The Tacoma-Pierce County League of Women Voters holds a general meeting every month, and a recent one at the Puyallup Public Library found nearly every chair taken. Members came prepared to take part in a lively discussion about the history of the suffrage movement, report on recent candidate forums, and share memories of their voting. The group was engaged, interested and, in addition to taking care of important business, a lot of fun. The League of Women Voters was formed nationally 100 years ago by women who were activists and trying to get the women’s vote.

Tucked into a building on downtown Sumner’s Main Street is Heritage Quest Research Library, where volumes of information and volunteers ready to help anyone searching for information about their ancestry. While companies charge for searches into ancestry by offering one database, Heritage clients have access to a number of databases and are welcome to visit the library as often as they choose. Heritage is a non-profit organization run 100 percent by volunteers. It’s open six days a week–Monday through Saturday 10 a.m to 4 pm, and Wednesday from 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. Some months, it has served as many as 160 folks.

Every Tuesday afternoon from 3 to 4:30, Mountain View Community Center in Edgewood throws open its doors and welcomes folks and their care partners struggling with Alzheimer’s, dementia, Parkinson’s, traumatic brain injuries, strokes and PTSD. At a recent session, mothers and daughters, husbands and wives, and friends streamed through the door two by two, ready to gather and sing, play an instrument or just listen and take an hour and a half away from their daily lives dealing with the effects of memory loss.

Falls don’t necessarily go hand-in-hand with aging, but when they happen to older adults, the consequences can be dramatic.
The National Council on Aging reports that one in four Americans 65 and older falls each year. Falls are the leading cause of fatal injuries and the most common cause of non-fatal, trauma-related hospital admissions among older adults. Nationally, victims are treated every 11 seconds in a hospital emergency room, and one of them dies every 19 minutes as a result of falling.