MiT, 4th senior day 3, 5th senior meet & greet

Things continue to go well with my 4th senior, with her daughter being so supportive. She (the daughter) found another old photo and the two of them really enjoyed sharing the photo together, and also with me. It's of my senior's parents, on their 50th anniversary celebration.

My 4th senior is very quiet (my Quiet Senior?) and hasn't been very expressive; her daughter says this is a very recent development and is really worried about it. But when she sees the old photos her daughter has been bringing in for the project, her eyes just light up and she smiles!

When I finished working with my Rock Star Senior, I was afraid that that was going to be the best part and nothing else would come close for the rest of the project. Well, this part is just as good, although for really different reasons. My Rock Star senior is still pretty with it, very lively and vivacious but with a few memory lapses here and there. Her joy was infectious. My Quiet senior is decidedly further along with her dementia, but when she lights up like that, it makes me feel great!

I met my 5th senior, a Centenarian! Unfortunately, I won't be able to start with her for another 2 weeks or so. Although she's still pretty sharp, I'm anxious that she'll remember me until then.

And then there's the recent Gocco news — Gocco going the way of dinosaurs? From May 30 news release:

Tokyo, May 30, 2008 (Jiji Press) - Riso Kagaku Corp. <6413> said Friday that it will discontinue shipments of its Print Gocco home-use greeting card printer in June because increasing use of personal computers has shrunk its demand sharply.

Cumulative sales of the Print Gocco topped 10 million units since its launch in September 1977. Sales of the product and related supplies reached 15.2 billion yen in the year to March 1994.

But sales sank to less than one pct of the company's group sales of 92.6 billion yen in the year to March 2008, as home-use PCs and ink-jet printers have been popular since the late 1990s.

Riso Kagaku said it will continue sales of related supplies, such as inks, for the time being.

The company mainly sells digital printers to schools and public institutions and high-speed ink-jet printers to companies.

Now the Quandary — while this is not a surprise, it's been vague enough that people have just been happily gocco'ing away. I'd been planning to set up a class for end of June, but now I'm needing to rework the class content to address this. And I really need to be sending out the class announcement already, if I'm really going to do the class for the end of the month.