Celebration Lifelong Clubs – Spring-Summer 2024

Join us as we focus on topics and fun activities targeting all dimensions of brain health. Directly address every function of the brain, including attention, memory, motor skills, visual/spatial skills and executive abilities within the gentle encouragement of a friendly group setting. Receive the latest research updates, the most reliable information on a brain-healthy lifestyle and great suggestions on successfully incorporating brain training into everyday life. Learn to preserve all of your cognitive abilities to live independently and happily into your later years! (Meets every other month alternating with Wellness Club)

Facilitator: Alexis Saire

Meets Monthly During Club Week on Tuesdays, 11:00 AM – 12:00 PM.

Do your diet and exercise plans fall apart after a few weeks or never get started at all? Would you like to achieve lasting improvement in areas of health and wellness such as fitness, nutrition, energy, quality sleep and stress management? Discover how to clarify your direction, create a realistic plan of action and make permanent lifestyle changes in a positive, non-judgmental group environment. The built-in support system of a group provides accountability, new perspectives and creative strategies to unlock your wellness potential. Be motivated, confident, and empowered as you travel on your journey to health and celebrate your achievements with your Wellness Club! (Meets every other month alternating with Brain Train Club)

Facilitator: Alexis Saire

Meets Monthly During Club Week on Tuesdays, 11:00 AM – 12:00 PM.

2024: Commemorating Heritage, History, and Awareness Months

Facilitators: Dolores Salvo, Don Salvo

Meets Monthly During Club Week on Wednesdays, 10:30 AM – 12:00 PM

Poverty Awareness Month
January 3 — Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver (2022)

Winner of the 2023 Pulitzer Prize and 2023 Women’s Prize for Fiction, Demon Copperhead is loosely based on Charles Dickens’s David Copperfield, but instead addresses contemporary issues faced by a boy born into poverty in Southern Appalachia. At times hilarious, at times heartbreaking, “Demon Copperhead speaks for a new generation of lost boys, and all those born into beautiful, cursed places they can’t imagine leaving behind.”

Black History Month
February 7 — The Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois by Honoree Fanonne Jeffers (2021)

A New York Times Notable Book of the Year and an Oprah’s Book Club Pick, The Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois is an epic history and modern story of one African American family that is the story – and the song – of America itself.

Women’s History Month
March 6 – Circe by Madeline Miller (2018)

Circe is a “bold and subversive” retelling of the goddess Circe’s story. With unforgettably vivid characters, mesmerizing language, and page-turning suspense, Circe is a triumph of storytelling, an intoxicating epic of family rivalry, palace intrigue, love and loss, as well as a celebration of indomitable female strength in a man’s world. Circe is the Winner of the 2019 Indie Choice Award and was shortlisted for the 2019 Women’s Prize for Fiction.

Arab American Heritage Month
April 3 — The Other Americans: A Novel by Laila Lalami (2019)

Late one spring night in California, Driss Guerraoui—father, husband, business owner, Moroccan immigrant—is hit and killed by a speeding car. The aftermath of his death brings together a diverse cast of characters deeply divided by race, religion, and class. The Other Americans is at once a family saga, a murder mystery, and a love story informed by the treacherous fault lines of American culture. It was a 2019 National Book Award finalist.

Jewish American Heritage Month
May 8 – The History of Love by Nicole Krauss (2006)

Leo Gursky taps his radiator each evening to let his upstairs neighbor know he’s still alive. But it wasn’t always like this: in the Polish village of his youth, he fell in love and wrote a book… Sixty years later and half a world away, fourteen-year-old Alma, who was named after a character in that book, undertakes an adventure to find her namesake and save her family. With virtuosic skill and soaring imaginative power, Nicole Krauss gradually draws these stories together toward a climax of “extraordinary depth and beauty.” (Newsday).

Immigrant Heritage Month
June 5 — The Lowland by Jhumpa Lahiri (2013)

A National Book Award finalist, The Lowland is set in both India and America. It is a tale of two brothers bound by tragedy, a fiercely brilliant woman haunted by her past, a country torn by revolution, and a love that lasts long past death.

Disability Pride Month
July 10 – Haben: The Deafblind Woman Who Conquered Harvard Law by Haben Girma (2019)

In a memoir that The New York Times calls “inspiring,” Haben Girma, the first deafblind person to graduate Harvard Law School, takes us on her amazing journey from isolation to the world stage. Warm, funny, thoughtful, and uplifting, this captivating memoir is a testament to one woman’s determination to find the keys to connection.

National Book Lovers’ Day
August 7– The Sentence by Louise Erdrich (2021)

The Sentence recounts the story of a bookstore that is haunted for a year by its most annoying customer. “Dazzling… A hard-won love letter to readers and to booksellers, as well as a compelling story about how we cope with pain and fear, injustice and illness. One good way is to press a beloved book into another’s hands. Read The Sentence and then do just that.”—USA Today

Are you a good cook? Do you like to cook but always struggle with what to make? Or maybe you are like me, love to eat, love to cook great food, and always on the lookout for new recipes and ways of bringing new life to foods you eat every week.

In this club, guess what? We will meet and share recipes! We can highlight the holidays, feature individual food groups and yes, we can discuss healthy eating and how to alter fattening recipes.

We meet outdoors under a rooftop so we can still have fun getting together and sharing the stories that make them special to us. I see a Celebration cookbook in the making!

Come join Meryl in this club adventure, expand your taste buds and your recipe collection.

Facilitators: Meryl Rachlin

Meets Monthly During Club Week on Wednesdays, 1:30 PM – 2:45 PM

NOTE: This club will be held outdoors.