‘Peace House Community Journal’ Archives
Something to Offer
from the series Peace House Community- A Place to Belong By MARTI MALTBY Marti Maltby Like many social service organizations, Peace House Community relies on volunteers to achieve its goals. Those who donate their time and, more importantly, their talents enrich the experience of our community when they come to our building. I am always thankful for our volunteers, and I knew we have added several services lately as new volunteers have joined us, but it wasn’t until a week or two ago that I grasped just how much goes on here because of volunteers. If I look only at what our volunteers do directly with the community members, the list reads: HaircutsHand massagesManicuresArt projectsWood carving classesWriters groupBlood pressure checksBicycle repairNeck and back massagesLive music during lunchMaintaining our gardenHave normal conversations with our members. This list doesn’t include the behind the scenes work of our volunteers, like sorting donations and maintaining [...]
Embracing Failure
from the series Peace House Community- A Place to Belong By MARTI MALTBY Marti Maltby “Anything worth doing is worth doing poorly at first. It’s worth doing poorly many times until you get good at it.”-Paul Tracy (or maybe it was Zig Ziglar, I can’t remember which) “Go on failing. Go on. Only next time, try to fail better.”-Samuel Beckett As someone who grew up receiving a fair amount of criticism when I failed (one of the byproducts of being compared to two exceptionally gifted brothers). I often try to protect myself from failure. Maybe it would be more precise to say that, when I fail, I make sure I have my excuses ready. I’ve learned that no one can completely avoid failure. Life will sometimes require us to do things we aren’t that skilled at doing, and we won’t be able to do it well enough. That may not technically be a failure, but as I grew up, it felt like it was. It took a long time for me to realize that avoiding my failures didn’t do [...]
Conflict: The Doorway to Greatness
Peace House Community - A Place to Belong By MARTI MALTEBY Marti Maltby Dave and Ray Davies, the brothers who have led the British band The Kinks since the 1960s, have a famously volatile relationship. Even though they managed to stay in a band together for over 40 years, they often despised each other and had explosive arguments. They addressed their relationship in the song Hatred (A Duet), which featured the lines:You wanna be my friend, well it’s too lateMy love for you has turned to hateAnd I think that it’s a permanent conditionYou say you wanna make the peaceSmile and turn the other cheekI can’t put myself in such a weak positionNow I’m willing to accept this fateYou and me just can’t cohabitateWe agree to hate and that’s our last decision That’s just the first verse. The rest of the song features many creative ways of expressing the same feelings. But the Davies brothers don’t continually make war. When they performed the song on The Tonight Show in [...]
