Page 56 - Sonoma County Gazette July 2020

Thru - Dec 4 ~ Public participation in Stanford and Aurora Santa Rosa Hospital needs analysis for fire victims. Each person will be interviewed by a trained researcher for approximately 1 to 1 1/2 hours. 707-800-7716, aurorasantarosa.com/programs/ hospital-collaboration, Cynthia.kane-hyman@aurorabehavioral.com
Thru - Dec 31 ~ Fife Creek Bridge to Bridge Butterfly Garden ~ Help with establishing native plants for butterflies and removing invasive species. Tools provided. Every Thursday 11a-4p, Woods Resort, 16484 4th st, Guerneville, 707-484-8767, Vira Fauss, viraneverends@yahoo.com
Volunteer at Ceres Community Project ~ Become an adult or youth (age 14 and up) volunteer at Ceres Community Project and help neighbors with life-threatening illnesses. Volunteers are the heart of Ceres. We look forward to welcoming you to our community! 7351 Bodega Ave., Sebastopol, 707 829-5833, volunteer@ceresproject.org
Volunteer Drivers needed for Meals on Wheels ~ Cloverdale or Guerneville. 30 Kawana Springs Rd, Santa Rosa, Santa Rosa, 707-525-0143, councilonaging.com, lgalten@councilonaging.com
Hallberg Butterfly Garden needs gardeners, & teachers ~ Volunteers to help in gardens, tour groups, classes, outreach projects, and to support local events. Hallberg Butterfly Gardens, 8687 Oak Grove Ave, Sebastopol, 707-823-3420, Meghan Peterman, hallbergbutterflygardens.org
Sonoma Agricultural Preservation and Open Space District ~ Interested in volunteering with us! We re-open July 6th. As a District volunteer you will play an important role in preserving and stewarding the open space lands in Sonoma County. 707-565-7366, sonomaopenspace.org
Donate Blood Donated blood has decreased dramatically, please come out and give. Find an drive at: https://www.redcrossblood.org/give.html/find-drive
Red Cross Ready + COVID-19 Webex Information ~ Free preparedness education curriculum, designed to help people understand, prepared for, and respond appropriately to disasters. Mon, Wed, and Thurs at 5p via Zoom. Meeting number: 739 077 299 Password: Covid-19
The Living Room Sonoma County ~ The Living Room offers drop-in day services Mon-Fri to women and children who are homeless or at-risk of becoming homeless. Visit the website for List of urgent needs. 1207 Cleveland Ave. Santa Rosa, 707-579-0138, info@thelivingroomsc.org. https://thelivingroomsc.org/how-to- help/#in-kind-donations
Hygiene Kits ~ Create hygiene kits and drop off at a shelter for people experiencing homelessness to help them stay healthy
Volunteer or Donate to Redwood Empire Food Bank ~ Food banks are running low on food items, help them stay well stocked. They are in great need of volunteers to help pack and sort food. They are taking precautions to prioritize volunteer safety. https://refb.org
The Hero’s Plate ~ Petaluma businesses have joined together to create a unique opportunity to those on the front line. Each week we choose an organization to celebrate then we provide a nourishing lunch. Organizations include: healthcare professionals, firefighters, police officers, ext. Choose from businesses and order food, candy and wine to be donated. We will prepare, gather and deliver your donations to these front line workers on your behalf. http://theheroesplate.com
Wellness Checks Check on older neighbors with a call, text, or talk through the door.
Petaluma People Services Center is looking for volunteers to make daily phone calls to our Sonoma County seniors or friends with compromised immune systems. Email: NotAlone@petalumapeople.org to learn more and receive an application!
Make Masks From frontline workers to neighbors we all need masks. There are many online tutorials to show you how.
What’s Love Got To Do With It?
Everything! Among the treasures I have held onto for many, many years, is a framed crayon drawing my youngest son created for me very early on. It was the simple, lettered statement: Love Will Keep Us Together. He had no way of knowing how very often I glanced at that frame or how many times (to this day) I considered the wisdom of a little boy still in single digit age.
It really is love that keeps us – in many ways: On track?
Confident? Hopeful? In love? In balance? Blindly trusting? ...and, yes, together. The last few years have been ones during which just personally keeping it
together (in a number of ways) was a huge chore – quite aside from the particular cause or chaos of the moment. It seems we fell into quite unloving superlatives more often than usual in our observations and quantifications: I have never seen such... It has never been so... This is the first time ever... And so it went.
It was the noticeable absence of “love” in our public
communication – from social interactions all the way to politics – that was troubling. I know the hair-splitters can come up with exceptions, so I give you that up front! But, even you might agree that just when we need love the most in our communities, our public discourse, our governments, our leaders, our allies and our personal lives, too much has been driven by dissension!
Anger is just plain exhausting, but so is Hope when you really work at it. My father was born in 1900 and came to America as an Italian immigrant child. His path and his stories were nothing like mine! But, he never complained, not once, about how it was for him in the new country or how hard it was for his parents. His stories were always about the value of the work and the hardships. He believed you learned more from difficulties than from easy street! Mostly about how to avoid more hardship! That was hope in action, he taught me. We talked about Love as
I prepared to leave home and chase the horizon; he believed Love to be the most difficult form of Hope. “Hope” he said, “is not something you sit around with, waiting for something to happen! Hope is something you work with!”
Naysayers like to ridicule the very term “love.” Too squishy
to apply to the down-and-dirty business of rough circumstances or politics! Love gets in the way -- not tough enough! (Oh yeah? How’s that working out for you?) Even the fantastic, abused Tina Turner belted out her demand: What’s Love got to do with it?
Everything. That’s all — just everything. Truth be told, almost everything unravels without Love somewhere in the mix. We must bring Love back out of the shadows and underbrush where it’s surely been hiding, waiting for us to regain our balance. Then we have to find a way to take
back our country with love enough to govern with integrity, feed the hungry, welcome those folks Emma Lazarus spoke about, kiss, embrace and care for our veterans, comfort our frightened children, care for our frail elderly, cleanse our environment, help the less fortunate than ourselves...
Love. It’s everything! (How’d I do, Seth?)
Zoë Tummillo is a Business & Marketing Consultant/Trainer/Commercial Writer, dba COMMUNICATION CONCEPTS, in private practice since 1974. In addition to Commercial work, she writesSenior Momentum: A Series of Situations; “Pieces of My Path. essay memoirs of growing up first-generation Italian American; andSenior Momentum: Front And Center!. Email Zoë at writingservice@earthlink.net
Village Network of Petaluma 707-776-6055
Many online classes ~ Gardening, Intro to online shopping, Yoga, Intro to Zoom, Women’s healing circle and more. Open to all. villagenetworkofpetaluma.org
56 - www.sonomacountygazette.com - 7/20