The Great New England Holiday Specialty Food & Artisan Shows. Mar 11th, 10-4 | Mar 12th, 10 – 3pm. The Rim Sports Complex – 311 Winnacunet Rd – Hampton. 130+ exhibitors. Special St Patrick Day Fun with Irish Dancers and green beer. Food trucks | Cocktails | $100 Door Prize | Holiday Music. $5 Entry- valid both days – Ages 14 & under free of charge.
A Sense of Place, an exhibition to accompany the History of Portsmouth NH in 101 Objects. Opens at the Discover Portsmouth Center on April 1st and runs thru October 28th.
28th Annual Peeper 5k Run/Walk is Saturday, May 6th in 2023. Starts at the Barrington Elementary School with an out and back course in a country setting. For more details and the link to Registration, please visit: https://barringtonchamber.org/Peeper-5K Race hosted by the Greater Barrington Chamber Of Commerce.
Cornerstone VNA Welcomes Three New Board Members
Rochester, NH – Cornerstone VNA, your local nonprofit home health and hospice care organization, is pleased to welcome and introduce the newest members of their Board of Directors, Marilyn Staff, RN, David Richard, and Laura Davie.
According to Julie Reynolds, RN, MS, President/CEO, “We are thrilled to have Marilyn, David and Laura join our dynamic and steadfast Board of Directors. In addition to sharing a passion for our mission, they all bring extensive experience in health care and leadership skills.” Julie adds, “Marilyn, David and Laura are joining our board during an exciting time as we kick off our 110th year anniversary, and work together to honor our past, celebrate the present, and look ahead to the bright future of our VNA.”
A graduate of Boston College, Marilyn Staff, BSN, RN, CCM has been an RN for over 35 years and is currently the Director of Care Coordination at FedPoint located in Portsmouth, NH. For over 8 years, she has been overseeing Care Management and Fraud Waste and Abuse for the Federal Long Term Care Insurance Program. She has extensive senior leadership and clinical operations management experience in various settings, as well as significant risk and audit experience. A strategic, analytical, and visionary leader, Marilyn is a past member of the Massachusetts Home Care Alliance and collaborated to establish the first Salem State Universality (previously SSC) Nursing shadow program.
David Richard is currently the sales manager for liquid fuels and equipment as well as head of community outreach for D.F. Richard Energy in Dover, NH. Prior to re-joining his family’s business in 2015, he was an occupational therapist for over 20 years in various settings, including skilled nursing facilities (SNF), and visiting nurse agencies. He has also held department management positions in SNF settings, including lead therapist positions in various VNA settings.
David shares, “I am honored to be a part of such a passionate group of professionals that provide much needed home health services to the greater Rochester area and beyond. Additionally, I have experienced Cornerstones VNA’s services firsthand as they have provided amazing care to my mother in her final weeks. All I can say is that I was much impressed with the level of compassion and level of communication to myself and my siblings. It was comforting to all of us. I would not hesitate to recommend Cornerstone VNA to anyone in need of at home care.”
Rochester resident, Laura Davie, is the Director of the Long Term Care and Aging focus area at the Institute for Health Policy and Practice (IHPP). She is also the Co-Founder and Co-Director of the Center on Aging and Community Living (CACL), a collaboration between IHPP and the Institute on Disability at the University of New Hampshire in Durham, NH. Laura joined IHPP in 2005 and provides leadership, project management, facilitation, and evaluation across multiple projects focused on person-centered options for older adults to support them to live and age in communities of their choice. Currently, Laura is a Cornerstone VNA Hospice Volunteer, an active member of the Tri-State Learning Collaborative on Aging’s Advisory Board, and is a collaborative partner in the NH Senior Leadership Series. Laura was a New Hampshire Public Health Association Board Member (2009-2016) and served as Vice President (2011-2015).
Laura shares, “As a hospice volunteer these past two years, I have learned about the breadth and depth of services Cornerstone VNA provides and the high caliber of people they employ. Joining the board is an opportunity to serve Cornerstone VNA, but also our community. Sustaining and expanding home-based services is vital to the health and well-being of individuals in need of care and their caregivers.”
Cornerstone VNA currently serves Rockingham, Strafford, Belknap and Carroll Counties in New Hampshire and York County in Maine. The team at Cornerstone VNA provides award-winning care and support through five distinct programs: Home Care, Hospice Care, Palliative Care, Life Care-Private Duty and Community Care. For 110 years, Cornerstone VNA has been committed to bringing services to people of all ages so that families can stay together at home, even when facing the challenges of aging, surgical recovery, chronic or life-threatening illnesses or end-of-life care. To learn more about Cornerstone VNA, visit www.cornerstonevna.org or call 800-691-1133.
