When I started in my position as Coordinator of How are the Children? I met with many people who have been working to create healthy communities for Suburban Ramsey County kids for many years.  Kirsten Dawson shared some vintage copies of the PCN Communicator, the newsletter of the District 621 Parent Communication Network. 

This entry, written by Murt Seltz, in the December 2000 newsletter is still as good today as when it was written. 

“While working for the Mounds View School District, facilitating support groups for middle school students in single parent and step-parent family homes, I began to realize the important role that grandparents play in the lives of grandchildren.  Over the years I heard student after student talk about the simple things that were meaningful to them, and the comfort and security they felt knowing that someone beside their parents had a lifelong emotional commitment to them.  I began to realize, also, that we professionals had an untapped resource that could possibly be of support for children.

Now that I am a grandmother I am seizing the opportunity to build relationships with the little ones who have entered my life—and I am enjoying this dimension in my life to the fullest.  The opportunities are boundless—the Science Museum, making doll clothes, driving around the city looking for the Snoopy statues, picnics in the park, utilizing the community center’s Eagle Nest and swimming pool, making cookies, raking leaves, visiting Como Zoo, the Dairy Queen, reading stories, playing chopsticks on the piano, having “special Wednesdays” and “super Thursdays” for two at a time, seeing plays at the Children’s Theatre, concerts in the parks, walking along Minnehaha park to the river and climbing the sandstone cliffs, viewing the city from atop the Foshay Tower, riding the city bus into Minneapolis and back, visiting the Minnesota Historical Society, The State Capitol, and the St. Paul Cathedral.  Thee are many activities that can enrich the lives of the children—and provide wonderful, lasting memories that will hold them in good stead forever.  Go for it, Grandma.”