Christine spoke to us about hospice and the other options available from Samaritan.
Samaritan has been around since 1980. They are a non-profit organization that provides service in our 5 county area.
The do not deny anyone service for inability to pay.
They provide palliative care, end of life care and grief support.
We learned that Hospice is available to anyone with less than six months to live. Once hospice is started for a person, all curative treatment must stop.
Today, we had a visit from the Happy Bagpiper, Thom Moore.
Thom told us about how he became interested in bagpipes and playing them. Part of his interest was in the history and types of bagpipes.
We did not know that there are many more types of bagpipes than the most familiar to us, the Great Highlands Bagpipe (GHB). There are seven Celtic regions (not just Ireland and Scotland and they have their versions.
Two that are shown here are Spain :
And Italy:
We also learned about the general structure of the bagpipe and the GHB:
Then were learned about the history of the GHB pipes and how they came to be used with military functions long after they were used for more social functions, including waking up the Lairds and and Chiefs:
The music has a total of 9 notes and can be a march tempo or a much slower tempo.
And of course, we all enjoyed the demonstrations of the music:
Chris Mattern of Eclipse Brewing in Merchantville told us about how he started his business. Eclipse Brewing is a micro brewery. Which means many taps and small kegs.
Mark Heston, introduced Chris and acted as the barmaid as we sampled some of the current product from Eclipse Brewing.
Chris told us about his search for a location and the chain of events that led him to his current location in Merchantville.
He also described how he get the flavors in his beers.
The flavors we tasted were a coconut, an apricot and a citrus beer. They were all great. He invited us all to stop by any Thursday through Sunday to see the brewery and take a tour.
He can't serve food, but the local merchants have developed menus to go with a growler that you can take out.
