Oliver, the Golden Retriever, Feels the Love At Ecumen Scenic Shores

Oliver, the golden retriever, has an extended family of 40.  He’s being raised by the residents of Ecumen Scenic Shores Assisted Living in Two Harbors, Minn. 

Housing Manager Julie Luchsinger sums it up this way:  “A big thing at Ecumen is creating home, and home to a lot of people is having a dog lying around,” she said.  The Lake County News Chronicle tells Oliver’s story.  [Oliver is shown in the photo with resident Bobby Smith, who used to train dogs.]


Readers’ Choice: The Most Popular Changing Aging Blog Posts of 2013 (Part 1)

As 2013 comes to a close, we’re sharing your favorite blogs from the past 12 months. The most popular stories are an eclectic mix of news and features about people and programs — inspired by Ecumen’s vision of “a world in which aging is viewed and understood in radically different ways.”

We are calling out the top 10— with the top 5 listed today and next 5 coming tomorrow.

1. Ecumen Receives $3 Million Margaret A. Cargill Foundation Grant

2. A Goodbye Without Tears – Almost by Ecumen Blogger Jim Klobuchar

3. Top 10 Holiday Gifts for Seniors: Ecumen Staff Offers Advice

4. A Visit with the Man with 125 Kids

5. Secrets to 75 Years of Marriage and a Final Goodbye on Valentine's Day


Ecumen of Litchfield Residents and Staff Sing the Praises of Lutefisk

In the great lutefisk debate, a group of residents and staff at Ecumen of Litchfield vote strongly in favor of the controversial cod.

They make field trips to the Litchfield VFW to partake and literally sing the praises of lutefisk. In his "Land of 10,000 Stories," KARE11's Boyd Huppert tells this stinky fish story.

At the beginning of the video, you can see the Ecumen of Litchfield residents walking into the VFW, and toward the end, staffers Julie K. and Jeanie D. lead the diners in the "Lutefisk Song."


Fran Tarkenton at 73 Remembers Pro Football Before the Mayhem-- by Ecumen Blogger Jim Klobuchar

 The current phenomenon known as pro football was introduced to Minnesota and its tributaries more than 50 years ago.   The audience for the first game in 1961, played not far from the cornfields of south Bloomington, was a modest 32,236, and the indisputable star was a rookie quarterback and now lively septuagenarian named Francis Tarkenton.

I can tell you all of this because I wrote about football then for the Minneapolis Star Tribune and also wrote a book about Francis well before his elevation to the National Football League Hall of Fame. We retain a friendship that cheerfully spans the decades.

He was on the phone a few days ago, the same old effervescent Francis.  “Klobey,” he said, “I’m 73 and never felt better, my business [advising startup corporations] is thriving but the old pro football I knew and played looks to be gone forever.”

He meant what pro football, in its unprecedented wealth and prosperity, is inflicting on itself—aided, he is convinced, by a runaway use of performance enhancing drugs.

Add the life-threatening injuries that are multiplying each year because of the increased size of the players, the speed of the game and its furies. Add the non-stop mayhem of it and the big money incentives that with each new season bring the game a little closer to the martial arts ferocities that turn competition into mayhem.

Add the growing evidence that football at all levels can be potentially life-threatening. If not life-threatening then damaging via concussions in a way that that might last a lifetime.  It’s a reason why many parents of today are looking for other less dangerous sports.

“People are getting hurt in ways they didn’t before,” he said. “The incentives to make it in pro football are huge. I loved the game — still do. But its very success is making it a more dangerous game than when we played it 30 and 40 years ago. And now it spills into the college game. Bigger players.  If it takes drugs to make them bigger, that too.”

How big? Grotesque big in some cases. Defensive linemen weighing 340 pounds, seemingly impossible to move out of the way.

But they CAN be moved because the large people facing them on the other side of the line of scrimmage are about as big.

Are they all taking drugs? Of course not. Are the drugs available if they want?  They are.

So the pro football league walks a tightrope. Its popularity has turned the enjoyment of sports into a caricature in ways large and small. Once there were pro football games on Sunday afternoons.  The TV ratings, meek in the years of black and white television, began to expand with color TV. Then there were pro football games on Monday night. That became so popular that they added pro football games on Sunday night.  That became so popular that the league itself produced a football game on Thursday night on its own network. But for all of its TV popularity, for all of the billions of dollars in profits that it produces, pro football is walking a razor’s edge in some places by charging its season ticket buyers a license fee to retain permanent ownership of the seats that they pay thousands of dollars a year to buy.

