios that were indicators of increased resilience in their lives and they told us that the craft projects that they did with their families that were designed to raise awareness about family strengths and their values were still important symbols in their homes.  Our article is on version two and we are almost ready to send it off for review.  I am really glad we put collective minds to the task of refining this important data. I see the youth and their parents as well as the dedicated facilitators who conduct the program as the local heroes.

The program has been really popular in my county and in other places where funds are available to offer it.  On my sabbatical task list is designing a process and cost estimate to remake the video portion of the curriculum and to find support for that process.  I have already found out that video production is expensive and it will take creative funding to make it happen.  I am diving into the waters of making connections for future funding this week.

Shuksan Middle School Graduation, March 2014

I often share this picture because it holds out the promise the program has for people.  Isabel Meaker who organizes the Shuksan program told me recently that at 6th grade orientation she signed enough families up for a full class that will take place in early 2016!

Isabel is another local heroine.  I met Isabel through Lindsey Karas, the last of the local heroines I would like to shout out to today.  Lindsey coordinates resident services at Sterling Meadows - Farmworker Housing run by Mercy Housing Corporation.  Mercy Housing Northwest oversees a number of properties throughout the west.  Our local WSU Extension team supports Sterling Meadows by embedding nutrition and gardening programs there and by serving residents in our Fortaleciendo Familias Program at Shuksan.  Lindsey is the fulcrum for the services that are designed to wrap around the children and their families at Sterling Meadows.  There are many collaborators that work with Lindsey and she deserves the recognition she received at a recent reception held as a fundraiser for her programs.  She works with Western Washington University (WWU) faculty and students to support the ongoing education of the students.  The success of the program is simply expressed.  They went from a 0% graduation rate among resident teens to a 100% graduation rate over the past seven years.  I was amazed and really proud to witness the speech from the polished and proud young woman who shared what Lindsey's program meant to her.  There were numerous examples of youth who not only completed their high school degrees but went onto college.  The word excelling was used to describe some of the youth in the program.  The homework club that utilizes WWU students is part of the reason these youth succeed.  The safe and supportive and predictable housing they grow up in also provides an atmosphere that lowers stress and allows the kids to focus.

I do not have a picture of Lindsey and her lovely student Crystal to share.  I received a lovely thank you note from Mercy Housing thanking me for my donation that has a photo of these local heroines.  There are some great videos that share what Mercy Housing NW is doing to support residents in having a successful and healthy life path.  They are short and sweet and worth seeing.  I recommend them.

Part of my passion for housing comes from my nine (yes 9!) years of board service at Lydia Place.  One of our big fundraisers takes place June 4th at Depot Market Square in Bellingham.  I am excited to go.  If you are interested in attending, tickets can be found at the website above.  It is a joyous and colorful event!  

Enjoy your early June!

Thanks for reading.

Gifts of Grieving

I realize that my posting has become less frequent over the last month.  I know I have mentioned at least once that my own daughter, Kate Bronwyn, died suddenly.  She died from encephalitis that resulted from bacterial meningitis on May 12, 2002.  In 2002, the day she died was also Mother's Day.  That holiday has never been the same for me and with my own mother's failing health and the time to really grieve without distractions, I experienced a tidal wave of grief this year.   There is no rhyme or reason to the seasons of grief and I have learned over the years that certain times will always bring a mixture of sadness and memory to bear.  Anniversaries of birth and death and holidays seem to be the most potent because they are tied to so many cultural expectations.  I spent time just feeling what I needed to feel and moving through the feelings to the other side.  I visited the cemetery on the 12th, cleaned her marker and was grateful to be amongst the memorials for so many and the celebrations of life they represent.  I was really surprised and pleased to find a bench dedicated to a wonderful couple near Kate's space.  I feel like Jim is there with her in spirit.

