I've had the opportunity to create imagery for several faith-based and health organizations. As a teen traveling to the Dominican Republic, sometimes these health clinics were at the end of the road, beyond society’s reach. More recently, images in Cuba and the United States have been captured. Here are a few images of those who have been served and those who have served them.
Yolo Hospice
Easing Memory Loss
I recently had the opportunity to partner up with Yolo Hospice, the Davis Senior Center and Comfort Keepers to have a showing of the documentary, "Alive Inside." The story of the film centers around how the Music & Memory program can help people with advanced dementia access memories long dormant. Yolo Hospice is a certified Music & Memory program facilitator.
Two attendees to the Easing Memory Loss event at the Davis Senior Center on June 23, 2017, practice dance steps taught by Barbara Nicholas.
Later Barbara Nicholas, a dance teacher, showed participants how to do the basics of ballroom dancing. A recent 21 year long study of the relationship between leisure activities and risk of dementia published in the New England Journal of Medicine showed that dancing had the strongest impact on decreasing subjects' likelihood of developing dementia. It reduced dementia risk by 76 percent, the highest of the activities studied.
I needed to start this farm.
-Rubie Simonsen
Rubie Simonsen doesn’t fit the traditional paradigm of a farmer. She’s in her 20s and wears a Frida Kalho t-shirt and has a leather portrait of Kalho on her keychain. She is part of a growing number of millennials intent on making something of the world that surrounds them.
Last year Simonsen went through a seven-month intensive program for first time farmers run by Center for Land-Based Learning based out of Winters, California.
The urban farm on the corner of 5th and C Street in West Sacramento owned by CLBL. Simonsen uses it to grow her crop of specialty herbs that will be the basis for her business, First Mother Farms.
Lemon Balm takes up an entire long row, sage and lavender varietals a couple others. There’s even a row of artichoke planted previously that will be used as a dye. Her favorite crop so far? Marigolds. She touches a plant from each row in turn with a slightly blistered hand.
”I was at my last job,” She says “Sitting at my desk, looking out the window and all I could think about was my farm.” She continues, "I needed to start this farm, to have dirt under my nails and see something grow.”
What is your motivation for the work you have chosen?