Some people call that an inducement. Another word is flat-out coercion.  Yet the game’s popularity has become almost mythic. Otherwise normal human beings invest money in fantasy football leagues. Their fantasy team’s performance is based on what happens in the actual games being played out on television. That now means they have a stake in what happens Sunday afternoon, Monday night, Sunday night and Thursday night.  Millions of otherwise normal men (and now normal women) have begun using the same language in routine conversation that the football scouts and the analysts use during the games: pistol formation, back shoulder pass, read option, nickel (defense), bubble screen and more (offense).

So pro football and televised football in general have become a national mania, easily surpassing the popularity of all other sports. It’s evidenced in the current hysteria over college football in the American South, in the jockeying for post-season riches and acclaim. But the increased exposure to injury and stories of former players now battling the results of concussions has led to legal action and serious questions raised increasingly by worried parents.

“There’s no question,” Francis Tarkenton said, “that pro football, any football, has to be concerned about the fallout from those big bodies hitting each other in today’s game.”

Billions of dollars are at stake here. There’s some evidence that the public is going to start demanding some rationality about how far football should go at the amateur level. 

All of that is exciting, Tarkenton conceded. “But certainly in pro football we’re being carried to excess here. Would you believe that football once was actually fun?”


Ecumen Meadows’ Arlene Schlichte Turns Her Hobby Into a Charity for Children

 Arlene Schlichte, 87, has created a charitable cottage industry headquartered in her apartment at Ecumen Meadows in Worthington, Minn. For the past six years, she has been crocheting scarves by the hundreds and donating them to Worthington children who need help fighting off the winter cold.

Worthington is a place where many children come from warmer climates, unprepared for the Minnesota winter.  Arlene’s daughter-in-law, a Worthington first grade teacher, brought this to Arlene’s attention and asked if she would crochet some scarves for the class.

So the first year, Arlene crocheted 25 scarves.  Then the teacher in the adjoining room saw the children wearing Arlene’s scarves and wondered if her class could have some too.  Then word started to spread to other classrooms and other schools, and before Arlene knew it, she was crocheting more than 100 scarves. And enjoying every minute of it. 

Arlene loves to crochet, so being able to help children with her skill took the joy of her hobby to a new level.

Crochet has been such a part of Arlene’s life that she can’t pinpoint exactly when she started doing it.  Over the years, she has made afghans for her six children and 18 grandchildren and takes great pride in that work.  Arlene and her husband, who is now in a care center, raised their family in Wilmont, Minn., where they owned a service station.  Arlene kept the books and also worked part-time at the Wilmont Post Office.

She has another hobby that she combines with crocheting — watching sports on television.  She loves to follow Minnesota sports teams, so she pulls up a chair in front of the TV set and watches a game while she crochets a scarf.  Each scarf takes about two hours, and she does one a day.

“It’s a relaxing thing for me,” she says.

So far, she has only heard about the results of her work by word of mouth.  “I don’t get out much, but someday I would like to walk into a store or somewhere and see one of the children wearing one of my scarves.”

How would she know if it’s a scarf she has made?  “I will know,” she says with a confident smile.


Honoring Judith Johnson, Who Just Celebrated Her 104th Birthday at Ecumen Parmly LifePointes

Judith Swenson Johnson was born in North Branch, Minn. before the start of World War I.  She recently celebrated her 104th birthday at Ecumen Parmly LifePointes in Chisago City.  In a Chisago County Press article, the positive, forward-looking Judith tells reporter Denise Martin: “I just wonder what’s going to happen next.”   


Alzheimer's & Dementia Care: "Listening to Elderly Cuts Use of Costly Medications," Ecumen Awakenings Featured in Minneapolis Star Tribune

So many people across Ecumen have made Ecumen Awakenings possible and are contributing to the program's learnings and growth.  It is innovation that empowers and honors those with Alzheimer's and other types of dementia while underscoring our mission and vision. Saturday's front-page article in the Minneapolis Star Tribune features a long story on this great work. Thank you to everyone who makes Awakenings possible and to our colleagues and customers at Ecumen Parmly LifePointes who opened their lives and shared their experiences with the newspaper.

You can read the article by clicking here: Listening to elderly cuts use of costly medications

Or cut and paste the following url into your browser: http://www.startribune.com/lifestyle/health/236822161.html.

