Hospice

Joan Meekins first tried reiki a year ago, to relieve the side effects of chemotherapy.Now the Carroll County woman is a certified practitioner of reiki, or touch therapy."

MARLENE Stivers and her talent for sewing beautiful handmade quilts are well-known in the area. This is the third year she has used this talent to raise money for Hospice of the Chesapeake by offering one of her quilts in a raffle. But this year, in addition to her own, there are two other quilts to raffle because she enlisted the help of more than 100 ladies in several quilting guilds. Stivers' favorite method of selling chances has been to go out in public. She and volunteers from the hospice have traveled all over, standing in front of businesses, going to festivals and garden centers.

It rained, it poured, the current was vicious and a cruising boat that got too close to the action impaled its rigging on the bowsprit of the committee boat during the starting sequence.But Shearwater Sailing Club's Hospice Cup XII on Saturday was a great experience nevertheless, for organizers, racers and a large group of sponsor/spectators aboard the Spirit of Baltimore and other vessels.The regular racing fleet of 83 starters in seven classes was augmented by a special 15-boat Hospice Class, made up of boats -- and crews -- that do not normally race.

It's Sept. 1: Do you know where your "Lion King" lunch box is?First-graders begin a journey this week that is remarkably fresh in the memories of their parents and grandparents.*Soon to celebrate 15 years of service, Hospice of the Chesapeake, Anne Arundel County's largest nonprofit agency for the care of terminally ill patients and their families, announces the arrival of its new medical director, Dr. Russell DeLuca.To direct its expanding nursing staff and related medical employees who care for the ever-increasing patient load, Chesapeake has engaged the 39-year-old specialist in oncology and hematology.

One recently bereaved family leaves a bell on their coffee table Christmas Day. Whenever someone remembers the loved one, they ring the bell.A little girl who lost her brother puts his picture on top of the tree as the family's own "Christmas angel."Some people light a candle and place it next to the dead person's picture on the mantelpiece, where the light glows all day.Finding ways to cope with a death in the family is especially hard during the holidays, and not just for the first year, said Betty Asplund, director of the Hospice of the Chesapeake in Millersville.

Pull on those country and western dancing shoes. You can dance all night Nov. 19 to benefit Carroll Hospice at A Grand Affair in Hampstead.Organizer Ellen Stickles hopes to raise about $5,000 for hospice programs. Almost half of available tickets have already sold."I've been a hospice volunteer for about eight years," Mrs. Stickles said. "I haven't had a patient since last summer, so I decided to do a benefit."We've never done [fund raising] on this side of the county, although we have a lot of patients in this area.

IT WAS a project of nearly four months, and a work of caring -- eight handmade lap quilts made by fifth-grade pupils at Linthicum Elementary School, with the help of teachers and a few parents. The children were all smiles Tuesday as they presented six of the quilts to Marilyn Potts, development coordinator for Hospice of the Chesapeake. They will be used in the six rooms of the Hospice House in Linthicum. The other two are going to ill family members of teachers. The project integrated language art skills and art classes.

Hospice of Howard County will hold its annual fundraiser, the Taste & Auction of Howard County, from 5 p.m. to 9 p.m. today at Turf Valley Resort in Ellicott City. The event's theme will be Caribbean Dreamin' and will feature a steel-drum band, auction items and food provided by 20 Howard County restaurants. A 50/50 raffle and a raffle for a 2007 Mustang convertible are also planned. Honorary co-chairs for the event are County Executive Ken Ulman and his wife, Jaki. Tickets are $85 at the door.

HOSPICE OF THE Chesapeake opens Chesapeake Treasures, its new community thrift store, May 8.Chesapeake Treasures will be in the same location as the thrift store the Cancer Resource and Support Center used to run before it dissolved this winter and transferred its assets to the hospice."

A woman dying of AIDS came to York House Hospice in Pennsylvania "with her spirit intact" said Joy Ufema, the hospice director."She told me she would just like to go, but she was afraid she would go to hell for being a whore," Ms. Ufema told a group of about 75 nurses and other volunteers from Carroll Hospice."