Cornerstone VNA Receives Multi Year Grant from New Hampshire Charitable Foundation
Rochester, NH: Cornerstone VNA is thrilled to announce they have received a $60,000 grant from the New Hampshire Charitable Foundation. The grant, which will be paid in $20,000 installments over a three-year period, was made possible by gifts from the following fund(s): Charles and Aroline B. Greenfield Fund, Cocheco Fund, Edmond and Margaret Drouin Charitable Fund, Greater Portsmouth Rehabilitation Center Fund, Marcia G. Moody Fund, Robert and Alexandria Lowe Fund. This important funding will help further Cornerstone VNA’s mission to promote the optimum level of well-being, independence, and dignity of those living in the community by providing trusted, compassionate and expert health care.
This multi-year grant will be used in-part for a rehabilitation training platform that will provide standardized patient education for exercises and provide professional education for their rehabilitation therapists. Furthermore, it will support underfunded specialty programs, such as Lymphedema, and specialized training for clinicians, which is critical due to the increased level of care needed to support patients at home with complex medical conditions. Funding will also support access to care for those in need, as well as efforts to attract, retain and train skilled staff.
According to Julie Reynolds RN, MS, Cornerstone VNA President/CEO, “We are so very grateful for the Charitable Foundation funding, which will enable us to continue our important work with expertise and excellence. These funds impact our ability to keep our clinicians up to date with the newest trends in healthcare, and providing specialty services to our most vulnerable residents in NH.”
About Cornerstone VNA: Cornerstone VNA currently serves Rockingham, Strafford, Belknap and Carroll Counties in New Hampshire and York County in Maine. The team at Cornerstone VNA provides award-winning care and support through five distinct programs: Home Care, Hospice Care, Palliative Care, Life Care-Private Duty, and Community Care. For 110 years, Cornerstone VNA has been committed to bringing services to people of all ages so that families can stay together at home, even when facing the challenges of aging, surgical recovery, chronic or life-threatening illnesses or end-of-life care. To learn more about Cornerstone VNA, visit www.cornerstonevna.org or call 800-691-1133.
About the New Hampshire Charitable Foundation: The New Hampshire Charitable Foundation is New Hampshire’s statewide community foundation, founded in 1962 by and for the people of New Hampshire. We are the place where generosity meets the dedication and ingenuity of nonprofits and the potential of New Hampshire students. For six decades, thousands of people have entrusted their charitable resources to the Foundation, creating a perpetual source of philanthropic capital and making it possible for the Foundation to award more than $60 million in grants and scholarships every year. For more information, please visit www.nhcf.org or call 603-225-6641.
Summer Camp
Kensington, NH — The Carriage Barn’s Annual Summer Camp runs weekly late June through mid August for children in grades K through 8. No previous farm or animal experience is needed. Carriage Barn camps are inclusionary.
Daily activities around the farm may include horseback riding, carriage driving, tending the gardens, enjoying our sensory trail, and learning about and interacting with the animals.
Camps run Monday through Friday, 9am to 4pm. Students must bring their own lunch, beverages, and snacks. Parent supervision is not required.
Camp proceeds help support The Carriage Barn’s adaptive therapy programs. For more information, please contact The Carriage Barn at carriage-barn@comcast.net or 603-378-0140, or visit our website at www.carriage-barn.org.
The Carriage Barn Equine Adaptive Therapy Programs is a 501c3 Not-for-Profit organization that seeks to promote the health and well-being of individuals of all ages with disabilities by enhancing their physical, psychological, cognitive and emotional healing and strengthening through equine activities. Program activities further this purpose by utilizing horses to provide opportunities for individuals with disabilities to form unique relationships that nurture and empower them in a way that brings new insights, self-confidence, improved communication, and relaxation. In the context of a quiet, natural outdoor setting, these activities provide a serene learning environment.
Celebrate Mardi Gras Tuesday, February 21st at New and Again Thrift Store for Charity. 585 Calef Hwy, Barrington. 10 am – 5 pm. All clothes on the racks – 50% off!! Enter raffle to win $25 gift certificate to the store. Outstanding quality and selection. Several unadvertised specials throughout the day.
Sweetheart Sale at Four Corner Antique Store on Feb 11th and 12th from 10am to 5pm. Buy one get one 50% off. Come say Hi to Big Mac the shop cat! Located at the corner of 202a and Estes rd in Rochester.
DECOMPOSITIONS
PORTSMOUTH NH: February 3 – 5, Pontine Theatre presents guest artist, Tannis Kowalchuk, performing an original one-woman show, Decompositions, at Pontine’s 1845 Plains Schoolhouse Theatre, located at #1 Plains Avenue in Portsmouth NH. Tickets may be purchased online at www.pontine.org — Performances are scheduled for Friday at 7pm, Saturday at 3pm and Sunday at 2pm. Free parking is available onsite.