It was no accident that I traveled to Portland to attend the Northwest Council on Family Relations annual conference.  I have served on the board for 3.5 years and it has been very rewarding. Our theme this year was Resiliency in Children and Families.  This conference featured presentations from Terry Cross, founder of the National Indian Child Welfare Association, who spoke eloquently on Culture as a Resource for Resilience: A Relational Worldview Perspective.  The conference also featured a two hour training by Jana and Heather from the Dougy Center for Grieving Children and Families on Grief at Any Age: A Developmental Look at Loss.  I was on the planning committee and knew that I could add to the program with my own experiences of grief and loss and my preference for experiential education.  I also knew that the conference bumped right up to my own time of loss and memory so I had to be ready and clear in my process.

I was really glad that I had chosen to stay within my own comfort zone of delving into the feelings and experience of grief and how those inform how we can be effective as educators and clinicians. The presentation from the Dougy Center team was mostly intellectual and filled our left brain with knowledge.  There was little time to touch our feelings outside of empathy for some of the stories and resources they shared.  I was especially touched by an excerpt from a French film, Ponette, that portrays a young child coping with her mother's death.   Terry Cross reminded us that each of us uses the filter of our culture and our relationships to understand the world.  The Relational World view that he presented works with balance and harmony as keys to understanding change and points of intersection with a cyclical view of being that includes mind, body, spirit and context.  The relational or cyclical worldview comes from the native or tribal wisdom.  I find this supported my own workshop the following day.

I believe that I need to experience the waves of grief as they come and to be present to the what arises in order to have my own harmony and balance restored.  Grief, like any good strong wave, can pull me way off balance.  I have realized that the first of my gifts is the ability to speak to my own grief and to allow others to look at theirs.  This has not always been easy for me but with the help of friends and family, therapy, nature, self-reflection, art, singing, worship and other healing arts (massage and acupuncture) I have survived and really thrived for the most part.

I did not get a complete count but I believe that about twenty-five people, all women, mostly young adults, attended my session.  I started by telling my own story and then we talked about all the types of loss that can trigger grief.  We then explored the ways into the grief process through the senses and explored how each sense has a component that resonates with someone.  I brought a quilt that a dear friend made from me eight years ago from some of Kate's clothes. The sense of touch and being wrapped in those fabrics never fails to bring me comfort and memory.  Some of the pieces of fabric are from clothes I made her and others from pieces my sister Betsy made for her.  I brought my Tibetan singing bowl to remind them of how potent sound can be and to remind them that sound is often the last sense to leave the dying person.  I have heard at least two people talk about singing to Pete Seeger as he lay dying.  We have Threshold Singers who sing to the dying on their journeys in our community.  One of our friends died last fall and the singers helped her a great deal.

There were many tears shed and shared and it was good to just let go in a safe place.  The only rule I started with was that there are no rules for grief.   We used my Gaian Tarot deck to trigger more conversation and memory.  My sister's dear friend designed and created the deck.   I use it in my own process and I selected cards that spoke to all sorts of grief experiences, ranging from joy to deep sorrow.  I had them pick a card that spoke to them and share if they wished how it spoke to them.  In our short time we had many wonderful stories, some of which were very sad.  At the end, we closed with a meditation drawn from the Buddhist tradition.  I combined some of Thich Naht Hahn's wisdom with a variation on a meditation on compassion I learned from studying the work of teacher and author Jack Kornfield.

I do not know the author but this bench lightened my day.  One of the amazing gifts the cemetery offered.

The biggest compliment I have received was from one of the graduate students with whom I have worked and known for several years.  She told me that this was the fourth year she had come to the conference and that this was the best workshop she had been to in the four years.  It was risky to do an experiential workshop on grief in the 60 minutes but it was just enough and I think we all came away richer for the experience.  I shared some of the gifts I had been given and learned and they shared their own.  I am incredibly grateful to do the work I do and to be allowed the time and space to turn my experience into something that can help others.

I will close today with a poem I wrote about grief while attending a workshop with Kim Stafford, poet and author.  It is titled Sister Grief Comes to Call.

