Hank Mattimore is the Chair of the Sonoma County Juvenile Justice Commission.
2343 Avenida De Las Brisas
Santa Rosa, CA 95405
707-544-3763
Contact: hmattimore@yahoo.com
Recently a fifteen-year-old girl was savagely beaten and raped on a schoolyard in Northern California while twenty schoolmates watched. A few of the boys participated in the violence but most were passive spectators, too scared to confront the perpetrators.
Date posted: 2009-10-30
I know I'm not mom or dad or even their "real" grandpa but at least they have someone there to give them a hug or a pat on the back and say "Hey, you did great."
Date posted: 2009-10-20
"The tree which moves some to tears of joy is, in the eyes of others, only a green thing which stands in the way. As a man is, so he sees."
Date posted: 2009-10-01
Bad or good, these are their parents. The kids need to come to love and accept them. It would be counter-productive for me or any of the Village staff to stand in judgment over any child's parents. You just don't mess with the powerful bond that exists between parent and child.
Date posted: 2009-08-22
"In everyone's life, at some time our inner fire goes out. It is then burst into flame by an encounter with another human being." --Albert Schweitzer
Date posted: 2009-04-25
Some days I find myself loving the kids so much it's scary. It's the kind of love that moms and dads know with their own children, the kind that hurts and also makes you want to sing.
Date posted: 2009-04-12
Once upon a time, millions of years ago, a tiny little bug was born. People called it the love bug because wherever the love bug landed, people would change and become more loving.
Date posted: 2009-03-29
We like to think that kids pretty much live in the present. They have adults to worry about them and their future. Their job is just to be kids. Nah! Not true for a lot of kids and definitely not true for kids in foster care. The nagging question in the guts of all of them is "What's Gonna Happen To Me?"
Date posted: 2009-03-06
To me the experience was a reminder of the magic that exists between the very young and the very old. The so-called generation gap that yawns between parents and their kids does not seem to exist between kids and geezers. They get along because they have so much in common.
Date posted: 2009-01-10
I suspect that parents, dealing with their kids being home from school over the holidays, might choose to differ on the "soul-healing power of kids." Words like "frustrated" or "challenged" or "driven berserk" are a few of the more polite descriptive words that might come to mind when big people spend school vacation time with the little people in their lives.
Date posted: 2008-12-15
I picked you up from school today as usual. You looked pretty sharp with your new jacket but I knew enough not to call attention to your appearance. I asked the standard dumb question, How was school today, big guy? You gave the safe answer. "Good." I knew better. There were two "f's" on your latest progress report.
Date posted: 2008-11-28
I really believe that there is something about the innocence of children that makes even the Master of the Universe drop everything and pay attention.
Date posted: 2008-09-06
Frederick Buechner once wrote that "Whenever you find tears in your eyes, especially unexpected tears. It is well to pay the closest attention. They are not only telling you the secret of who you are, but more often than not of the mystery of where you have come from and are summoning you to where you should go next."
Date posted: 2008-06-17
Growing up he was a daily witness to a domineering father physically and emotionally beating up on his mom. His mom, only a child herself when she gave birth to Eddie at 16 was no match for the drunken anger of his dad. Eddie learned early on that women are to be treated like dirt. Men are in charge and it's okay for a guy to beat up his woman.
Date posted: 2008-05-02
Abby rested her head on her princess pillow. It was 7:30 and time to wake her for school but the magic of the moment made me pause. It's not often that a grandpa has an opportunity to see his little five year old sweetheart sleeping. I wasn't about to hurry along.
Date posted: 2008-04-16
This was a year like no other for this old guy. Living here at the Children's Village full time changed me.
Date posted: 2008-01-01
Someone once said that there are places in the heart that you never even know exist until you love a child. I believe that. When I became a parent, I got in touch with a part of me that had never surfaced before.
Date posted: 2007-12-20
We don't really have to see old age as the enemy. We can be smarter than that. Let the folks who chase a lost youth grit their teeth and agonize over their lot. We have some living to do, some jokes to tell, some hugs and smiles to share.
Date posted: 2007-12-09
Dag Hammarskjold, the legendary humanist and former Secretary General of the United Nations, was fond of saying "The less I let others determine my worth for me, the more I own myself. The less I obsess about my self, the more I am myself."
Date posted: 2007-12-08
Life never quite lets us off the hook does it? Even when we are retired from the workplace, the kids are grown and we are free to do whatever we want to do with our days, there is still a catch.
Date posted: 2007-09-09
Steven Levine, author of "A Year To Live," suggests that we take a day off from living from time to time. He advises us to use our imagination to disconnect ourselves from life and pretend that we have died. We see the world as though it were the day after our funeral. We walk through a world in which we no longer are physically present.
Date posted: 2007-07-22
Ten O'clock at night. I hobble to my bed nursing a sore ankle from a tennis injury. Oh! Finally getting in bed never felt so good. Then, I hear the sound of Penny, my basset hound at her water dish.
Date posted: 2007-06-10
When my four-year-old granddaughter asks me for some "Me and you time," I marvel at how much we adults can learn from little children. Kids instinctively know that personal, one-on-one time with a caring adult is special. Maybe we realize it too, but it's so much easier to ignore it.
Date posted: 2007-04-13
True story. A sub compact car with a family aboard was rear ended and burst into flames. A man in his late 20's ran to the burning vehicle and at considerable risk to his own life, managed to pull a little boy free.
Date posted: 2007-01-29
The popular Irish Rock group has contributed some beautiful music to this generation but no song more hauntingly beautiful than this one, "But I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For."
