Up-Coming Mara Activities

At Mara's memorial celebration, Luke Zahner said:

"The thing that struck most of us when we first met Mara was of course her infectious smile, and her laugh, AND THEN how busy Mara was. While she always seemed relaxed, with all the time in the world to be with you, she was in eternal motion, always late and needing to run off to meet this friend or attend that appointment – it was constant, even through her last cancer treatments. My partner Chris once compared her to Hermione Granger from the Harry Potter series – as most of you will know, Hermione had an amulet that allowed her to be in two places at the same time.

"To Mara, a calendar was three-dimensional, sometimes even four dimensional, and it worked! I don’t know how she did it, but she always found time for you – if there was ever an emergency, she’d drop everything to come to your aid, and if her scheduled dinners or meetings overlapped, it was just the opportunity for more of Mara’s vast constellation of friends to meet, to intersect. Just another way she brought people together."

For those of you who are still tuning in, and I hope that off and on many of you will, we are finding that Mara's forward motion has not ended and we would like periodically to update you on what is happening. Four things I would like to note in the immediate future:

1) On, or around (inexact completion date Mara style) November 28th, a video of Mara's Memorial Celebration on Sunday, November 18, should be available on the web for people to see and share in the moments that so many of us were lucky enough to have and that Mara's foster sister, Olivia, was able to capture so well for you on the Blog when David Mees, David Galaty and I gave out! I WILL BE POSTING INSTRUCTIONS ON WHERE TO FIND IT AND HOW TO DOWNLOAD IT!

After the Sunday Memorial service is posted on the Web, I will be including the text of the program and speeches on the blog so that any one who is interested can follow what is being said if the recording is a bit hard to understand.

2) There will be a memorial Service for Mara in Portland, Oregon.
Date: Sunday Dec 2
Place: Lewis and Clark University - chapel with reception to follow at Smith Hall.
Time: 2:00 p.m.

3) A memorial celebration for Mara will be held in Jordan in December. Date and location to be scheduled.

4) The information on the Blog will be downloaded into a book. We are asking anyone with a Mara story that they haven't told and would like to to post it on the blog now. Many people in notes, cards as well as in person at the interment and at the memorial service told wonderful stories of what Mara had done with them as well as some of the ripple effects that have already take place when people have read her obituary. Please share these with us on the blog if you can so that we can include them in the printout.

Carol