About 50 people gathered on the Dartmouth Green last Thursday evening to celebrate Hanukkah, the festival of lights, and a miracle that happened many years ago.
In the past the menorah on the Dartmouth Green has met with both large and small problems. The smaller problems have been comical. The lighter wouldn’t light, or the wind blew out the rabbi’s matches. The big problem was the year that someone shot the lights out. That year I was scared. I worried about anti-semitism.
Before we all recited the blessings, Rabbi Moshe Gray spoke of the meaning of Hanukkah. It is a holiday that celebrates light when the days are their shortest and the world is at its darkest. It’s about miracles and defeating those that would rather force us to assimilate than allow us to be ourselves. It is about bringing goodness into the world and standing up to do the right thing, even when that is difficult to do. Rabbi Gray also thanked Dartmouth’s President Beilock for unifying the campus while so many other colleges are struggling with hate speech and anti-semitism.
Rabbi Gray joked that, in past years, he has had trouble with matches and little lighters and so this year he came ready for the challenge. He climbed up the stepladder with a blowtorch in hand. When he tried to light the torch, it didn’t work. It was frozen shut. The crowd waited patiently despite cold fingers and toes. Several people stepped forward to help. They even tried warming the torch over the simmering pot of cider. Nothing worked.
Rev. Nancy Vogele, college chaplain, said she had a lighter in her office. Abdul Rahman Latif, Dartmouth’s Muslim chaplain, stepped forward. He offered to run to get Vogele’s lighter. Nancy handed Abdul her office keys. He returned in a few minutes slightly out of breath and handed the lighter to Moshe. The rabbi lit the menorah with the pocket lighter.
I will remember Hanukkah 2023 as the year of interfaith cooperation. A Christian offered a solution, a Muslim put it into action, a Jew spread the light. And, for that moment, everyone was happy.
K. Heidi Fishman
Norwich
Our communities
need more nurses
Our towns need a community nurse or health care coordinator. With 42% of us old people now, and lack of housing options or retirement homes, we need to consider aging at home. My town, Sharon, has had a care coordinator for nine years. We get to know her and can depend on her finding the necessary resources we’re in need of. She lessens many trips to the medical facilities and cuts down on emergency situations.
She helped me and my husband several times, providing a learned relationship we can go to, always there for us. She helps translate and explain medical terms we don’t understand, advise about medicines, and make our surroundings safer for us to avoid falls. To combat isolation she interviews us about what music we enjoyed when young and gets a CD made especially for us.
Our Care Coordinator acted as the primary coordinator for a complicated case; a senior with advanced dementia, living alone at the wheelchair level, for more than 1.5 years. Through our advocacy, communication with agencies, facilitation of doctor’s appointments, application assist to choices for care, implementation of durable medical equipment to prevent falls, the client has been able to meet her goal of remaining home. All this is free.
In looking around at many of the good agencies that serve the elder population, many have a staff shortages and have cut back or stopped doing home visits. Having a town Nurse/Coordinator on the ground enables a connection to these services. They don’t do hands on medical tasks like the Visiting Nurses, they appraise and navigate to what’s needed.
The community nurse or care coordinator idea is spreading around the Upper Valley. I urge more towns to consider getting this kind of help in place. There’s a bill in the Vermont House, H.358, for the purpose of establishing community nurse programs in more Vermont communities. Let’s encourage this idea!
Carol Langstaff
Sharon