Date posted: 2006-12-16
"At times our own light goes out and is rekindled by a spark from another person. Each of us has cause to think with deep gratitude of those who have lighted the flame within us." - Albert Schweitzer
Date posted: 2006-12-02
That's almost unique among nations in the developed world. If you've traveled in Europe, you know how few people go to church at all. Does that make us somehow holier in God's eyes? Nah! I don't think so.
Date posted: 2006-11-17
I think we adults need to put ourselves in the sneakers of our kids. They are living now some of those experiences that knocked us for a loop when we were kids. Take it from this old guy. Tumbling down a grassy slope hill in the summertime is only part of a kid's life. Give them a lot of love and a big dose of empathy. They are you a half-century ago.
Date posted: 2006-09-09
Lia Rowley, the Founder and Executive Director of Children's Village, is a believer in the influence grandparents can exert in the lives of children.
Date posted: 2006-08-05
"Keeping holy the Sabbath" is the forgotten commandment and, whether you are a religious person or not, when this commandment is ignored, our quality of life is diminished.
Date posted: 2006-07-08
I'm convinced that there are moments in all our lives when our music is played. Whether the musician is our conscience, mother earth, or God in heaven, someone plays music that is meant for our ears alone. The melody appeals to what is most noble in us. We recognize it immediately.
Date posted: 2006-05-24
Whoa! Those are powerful words, don't you think? Most of us are all about looking good aren't we? If we were not, the cosmetics market would not be the multi billion market it is today. Everything about us, from the clothes we wear to the model car we drive, from hair styling to pedicures, we take our appearance pretty seriously.
Date posted: 2006-04-22
I was listening to talk show host Pete Wilson yesterday on KGO discussing the torture and murder of a man named Tom Fox in Iraq. To refresh your memory, Tom Fox was not a soldier. He was a 54-year-old Quaker from Virginia who was in Iraq as part of a small peacekeeping organization called the Christian Peacekeeping Team. Wilson was asking the question "Do the Tom Fox's of the world really do any good?"
Date posted: 2006-03-18
We need to remind ourselves that respect is a two way street. It helps if we do our part to earn it. There's nothing worse than an old coot who thinks he's entitled to be arrogant or demanding just because he has a few gray hairs.
Date posted: 2006-02-22
Deep in the mountainous region of western Guatemala, where tourists rarely wander, I find myself shaking hands with a seven-year-old Mayan kid named Alex. We are not exactly strangers to one another. Alex and I have exchanged photos and letters over the past 18 months, ever since my wife and I decided to sponsor him through a non-profit agency in the United States. But this is my first face to face meeting with Alex and I'm a little nervous because my Spanish language skills are of the mui poco variety and, wouldn't you know it, the interpreter we were supposed to have is late.
Date posted: 2006-02-11
Despite our foibles and cussedness, God continues to love us and wish us well. Maybe that's the Lord's way of telling us to lighten up on our own shortcomings and those of our fellow human beings.
Date posted: 2005-12-18
Despite our losses, despite that arthritic knee, life is still a hoot, still has its moments of wonder and beauty and laughter.
Date posted: 2005-12-18
I ran across an old Italian proverb the other day that tickled me. "Once the game is over, the king and the pawn go back into the same box." Think about that one for a minute.
Date posted: 2005-11-02
We may as well make the best of today because it's all we have.
Date posted: 2005-10-16
I find myself re-reading "Tuesdays With Morrie" for the third time. What a marvelous read! For those of you who have not read it, "Tuesdays With Morrie" is the story of an old professor dying of ALS, spending his Tuesdays with a former student, sharing with him some of life's great secrets.
Date posted: 2005-09-24
We tend to keep our mortality in the furthest corner of our mind. It takes the loss of a loved one or a close friend or the end of another summer to remind us that life, like the lazy days of July and August, goes by all too quickly.
Date posted: 2005-08-25
Our bonds with parents, spouse, children, siblings and friends are our most valuable possessions.
Date posted: 2005-08-10
In Holland, legislation that started out with good and compassionate intent is now being invoked by doctors to put severely disabled babies to death. In this country, laws legalizing capital punishment had all sorts of safeguards built into it to make sure no innocent person was ever put to death. Sadly, we are finding out through DNA technology that our safeguards were full of holes.
Date posted: 2005-05-17
Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies in the final sense a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.
Date posted: 2005-03-13
Killing infants and children? People may differ, in good conscience, about the morality of aborting a fetus but live children? No, this is where civilized societies have to draw a line in the sand. What gives us the right to take away an innocent life?
Date posted: 2004-12-06
Why does our legal system ignore the special status of youth when it comes to the criminal justice system? We don't need a PH.D to know that kids 14 and 15 years of age have developed neither the emotional maturity, the judgment or the brain capacity to function as fully mature adults.
Date posted: 2004-08-06
Most of the time we remain children fighting one another over our toys. We still need soldiers and weapons and prisons because we haven't figured out a way to protect ourselves without them. It's still an "us" and "them" world where we fight for survival never quite realizing that it is our brothers and sisters that we fight.
Date posted: 2003-03-31
Is there another way in Iraq? Our President doesn't seem to think so. Maybe he's right. I think he is a moral man who wants to do the right thing. But before we go to war, I'd like to introduce Mr. Bush to a friend of mine. He's a new grandpa who lives in a country called Iraq.
Date posted: 2003-02-16
If, as the FDA claims, up to 25% of our children suffer depression, we have a major mental health problem on our hands. I submit that a problem of this magnitude is caused by things like kids being left to raise themselves, broken families, lack of a father in the home, a dearth of supportive day care programs and a host of other issues, none of which will be solved by putting our kids on Prozac.
Date posted: 2003-02-15