In the original song-filled, multi-media production, Decompositions, Tannis Kowalchuk performs monologues and stories exploring the composting process as a metaphor for life. The one-woman show opens with a compost pile set center stage, as Tannis invokes an entry to the action with excerpts from a Gertrude Stein essay, Composition as Explanation. The play features personal stories, each describing a step in the process of decomposition…germination, rot, phosphorescence…Decompositions explores questions that arise in mid-life.
Theatre artist, flower farmer, and co-owner of Willow Wisp Organic Farm. Tannis has directed and performed in over thirty original productions in the US and Canada. Current projects include the annual Dream on the Farm, Stone Soup Cooking Class, Shakespeare on the Farm, and Decompositions. Prior to founding Farm Arts Collective, she was a founding co-artistic director of NACL Theatre with whom she created The Weather Project and Courage.
Produced by Farm Arts Collective, the Decompositions premiered in 2022 at the Delaware Valley Opera Center in Lake Huntington, NY. A 2023 tour includes engagements at Pontine Theatre in Portsmouth, NH, Bernie Wohl Theatre at Goddard Riverside, NYC, and Clear Creek Creative in Big Hill, KY.
Farm Arts Collective is an Agri-Cultural Hub where art and performance intersect with agrarian and ecological ideas. Farm Arts Collective makes its home in a large greenhouse centrally located at their home, Willow Wisp Organic Farm, a solar-powered organic vegetable farm located in Damascus, PA, that serves northeast Pennsylvania, the Catskills, and New York City.
Cornerstone VNA Celebrates 110 Years
Rochester, NH – January 2023, marks the 110th anniversary of Cornerstone VNA, a local nonprofit home health and hospice care organization serving Strafford, Rockingham, Belknap and Carroll Counties in New Hampshire and York County in Maine.
Cornerstone VNA is excited to celebrate its 110th year and is proud to look back on their impressive history of providing care at home. In 1913, the Rochester Women’s Club, led by president and philanthropist, Norma Snow, and the Ladies Aide of the First Church Congregational founded the VNA to provide homecare services. For more than a century, Cornerstone VNA has been committed to bringing services to people of all ages, so that families can stay together at home, even when facing the challenges of aging, surgical recovery, chronic or life-threatening illnesses or end of life care. As a full-service home care organization, Cornerstone VNA provides award-winning care and support through five distinct programs: Home Care, Hospice Care, Palliative Care, Life Care-Private Duty and Community Care.
Julie Reynolds, RN, MS, President/CEO states, “I have proudly worked as a home care nurse since 1987 and joined Cornerstone VNA in 1994. I have experienced so much personal and professional growth in my time at Cornerstone VNA, and it has been an honor to lead this organization as the President/CEO for the past 10 years.” Julie continues, “Although we have grown tremendously in recent years, we still pay tribute to our founder and our remarkable history of providing high quality care to our patients and our community.”
Particularly in the last decade, Cornerstone VNA has experienced significant growth which earned them recognition as the Business NH Magazine 2020 Health Care Business of the Decade, as well as numerous other awards including most recently the Falls Chamber of Commerce 2022 Nonprofit of the Year, and the 2022 Best of the Seacoast Best Home Health Care.
As the region braced itself for the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, Cornerstone VNA was well-prepared thanks to their ongoing emergency preparedness efforts. They continued providing care to patients and developed innovative ways to remain connected to their local communities. They also broke ground on an important capital project in October 2020 to expand their building and renovate their existing space to address the growing needs of their patients, staff, and community members. Over the years, Cornerstone VNA has remained proactive in its approach to researching and implementing innovative specialty services, including a remote telehealth monitoring program, to meet the complex needs of their patients to ensure positive outcomes.
With a staff of over 170 team members, Cornerstone VNA has a depth of longevity that is quite extraordinary. Sandy Powers, RN, has been a nurse at Cornerstone VNA for thirty-one years, and is known fondly by her patients as “Nurse Sandy”. Sandy remarks, “I’ve had various roles over the last 30 years, and it has been a wonderful ride with all of them. I’ve gained so much knowledge working as an RN in home care.”
From longtime nurse, Sandy, to recently enlisted team member, Megan Casey, RN, BSN, the positive feeling of being a nurse and working in home care is just as strong. Megan shares, “There’s something remarkable and rewarding about caring for patients in the home setting, often at their most acute and vulnerable states, and being part of an agency (family) that provides endless support and appreciation. I don’t just love what I do, I live for it.”
To learn more about Cornerstone VNA, visit www.cornerstonevna.org or call 800-691-1133. Visitors to the website can also learn more about Cornerstone VNA’s history by reading their historical blog posts, which will be posted each month throughout the year.