 

About Ecumen Awakenings:
Ecumen Awakenings™ is working to transform America’s culture of care for people living with Alzheimer’s and related dementias.  Awakenings improves lives and care experiences while achieving the optimum benefits and balance of non-pharmacological and biomedical approaches.  Offered by leading non-profit Ecumen, Awakenings is an empowering, collaborative approach to care that honors one’s individuality and abilities while enriching lives. 

This collaboration of the person, care professionals, physicians, pharmacists and loved ones often leads to reduction or elimination of antipsychotic medication use and prevents many people from moving to antipsychotics, which carry significant health risks for older adults.  “Awakenings” occur as behavioral symptoms decrease and one’s abilities and personality emerge.

 


Ecumen VP of Philanthropy Judy Blaseg Featured in Star Tribune “Movers & Shakers”

In the Star Tribune’s Movers & Shakers column today, Ecumen VP of Philanthropy Judy Blaseg talks about how Ecumen’s mission and her personal experience drew her to applying her fundraising skills to issues related to aging. 


There Is a Santa Claus at Ecumen's Luther Park at Sandpoint, Idaho

On Christmas morning in Sandpoint, Idaho, a dozen or so small children gather around the tree to see what Santa has brought them.  The kids all have at least one thing in common: Santa is definitely not their parents.  They are the kids of Kinderhaven, a group foster home and emergency shelter in this small northern Idaho town.  They have been removed from their homes and placed here for their own protection. 

But there is a Santa Claus.  Not far away, the residents of Ecumen’s Luther Park at Sandpoint have been in their workshop raising money for gifts and hand-knitting hats, mittens, scarves and blankets, making sure the Kinderhaven kids have some Christmas presents.  The Kinderhaven kids have no idea this is going on.  All they know for sure is that last Christmas they had about 12 gifts each.

The kids do know the Luther Park folks care.  They go over to the assisted living community and sing Christmas carols, and the Luther Park folks are really nice and friendly and don’t want them to leave.  But, as it should be, they don’t connect the dots.  Knowing who Santa is would spoil the fun.

But if the Kinderhaven kids could only know what joy they are giving Santa.  The Luther Park residents and staff have been working all year so that these beaten, bruised and emotionally scarred kids can have a happy Christmas.  In fact, the whole town of Sandpoint has been working toward this goal.  And before this Christmas is over, the town’s community effort will have raised about $175,000 for the kids.

Wendy Traffie, the administrator at Luther Park, says you have to live in the town to truly understand what’s going on.  There’s a kind of frontier spirit fostering the expectation that everyone must pitch in to help everyone else. And everyone pitches in to help the Kinderhaven kids.

Just before Christmas every year, there is a highly anticipated gala.  Local businesses sponsor Christmas trees that are decorated with donated theme gifts.  At the gala the trees are auctioned off.  But usually the first two or three people who “buy” the trees donate them back to be auctioned off again, and when the night is over about $175,000 has been raised for Kinderhaven.  This is in a town with a population of about 7,500.

Last year, Ecumen’s Luther Park at Sandpoint sponsored a tree with the theme “All Things Bonner County,” featuring local foods and gift certificates to businesses, donated by local merchants.  The tree raised $6,500 at auction.

This year, their tree had an “All Things Disney” theme, decorated with a Tinkerbelle ornament at the top, stuffed animals, toys, games and action-figure ornaments.  And Luther Park was honored by having their tree purchased for the Kinderhaven house to be the tree for the children.

Luther Park’s involvement started three years ago.  Amy Schroeder, an employee in maintenance and housekeeping, went to Wendy with the idea of maybe adopting a kid at Kinderhaven.  “I grew up here,” Amy says, “and I had such a wonderful family life.  I knew about Kinderhaven and thought it might be a good place for us to get involved.”

Then, as Wendy puts it, “it just snowballed” into an all-out labor of love.

As soon as this year’s gala ends, Amy is back in Wendy’s office with the tree-theme idea for the upcoming year.  Amy does the heavy lifting all year long, gathering the donations, making sure everything comes together and striving to make this the year that the Luther Park tree raises the most money of any tree at the gala.

The impact of the effort is astonishing, Wendy says. The residents and staff rally with a commitment unlike any she has ever experienced.  “It’s like everybody moves to a different level.  There’s no stress around this.  Residents and staff use their skills toward an important purpose. It becomes so much bigger than ourselves.  It’s all about the kids.  It reminds us of the real reason for the season.”

And in this picturesque small town, everyone gets to watch the kids grow.  In fact, three of the former Kinderhaven kids are now on staff at Luther Park— and now they know who Santa is.