We teach our children by example, not by the laws we pass

Two of my longtime dearest friends called to say hello before isolating themselves while they start the arduous preparations for the forthcoming beginning of the Jewish holiday of Passover, which begins Monday evening with the traditional Passover Seder meal at sundown and lasts for eight days, ending on April 2.

While I envy these women friends their warm, close family gatherings at this holiday, I am relieved that my own preparations for Palm Sunday and Easter are minimal and easy compared to their lengthy, demanding schedule of cleaning, bringing forth special dishes and utensils and the preparation of many symbolic and delicious foods, which may not contain wheat, rye, barley, oats or spelt.

Passover celebrates the delivery of members of the Jewish faith from slavery in Egypt during the time of Moses. At this special time of year which represents a rebirth, I have also been giving a lot of thought to news items about the continuing arguments over gun laws, the presence of a gun shop on Main Street, Branford, and the push, in some states, to allow sponsored prayer at school sports events and in the classroom.

While I have never been convinced of the need for artillery-type weapons for self-defense nor the claim that good guys being fully armed at all times is the best way to protect us from the bad. I also don’t think foregoing the wise decision to keep church and state separate and bringing prayer (representative of one faith) into the schools, will make children “good” either.

As parents and teachers, we lead by the example we set with our own friends and in our own communities. I am both charmed and impressed that in Hebrew there are several expressions for acts of kindness. Mitzvot are mandated acts; respecting your parents and grandparents and giving food to the poor as well as caring for orphans, the homeless and unfortunate strangers. Tzedakjah are the acts which serve as living models for our children when they see and help us donate food and clothing or invite others to share in our holiday dinner and live the virtues of study, hard work, honesty and thrift. Gimelut hasidm, or loving acts of kindness, are the little but so important things, the unsolicited gestures that are gifts of love and empathy.

Lastly, Tkun olam (repair of the Earth) are the acts as small as picking up litter or trying to conserve natural resources. We adults are all teachers, and we instruct by what we do rather than by what we say. At this special time of year when the Earth comes alive once again and whatever our faith, we feel hopeful and renewed, let us consider that laws are only as strong and meaningful as the examples their human makers set. May you have a happy and peaceful Easter and Passover.

Contact Jean Cherni, certified senior adviser for Senior Living Solutions and Pearce Plus, a helpful, full-service program for seniors contemplating a move, at jeancherni@sbcglobal.net or 15 The Ponds at 101 Hotchkiss Grove, Branford 06405.

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A tip o' the cap this day to all those lucky enough to be Irish

“May you always walk in sunshine

May you never want for more

May Irish angels rest their wings

Right beside your door”

— Old Irish blessing

I have always envied the Irish their wonderfully colorful language and their inborn talent as marvelous story tellers. One has only to read authors like Frank McCourt to be aware of their uniquely lilting method of expression.

Quinnipiac University’s The Great Hunger Museum, which opened last year on Whitney Avenue in Hamden, has been in the news for its unprecedented collection of visual arts, artifacts and other materials relating to the starvation and forced emigration that occurred from 1845 to 1850.

It was these horrific circumstances that caused so many Irish to come to America. One of the first Irishmen to come to what is now Connecticut was a nobleman by the name of Riley who settled in the Connecticut River Valley in 1634. Another Irish immigrant, Darby Field, explored the White Mountains with a group of Indian guides. In 1640, a group of Irish refugees came from the West Indies to New Haven, among them was an educated gentleman, William Collins who taught school in Hartford before going to Boston where unfortunately he ran into trouble with some church officials who banished him to Rhode Island.

Edward Brennan, the son of an Irish immigrant, founded St. Margaret parish in Waterbury and Patrick S. McMahon established Strickland House, formerly one of the oldest hotels in Connecticut. Particularly interesting was an influx of Irish immigrants to Newtown. Many came as railroad workers and lived in the Sandy Hook and Walnut Tree Hill neighborhoods.

