One of the lovely things about summer communities is getting to know many people from all over the country/world, not just your home town. Regional and cultural differences become understandable and even enviable. Perhaps more lovely is when people in the community with professional histories so different from your own bring skills and interests into the actual working of the community.

Joan Warburg-Phibbs is one. For decades Joan built a career at the nexus of health, physical therapy, dance, and stress management (even before we all heard that we are a stressed population). From early studies in pre-med and fine arts, she moved into practicing her panoply of skills in schools and programs for adults. Her results were remarkable. Fun fact: during her work in a competitive D.C high school, she trained the debating team in the art of physical and mental focus, a training that helped take them from a low ranked team to the interscholastic champions. More recently she has blended elements of modern dance with stress management moves to harness stress for optimal health and physical performance. And better yet, she runs a free weekly class in the JPVIS Community House Tuesday mornings at 10 for one hour focusing on balance, mobility and cardio fitness to support daily function. Joan will also hold a conversation/chat on stress and its effects on brain and body Monday, July 20 at 7 p.m. in the Community House. Whether you know you are stressed or not, chances are you would benefit (or at a minimum have a great physical work-out) from participation.

In an entirely different sphere, is Terry Paetzoid. Terry crafted her career around a passion for cooking. She attributes the roots to her mother, who made sure there were two green vegetables on every dinner plate and was generally a pioneer of farm-to-table. From there, Terry wound her way to chefdom through diverse adventures—teaching cooking in an elementary school, getting to know chefs at places where her husband Ray was stationed with the Coast Guard and often entertained incoming dignitaries, running the dining room at Pepsi in Atlanta, adding specialties through training, recipe testing for chef cookbook writers, training with a Parisian chef where she and her daughter stole away for several months in the 1990s, and ultimately nesting into the culinary scene in California. Even since moving to Boothbay six years ago, Terry has worked twice as sous to a celebrity chef on Mediterranean cruise ships (a definite perk of the marriage for Ray). Here on Juniper Point, we are lucky to have Terry as a judge in the Chowder Cook -off (coming up this year on Aug. 2 at 5 p.m.), definitely upping our game of chowder inventiveness.

Among the many joys of Juniper Point, such a spilling over of professional passions to our community is a blessing.