Sister Grief Came to Call

Drew Betz, author

12/30/08

Sister Grief dropped in today.

I welcomed her with tears and questions.

What now? Why now?

She is capricious and yet not so  much in reality as in my mind.    

She surprised me today with a flood of tears and a gift of memory.

Kate and Edith danced in my heart.

Sister Grief called today and she stayed for awhile.

She remained after the tears had run their course

and lived in the warmth of my eyes.  She ruminated in

My heart about what I hold dear.

I let her guide me on the path and we danced together

to a song of our own creation. 

I love Sister Grief because she reminds me I am alive.  When she goes I

let her take my burden of grief.  It will always be hers to bear.

I share it when I may.

Sister Grief dropped in today and I welcomed her.

She doesn’t stay long these days.

I am grateful for her embrace and lighter as she leaves.

She will come again.

I will always make room for her because she is a friend.

Today's quote from Gratefulness.org is "Fragrance remains in the hand that gives the rose." Heda Bejar

May you be blessed today with your own gifts of grief and move into a day of great celebration and aliveness!  I will.

Thanks for reading.

The Big Apple, aka New York City, Part 3

As I began to write today I thought of the old familiar name for New York City and "Big Apple" immediately came to mind.  I really had no idea where the name came from and what the heck apples have to do with NYC.  The name was popularized in the 1920's by a sports writer for the NY Morning Telegraph.  I used the ever helpful Wikipedia to enlighten me.  In the 1970's the New York City Visitors and Convention Bureau adopted the name in promotional campaigns and it is still in use today.

I was thinking of my own interpretation of apples - healthy, fresh, temptation, red and round, etc.  I think NYC holds all those paradoxes and more in its existence.    I come from the state of Washington where, like New York state, apples are an important agricultural crop.  We love our apples here.  I have three trees in my small yard.  I think that NYC fed  my soul in a way that apples feed my body.  I felt nourished every day I was there.  I look forward to returning some day.

One of the many wonderful experiences that my colleagues at Cornell Cooperative Extension shared with me was an opportunity to meet Dr. Jane Powers, Project Director for ACT (Assets Coming Together) for Youth Center for Excellence (COE) at Cornell University's Bronfenbrenner Center for Translational Research (BCTR).   Jane and I met together to discuss the work of the Bronfenbrenner Center and her work with ACT for Youth.  ACT for Youth COE is funded by the New York State Department of Health to reduce risky sexual behavior and to promote positive outcomes among youth.  Jane's group provides technical assistance, training and evaluation support to seventy-seven grantees across the state.  The work of CUCE-NYC is interwoven with the work of BCTR.  Several of the key leaders of CUCE-NYC are part of the BCTR and several of the staff I met are engaged in the work of the Center.

Jane, Jackie and Drew

Jackie Davis-Manigaulte serves on the executive committee for ACT for Youth COE.  She is the program leader for family and youth development at CUCE-NYC and supervises the the NYC staff who are part of ACT for Youth COE.  Jackie is an amazing woman and resource for both internal and external partners throughout the city and state.  She was busy writing proposals the whole time I was in the office!  I am still in awe of the resources she has helped draw to the work of Cornell in the city and the relevance the programs have for urban youth and families.

It was synchronicity at work when Jane said she needed to come to the city from upstate to visit with providers.  I had expressed a desire to learn more about the work at CUCE-NYC that focused on sexuality education.  What came together was a meeting of providers and CUCE-NYC staff, Jane and me over lunch.  Jane and I met to brainstorm a series of questions and the conversation that took place was really rich for all of us.  Jane made it very clear that the session was not about her monitoring compliance and encouraged all the providers/educators to speak frankly about what was working and where there were issues with the mandated programs.

