Blog archive
June 2023
Communications Project with Cal State LA
06/02/2023
Creative Aging
06/01/2023
May 2023
One Villager's Story
05/31/2023
Pasadena Area Literary Arts Center
05/31/2023
Pasadena Village Responds to Rainbow Flag Burning at Pasadena Buddhist Temple
05/31/2023
Plan Ahead - And Be Prepared
05/31/2023
Tuesday, May 23 Pasadena Celebrated Older Americans
05/31/2023
Rumor of Humor #15
05/28/2023
Reparations, Social Justice Activity
05/24/2023
Rumor of Humor #14
05/19/2023
Rumor of Humor #13
05/12/2023
Issue #12
05/09/2023
Science Monday - Review of Meeting on April 10, 2023
05/09/2023
Conversations Re African American Artists Before 1920
05/08/2023
Beyond the Village – Suzi and Phil Hoge
05/01/2023
Congratulations Wayne April! Honored at UNH
05/01/2023
Table Topics
05/01/2023
Volunteer Appreciation at the Village
05/01/2023
“ACCIDENTAL HOST—The Story of Rat Lungworm Disease”
05/01/2023
April 2023
Jumbo Joy
04/24/2023
Pasadenans Recent Experience With Racism
04/23/2023
Recent Events Reflecting Racism
04/23/2023
Fig and Goat Cheese Bruschetta
04/18/2023
Photography for Social Justice
04/11/2023
Issue #8
04/07/2023
BEYOND THE VILLAGE - Catherine Deely
04/06/2023
Creative Writing in Older Adults
04/06/2023
Gifts of Love
04/06/2023
March 2023
Issue #7
03/31/2023
Issue #6
03/26/2023
Great Decisions update
03/14/2023
Dominion Lawsuit, South Africa and 710 Stub
03/08/2023
February 2023
2023 DEI Progress
02/27/2023
BEYOND THE VILLAGE - Doug Colliflower
02/26/2023
CONVERSATIONS WITH ART
02/26/2023
GREAT DECISIONS
02/26/2023
OLDER ADULTS RESOURCE FAIR
02/26/2023
The Important, Influential Books in our Lives - Revisited
02/26/2023
History, Resolution of the 710 Freeway
02/19/2023
Eminent Domain, 710 Highway
02/13/2023
Bernard Garrett, 710 Freeway
02/06/2023
Men's Times Gatherings
02/03/2023
January 2023
Pasadena's Senior Commission
01/30/2023
BEYOND THE VILLAGE - JIM HENDRICK
01/27/2023
GRATITUDE - IT'S GOOD FOR YOU!
01/27/2023
JEFF GUTSTADT - FORENSIC PATHOLOGIST
01/27/2023
Bernard Garrett, Incredible Black Entrepreneur
01/17/2023
What is the "Spirit Talk" Group About?
01/16/2023
Same Ol’ New Year, Brand New Me
01/12/2023
Review of 2022, Consideration of 2023
01/06/2023
BEYOND THE VILLAGE - PATTI LA MARR
01/03/2023
FROM THE CHAIR
01/03/2023
WALK WITH EASE
01/03/2023
Belonging and the Pasadena Village
By Blog MasterPosted: 09/04/2020
I didn’t really “join” the Pasadena village. I was kinda “assumed” into membership.
There’s a story there. You see I’ve been in a Men’s Group, before the Village Men’s Group,
for almost thirty years. About ten years ago a dear friend and mate in this
group discovered and introduced me to a newly popularized Scandanavian form of Elder
“commune, I’ll call it”. Where friends of similar values decided in their senior
years to form a living community for support and intellectual and emotional growth.
Sound familiar? My mate’s name was Jim Goodell. If you’ve been around for awhile
you’d have had the pleasure of knowing Jim before his sad and early death…
and you surely know his talented and charming wife, Nancy, who presently sits on the Village Board.
Well, Jim was an action guy and an organizer, and had deep roots in the Pasadena
community. No surprise to me, he initiated a series of community meetings in the
Goodell living room on Bellmore Way, down the hill behind the Gamble House to see
if this “sorta commune idea” had any interest to his many friends. He was an exciting
chairman, stirred a lot of dreams, and brought a generation of locals to face
up to their retirement years. We even looked at available property with the idea of a
live-in community as the centerpiece of this elder experiment. One dream was the
Evanston Inn property on Marengo, which later was developed by our consulting advisor
into a beautiful, diverse, and thoughtful condominium community.
But it so happened that one of the members of this “brain trust”, Elsie Sadler,
a person of some influence in Pasadena, a Board member of the Episcopal Homes,
and by coincidence, Peggy Buchanan’s mother, was on a business trip to Boston
where she was introduced to a newly formed organization on Beacon Hill called
the Beacon Hill Village, the first of what was to become a national movement.
Well, the rest is history. The brain trust became the founding membership some
two years after the first meeting in the Goodell House, they formed the first Board
of Directors, hired Sue Kajawa as the first Executive Director, welcomed the generous
support of the Episcopal Homes Organization and watched these last eight years as
the idea caught flame and the monthly calendar of activities grew beyond anyone’s
expectations.
I’m very proud of my friend, Jim Goodell, and I hear him at each Zoom meeting,
as he looks down at me, and says, “See, I told you it would work!” And I say, “Yep!”