FARMINGTON – A Resource Fair celebrating seniors will be held on Saturday, Oct. 1 at the Mt. Blue Campus. The fair for those 55 and older, is a collaboration of several area agencies and service organizations that support seniors, will feature vendor presentations and three seminars on senior-related topics from 9 to 11:45 a.m.
Among those, Sharing Stories—A Life Review, will describe a unique project underway by Steven Quackenbush, a professor of psychology at the University of Maine Farmington, Karol Maybury, a UMF associate professor of psychology and their participating students, who are exploring the role played by stories in understanding ourselves and sharing our lives with others. Each participating volunteer senior storyteller brings “an ideal opportunity to celebrate life in its richness and complexity,” Quackenbush said.
In part one of three narratives to be published on Wednesdays leading up to the Senior Resource Fair, UMF student Samuel Birch interviewed Linda Manning, 60, of Kingfield. A career accountant, Manning grew up in Marblehead, Mass. As part of an extended interview, Manning was asked to recall the single most important experience in her moral development which had the greatest impact on the values she holds today. Manning told the following to Birch:
“I was in fifth grade when this happened. My teacher was a very strict, almost harsh woman. She arranged the seating in her classroom by perceived intelligence. I don’t know exactly how she judged it, but that’s how we sat. She kept the ‘smarter’ students in the front few rows and the ‘less intelligent’ students in the back. Being a good student with high grades, I was placed in the front. However, I was not comfortable with this.
“I had a friend who sat in the back corner of the room. It really bothered me on a deep level that she had to sit back there—it just didn’t feel right. I knew she came from a poorer family. I had visited her home before. She lived in one of the rundown apartments in town with a single working mother. When it was announced that my friend was moving to another town, the teacher made the comment, ‘That’s a shame, I was just beginning to like you.’ This was such an unkind, unwarranted statement. She could have said something like ‘I wish you well.’ I can only assume that she didn’t like her because she wasn’t a good student. But this teacher didn’t know what her home life was like.
“This situation struck me as wrong because I knew I had been given preferential treatment by the teacher based on my academic ability. It was wrong for my friend to be put in the back of the class because she didn’t meet my teacher’s criteria for privilege.”
Manning was asked if she could describe the experience to a young adult, what lesson would she like them to learn?
Manning responded, “that kindness is the best way to approach helping others. You’re never fully aware of what someone else is going through, so there is no value in being unkind.” She also said she wished that “children who feel they are better or above others to hear this story.”
Manning and other seniors participating in the Sharing Stories project, will be highlighted during a presentation by Quakenbush during the first seminar at the fair on Oct. 1, from 9 to 9:45 a.m.
The Senior Resource Fair will open with a free buffet breakfast from 8 to 9 a.m. in the cafeteria on Mt. Blue Campus. The breakfast will be catered by the Culinary Arts program at the Foster Career Technology Eduation Center.
Funding for the event is provided through a Thriving in Place grant administered by MeHaf, Maine Health Access Foundation, and sub-sponsored by SeniorsPlus and is geared for seniors 55 and older who are interested in learning more about all of the agencies that serve Franklin County and to become familiar with programs and services they provide. Family members and caregivers are encouraged to participate so they can gather information and provide guidance for their loved ones as they grow older and are in need of support.
Seminars include Scams in Franklin County and “Living Courageously and Outrageously” which will provide seniors with an overview of all of the wonderful opportunities and challenges that face seniors, as they grow older.
Vendors providing information will include: SeniorsPlus, Franklin Community Health Network Education Department, Western Maine Community Action, Western Maine Transportation, United Way, Franklin County Sheriff’s Office, Farmington Police Department, Androscoggin Home Care and Hospice, Franklin Savings Bank, Senior Planning Center.
Just wondering if we have to pre-register for this event and if so who do we contact?
Preregistration is not required. Just show up. You can call SeniorPlus for more information at (800) 427-1241.
I’ll be there! We seniors certainly are in need of the information! Thank you.
I cannot attend, but (I am going to be 63 next month) I would say that my parents were the ones who gave me moral guidance. My mom raised me until I was a bratty teen and she never made me do any work, but then I moved in with my dad and I felt like I was in reform school. Get out of bed, clean this place, got weeding to do. Shovel the driveway, clean out the horse stalls. I thought he was a tyrant. He used to be a drill sargeant during WWII. I was awful. Sassed back. Refused to clean out the hen house. He never hit me, except for once (which I deserved, because I told him he was unfit parent and that I hated him and my step-mother and that they were mean.) My dad’s dog (dad fed him under the table) stood up for me and bit my dad’s cuff of his trousers to stop him from hitting me. His dog. Not mine. Anyway, I think though my mom loved me, I think my dad really taught me the most.