Front row: Melisa, Drew, Jane, Marisol
Back row: Luis, Eduardo, Michele, Ashwini, Ed, Caroline
CUCE-NYC staff and ACT for Youth COE providers

We decided to focus the conversation on three areas with specific focus on teens and immigrant families.  We asked them to describe both the victories and the barriers they experienced in their work, to share the messages that resonate or that frequently pop-up and any wisdom they could share about engaging parents.  What I share is a summary without mentioning specific names of the speakers.  All of the educators worked either in school based or clinic based settings with teens in Manhattan, the Bronx and Brooklyn boroughs.  

Victories

• We are delivering the programs in their language and they are connecting with the kids.  
• Establishing a trust in the context of a class on sexuality can lead to teen coming to the school health center for a one on one meeting with educator who also works in the clinic.
• The community of youth is owning the program and are embracing the messages because they are using peer educators who are embedded in the community.

Challenges - our discussion evolved around the connection between parents and the families and the disconnect than can happen during the process of the adolescent development.

• Parents feel intimidated by many sources and that feeling intensifies when the child starts to pull away from physical contact.
• Parents are trying to prevent the emotional consequences of being intimate which is challenging because they may not have experienced emotional intimacy themselves.  
• Access to services may be a challenge because of (undocumented) immigration status.
• Kids are raising kids and teens are parenting without much parent involvement.
• Need to make all messages non-shaming for teens and for their parents.
• Healthy and unhealthy relationships are based on what they see.

Messages 

• For parents: Use door openers rather than door slammers (What do you think? Where did you hear about that? vs You are too young.  I'll let you know when you can talk about it (sex).
• Virginity and purity were topics to which the group had a wide range of opinions.  The group consensus seemed to be that splitting hairs over virginity was not productive although the youth do it all the time.  They counter these with the following: Stay Safe, Abstinence, Consent in terms of making an informed choice and decision.  Know the consequences.  Violation of consent or non-consent is wrong.  Challenge the preconceived notions that exist around virginity and purity.
• Teach and use the correct names for body parts and the biological processes associated with sexual development, sexual behavior and reproduction.

Parents - other issues to consider

• Imperative to target parents and to teach them to be transparent and clear about both the biology and body parts.
• Encourage both parents and youth to find healthy and comfortable ways to touch each other and their friends and siblings as the youth age.  Touch is an essential need that kids will seek elsewhere if not satisfied at home.
• Advise parents to start where they are.  Have them think about what advice and teaching they received and what they would like their children to have.
• Reinforce messages through publications in Spanish and that are appropriate for different Latino groups (Puerto Rican, Dominican, Mexican, etc).
• Talk about gender with parents and the roles that they grew up with and how gender is perceived today in their communities.
• Start embracing the family that their role in the development of the youth.  Put sexual development into the context of other things, do not make the discussion about SEX to the exclusion of the other changes the adolescent experiences.
• Educate everyone what it means to "stay safe."  Be aware that parents may have experience as either victims or perpetrators or witnesses of sexual assault and/or domestic violence.

I have many thoughts about this conversation and how I can translate some of this conversation into my own work as return to WSU in July.  I will not share those now.

An irony of this trip for me is the memory of our one and only visit to Times Square.  On one side of the street Disney characters where posing like crazy with an intent to get people to attend the Broadway show featuring Disney themes.  On the other side of the street was the Naked Cowboy and his Indian Princesses.  I rushed by in order to get across the street.  What I did see were two young women, mostly or completely naked, breasts painted with feathers in their hair.  Young adult men were thronging around to have their pictures taken with these women and I am guessing the Naked Cowboy was taking the tips.    What messages did that give to the many folks of all colors, ages, sizes and nationalities who thronged the square that day?  I was not impressed and could not get away fast enough from the side show this created.  If and when I return to the city, I will not go out of my way to visit Times Square.   Mike and I created routes that circumvented that three ring circus after our one encounter.

Life in the Big Apple. 

Thanks for reading.