Like all first waves of immigrants, the Irish were at first, most unwelcome; they were polarizing socially, religiously and politically. Many came to Newtown from one small area of County Clare and eventually changed the town’s political majority from Republican to Democrat.

While they started out as farmers and laborers, subsequent generations fulfilled the American dream and became attorneys, doctors and government officials, and, of course, one, although not from Connecticut, became our first Catholic president. (JFK did, however, attend Choate in Wallingford.)

There is an excellent article in the current issue of Connecticut Magazine by David Monagan, entitled “Irish Yearning,” and there is also a Connecticut Irish American Historical Society which maintains a collection of books about Irish history, culture and genealogy at the Ethnic Heritage Center at Southern Connecticut State University in New Haven. They also publish a quarterly newsletter, The Shanachie, which means “storyteller” in Gaelic, for their more than 300 members.

They are very involved in interviewing and recording the recollections of senior citizens in the Irish community. Recording and preserving the oral history of our diverse senior population, is, I believe, of tremendous importance.

Have a celebratory dinner of corned beef and cabbage at Nick’s in Madison or Kelly’s Restaurant & Bar or O’Toole’s Irish Pub and Restaurant, both in New Haven.

-And should you have the time, dearie, I’d luv to see the likes of you at 5:30 p.m. March 21 at the Hearth at Gardenside, 173 Alps Road in Branford, where I’ll be talkin’ about “How to Speak to Your Aging Parents.” Call the Hearth at 203-483-7260 for reservations.

Contact Jean Cherni, certified senior adviser for Senior Living Solutions and Pearce Plus, a helpful, full-service program for seniors contemplating a move, at jeancherni@sbcglobal.net or 15 The Ponds at 101 Hotchkiss Grove, Branford 06405.

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In some countries, International Women s Day resembles Mother s Day

Was there ever a year when daylight savings, a sure sign that spring is just around the corner, was more eagerly anticipated and welcomed? We are all certain to be aware that today marks that event.

What many of us may not have read about is that this past Friday was International Women’s Day. While the day has been observed since the early 1900s, a time of turbulence in the industrialized world when it was known as International Working Women’s Day, it wasn’t until 1975 that the United Nations gave official sanction to the holiday.

Following a decision reached in Copenhagen in 1911, the IWD was honored for the first time in Austria, Denmark, Germany and Switzerland, with more than 1 million men and women campaigning for women’s rights to work, vote and hold public office.

Less than a week later, on March 25, the tragic Triangle Factory Fire in New York City, which took the lives of more than 140 immigrant working women, called attention to conditions in the United States.

On this same day in 1917, Russian women began a strike for “bread and peace.” A latter-day Soviet poster dedicated the 8th of March holiday, calling it, “The day of the rebellion of working women against kitchen slavery.” From the time of its birth in the socialist movement, IWD has grown to become a global day of recognition and celebration and is an official holiday in many countries, including Great Britain.

Some countries treat it almost like an equivalent of Mother’s Day. In Italy and Russia, yellow mimosas and chocolates are popular gifts.

This year, the theme is “A Promise is a Promise ... Time for Action to End Violence Against Women.” Some 603 million women live in countries where domestic violence is not yet considered a crime. Sixty-million girls worldwide are child brides, married before the age of 18, and 50 percent of sexual assaults are committed against girls under the age of 16.

Our own country has been dealing with sexual crimes against women in the military, and, of course, women are still paid less than men for the same work in many areas.

In Bangladesh in 2002, there were more than 500 recorded acid attacks on women. A huge men-only demonstration in Dhaka on IWD, which has been regularly repeated, resulted in fewer than 100 attacks last year. As Gloria Steinem so eloquently put it, “The story of women’s struggle for equality belongs to no single feminist, nor to any one organization, but to the collective efforts of all who care about human rights.”

