Child Care / Learning Center Opens On First Avenue

A well known proverb says, "It takes a village to raise a child."

Director Jodi Mincer

To Jodi Mincer, founder and director of Nu Creationz Child Care and Learning Center at 418 First Avenue, the proverb reminds her of the need to leverage community resources and values to foster an environment where children, staff, and families enjoy friendly and meaningful relationships and where children are free to learn and develop appropriately.

Mincer's vision for Nu Creationz is that children at the center will enter kindergarten well prepared for the challenges ahead.

Nu Creationz offers all day as well as before and after school care in facilities that are spacious, full of bright colors, beautiful hardwood floors and sunlight with plenty of room for children to move around.

Rooms at the center include a:

• Learning and Play Center – This is the large room at the main entrance of the facility.  
• Arts and Crafts Room –  In addition to functioning as a space for children to create visual art, it also provides access to our outside play area.  
• Social Play Room – Stocked with child-sized replicas of real-life appliances, the social play room allows children to “play house” and other “grown up” activities.   
• Healthy Lifestyles Room – Half carpet and half hardwood this is a multipurpose room.  It is used as the primary place for serving snacks and meals.

 Nu Creation is offering flexible hours and grand opening specials including 25% off first month rates.  Check them out and learn more about Jodi at Nu Creationz web site

Message Of The Empty Tomb

Garden Tomb of Christ

On this Easter Morning with its gray skies and rain-filled forecast, this editorial in Salt Lake's Deseret News, captures the essence of the holiday and the eternal and temporal hope Christ's resurrection offers.

The money quote:

If the soul lives forever, then what genuinely matters is how souls relate to one another, not what they possess or command. If the soul lives forever, then not only might we have to account for our indifference to strangers or mistreatment of enemies, but we may actually have to interact with them as distinct beings, then with the recognition that they possess the same worth and dignity as friends and family.

The entire editorial can be found here or read in its entirety below:

Not far from the Damascus Gate of Jerusalem's old city, pinched on all sides by the bustle and noise of urban life, sits a small, well-tended garden surrounding an ancient empty tomb.

The Garden Tomb dates from the time of Christ. As a lovingly cared for archeological site, it possesses many of the elements of the tomb described in the New Testament as the resting place for the body of Christ following his crucifixion.

Some question whether the Garden Tomb is the actual spot of Christ's entombment. But none can dispute the power of the message of hope conveyed by the symbol of this empty tomb.

It requires faith to believe that Jesus of Nazareth was resurrected following his brutal and inhumane execution.

It requires faith to believe that his resurrection paved the way for humankind's immortality. But once that seed of faith is planted, the message of the empty tomb places significant requirements on us, requirements of hope and charity.

Each day this paper prints the news of a broken and fallen world. Far too many contemporary events entail tragedy, betrayal and loss. Each day we publish obituaries, acknowledging the profound loss of loved ones.

But because of what led to an empty tomb on that first Easter Sunday, all can have genuine hope that what has been lost in this world — even life itself — can be lustrously restored in a better world.

Some have felt that this transcendent message of hope, that the soul will live forever, can somehow justify mistreatment and exploitation in this life. What a strange contortion of the message.

If anything, the message of the empty tomb intensifies one's obligations to behave ethically by universalizing and making eternal the reverberating consequences of behavior here and now.

If existence ended with the natural biological span of the body then the span of ethical obligations feels similarly truncated. Although it might make sense to improve the immediate material and moral conditions around oneself while the body lives, why think beyond immediate kin and community?

But Jesus Christ, understanding the immortality of the soul, taught that being a neighbor was not about the proximity of our dwellings, but about how we treat and care for one another.

He taught that charity was not about community recognition, but instead about quiet genuine acts of love to the least among us, and even to enemies.

If the soul lives forever, then what genuinely matters is how souls relate to one another, not what they possess or command.

If the soul lives forever, then not only might we have to account for our indifference to strangers or mistreatment of enemies, but we may actually have to interact with them as distinct beings, then with the recognition that they possess the same worth and dignity as friends and family.

Christ, knowing that he would break the bands of death and hell, and wanting all to follow him, wore out his life trying to teach the heavenly law of charity so that men and women could begin to live and love after that pattern here and now.

This Easter Sunday, as we contemplate the message of the empty tomb, may we all gain a brighter hope of the better world to come.

But let us not forget the world we now inhabit. Indeed, let us improve upon it by embracing our obligation to live with greater faith, hope and charity.

This Week's Poll Results

If this week's poll results are to be believed, Parkesburg's drivers spread their gas money around evenly at several of the areas gas stations.

Of the 56 people participating in this week's poll, 11 people or 19% said they buy their gas at the Wawa at Route 10 and 30 followed closely by the area's two Turkey Hill stations both of which received 9 or 16% of the votes cast.

Express Stop in Parkesburg and the Gap Wawa followed with 7 votes each with the Sunoco station at 10 & 30 receiving 6 votes, 10% of the total votes cast.

Seven people said they bought their gas at stations ofter than the six stations listed.