New York City - Part Two

I am finally digesting what I did and learned on my trip to New York City.   I was privileged to visit Cornell University Cooperative Extension - New York City (CUCE-NYC) as I have mentioned in previous posts.  I want to acknowledge the amazing schedule that the team of Jackie Davis Manigaulte, Eduardo Gonzales Jr. and Michele Luc developed for the two days I spent with them in their office on East 34th St.  It was so good to speak with them in groups and as individuals and to get a good sense of what they are doing in New York City.  The parts of the visit that really stood out for me were the meetings, both in groups and individually with CUCE-NYC staff, collaborators and young people.  My memories are jumbled as I tumbled from one meeting into the next so this writing will be helpful.

It was good to start my visit with a Meet and Greet so people could get to know me and I could put names to faces.  I was delighted to be rushed off to visit KC Wagner who I wrote about earlier and then join the group for lunch.  We seemed to do lots of eating while in New York City and it was balanced each day by lots of walking!  A good balance for me.

I was able to spend time with two of the EFNEP (Expanded Food and Nutrition Education Program) community educators, Marta and Gloria, who shared about the work they do in Manhattan, Brooklyn and Queens.  I was astounded that they take their rolling carts of program materials on the busy NYC subway trains to get to their locations.  I never saw an elevator at any of the stations so I am imagining that they had to drag those materials up and down the stairs at each station.  They try not to do more than one site per day because of the time it takes to transport themselves and their materials.

Marta Garcia and Gloria Morel, CUCE-NYC EFNEP

Marta and Gloria excitedly showed me some of the props they use.  Prominent in the foreground are five samples that represent the bacteria that grows on meat that is defrosted improperly.  I took a close up so my colleagues in Bellingham can see what can be created to demonstrate food safety issues.  None of what you see is real meat. The samples were made with clay and lentils.  These samples got my attention and it has been a successful strategy in changing home food safety practices and health outcomes of family members according to some of the stories Marta and Gloria shared.

Gloria and Marta told me that among the newer immigrants to New York City are the Mexican immigrants who have come from the state of Puebla.  They were serving them through their program.  I asked them what some of the needs they saw in this community. They said they need access to health care because they do not qualify for the Affordable Healthcare Act because they are undocumented and they need to address domestic violence in that community.  When I asked Marta and Gloria about what concerns the parents were expressing they talked about a growing sense of disrespect being shown by the kids.  They attributed part of this coming from generational differences and part from environmental influences.  I heard from these fine women as I have heard from others that some youth use the threat that they will report their parents to authorities if they enforce discipline (fair or not).  "Parents need to understand the laws and know how not to give away their power."  The parents are very concerned about the focus shift from traditional values of respect and family to more material values.  I have found the nutrition education staff who work with the families and who are embedded in the communities to be great sources of insight in Arizona, California and New York City.

I think I will stop here for today.  Mike and I are going to a performance of the Mariachi Divas at our Mount Baker Theater this evening.  There will be food, drink and lots of people celebrating what is essentially an American Mexican holiday, Cinco de Mayo.  It seems like an appropriate way to honor my focus on Latino life in this country.   Interestingly, the battle 5th of May honors was fought in the state of Puebla.   The Mount Baker is a classic theater built in 1927.  It is a beautiful place to see a show and so much bigger than the theater on Broadway where we saw "It's Only a Play."  I encourage you to check out the website and to view some of the photos of this grand theater.

Rhodies in my neighborhood in all their May glory.  

Thanks for reading!

Thoughts on Aging and Moments of Grace

Owls guard the entrance to Herald Square in New York City.   They remind me to be wise and to attend to those things that bring wisdom to my life.