A Join Me on the Bridge campaign started in 2010 when women from the Congo and Rwanda joined together on the bridge connecting the two countries, showing they could build the bridge for peace.

From China to Costa Rica, singers and musicians come together to spread a message of unity with “We Are One Woman,” a song. According to Women for Women International, one of my favorite charities, “One woman can change anything. But many women can change everything.”

P.S. International Men’s Day is Nov. 19.

Contact Jean Cherni, certified senior adviser for Senior Living Solutions and Pearce Plus, a helpful, full-service program for seniors contemplating a move, at jeancherni@sbcglobal.net or 15 The Ponds at 101 Hotchkiss Grove, Branford 06405.

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At this age, who couldn’t use a hearing aid

Last year, when my daughter Marianne visited me, she sometimes would say something while in another room, and I would only comprehend every third word, requiring me to constantly shout, What?” or “Wait till I’m in the room with you to talk.”

Never one to be indirect, Marianne told me I really ought to think about getting a hearing aid. Most of the time, in personal conversations, I’ve experienced no problem, but sometimes phone conversations or understanding all of the lines in a theatrical production can prove difficult.

When I had my hearing tested, I was told that my hearing loss was “age appropriate,” whatever that means and that a hearing aid would be beneficial. (Well, of course they think so, they are selling them.) However, I have been doing some serious research on the subject and here’s what I found out:

About two-thirds of adults age 70 and older have hearing loss. After age 80, the percent jumps to 79 percent.

Most important is that recent studies strongly indicate a relationship between hearing loss and declining cognitive function. In fact, in an observational study, baseline hearing loss was associated with 30 to 40 percent greater cognitive decline per year as compared with similar patients without hearing loss.

One of the reasons may be that hearing loss can cause older adults to withdraw socially. When it becomes hard to hear what other people are saying, you definitely feel cut off from those around you.

Another possibility, according to Dr. Frank Lin at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, is that hearing loss forces the brain to devote extra resources to processing the “garbled” signals it is getting from the ears. “If you are redirecting brain resources to help with hearing,” Lin explained, “that probably comes at the expense of something else — like working memory.”

Hearing loss is more than an inconvenience or source of embarrassment; hearing represents a critical portal to conversation, a behavior that connects humans to one another socially. Hearing loss creeps up on people “slowly and insidiously,” according to Lin, so it might not be you who notices it, but the people around you. (Certainly true in my case!)

There is often confusion over the terms “hearing impaired,” “hard of hearing,” “deaf” and “deafened.

Hearing impaired is often used to describe people with any degree of hearing loss from mild to profound, including those who are deaf. But deaf usually refers to a hearing loss so severe there is very little or no functional hearing.

Hard of hearing refers to a hearing loss where there may be enough residual hearing that an auditory device provides adequate assistance to process speech.

Deafened usually refers to a person who becomes deaf as an adult and, therefore, faces different challenges than those of a person who was deaf at birth or became deaf as a small child.

AND NOW FOR SOME REALLY GOOD NEWS

I have found and tested a special and helpful phone called Caption Call, which, when you answer your phone, simultaneously displays the entire conversation on a screen which is part of the phone. I keep it next to my regular phone and use both. It is the most helpful accessory since my GPS. And best of all, if you have Internet service (needed for the connection) it is absolutely free. It is subsidized and paid for by a small tax we all pay on our phone bills (Who knew?) and you are entitled if you are even slightly hearing impaired.

It almost sounded too good to be true, so after I heard about it a few months ago, I waited, got mine installed and have been using it for almost eight weeks before feeling I could tell readers about it. Find out more at CaptionCall.com or 877-557-2227 where you may also put in an order.

Contact Jean Cherni, certified senior adviser for Senior Living Solutions and Pearce Plus, a helpful, full-service program for seniors contemplating a move, at jeancherni@sbcglobal.net or 15 The Ponds at 101 Hotchkiss Grove, Branford 06405.

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