I have been slow to write this week.  I have been impacted by the health decline of my almost 86 year old mother, Donna.  My sisters, brothers-in-law and I all met last weekend to share information on our mother's health and the needs of both parents.  Our 88 year old father, Jim, is the primary caretaker for our mother who has been recently diagnosed with Alzheimer's Dementia.  It is a tough reality for all of us.  I took a trip to Tacoma this week and was able to take our aunt Mary Ann, my mother's only sibling, aged 89, out to dinner.  It was my task to tell her in person and I did.  We sat in stunned silence for a few seconds and then Mary Ann stated that she knows two brilliant people (my mother one of them) who suffered this terrible disease.  She spoke of her friend Jim and my mother. She remembered my mother's fierce bridge playing skills with admiration.  Then she stated that we all get old and die.  We went on to share a wonderful meal with her.  I was so grateful to have spent that time with her and to be able to see her perspective.  She has described herself to me on more than one occasion as fairly unemotional.  I am not sure about that but I think she rides the waves of life more easily than many and certainly more easily than my mother who suffers not only from dementia but also from lifelong anxiety issues.  These anxiety issues are complicating her condition and we are all hopeful that we can help stabilize her decline with some outside help.

I also took a big step in my own aging process this week.  I walked over to the Social Security Office that is just six blocks from my house and found out what I needed to do to sign up for Medicare Part A.  I will be 65 on June 18th and have been inundated with advertisements for Medicare Supplemental plans.  Obviously the world of insurers knows I am turning 65 as well.  Mike turns 65 in August so we are getting a double dose of mail about medicare plans.  Signing up was significantly more simple than I thought and took less time than it did to wait to speak to someone in person.  It was worth the time and the wait was tempered by a conversation I had with another customer who provided comfort and wisdom about living with debilitating illness.  Her husband died of Parkinson's related complications.  She patted my hand, called me "my darling" and told me to take good care.  It was a special moment of time and grace.  I am grateful for all those moments of grace that come as random acts of kindness and compassion.  I believe they are a gift of being open to life.

The Julia butterfly at Desert Botanical Gardens.  Butterflies are such potent symbols of the fragility and beauty of life.

Tomorrow Mike and I are doing the service at our church on Immigration Injustice and I have been reflecting on what I plan to share.  I plan to speak about the women who shared their stories at the Kino Women's Shelter in Nogales, Sonora and how deeply those stories and images of the women settled with me.  I have been thinking about the anxiety I felt before I went to Tucson and embarked on the Immigration Justice journey.  I doubted my ability to be witness to the grim reality that exists for the undocumented immigrants who are desperate to reach our country, to save their families and themselves.  I was changed by the experience and I will always be reminded of the courage and determination that those women showed in the face of incredible danger and odds against their success.  I hold that image as I go through my life and watch the decline of my own parents and remember the death if my daughter and how I have survived as well.

I will return to writing about NYC and my visit there.  I was reminded this morning about an exercise I used to employ when conducting work and family life balance.  It was called the juggler.  Many of us are juggling roles and responsibilities every day and we mostly are fine and skilled with the juggling act.  I know that I am very good at multi-tasking on most days.  When crisis hits it comes often in the form of a box that requires both hands and it is typical that all the balls drop to the ground for awhile as we gently handle the box and what it contains.  It is usually heavy with some kind of weight - physical, emotional, psychical, financial, etc.  This metaphor has helped me and others develop compassion for the complicated business of life and I recalled it this morning and realized that being present in my extended family for the decline of my mother is that box for me right now.  I will settle it gently on some days, but other times, it will need to be carried.

I will end today's somber post with a couple more NYC photos.  One I shared on Facebook but not on this blog.  Mike and I visited Strawberry Fields in Central Park and remembered John Lennon and his beautiful music, witness to many wrongs and his tragic, untimely death.

Remembering John and keeping the spirit of a united world loving in peace.

The night brings counsel, wisdom shared on a plaque in Herald Square as part of the New York Herald.
The publisher was known for his obsession with owls.  If I go back to NYC I will revisit the square.

I am grateful for the reminder that sleep can bring new wisdom.  I wish that for all of you who have been reading and have been remembering hard things that you have faced or are facing.

Be well and imagine.

Thanks for reading.