A 107-Candle Salute to Ecumen Customer Marion Davidson
The Beauty of Aging at Ecumen’s Villages of North Branch Community
For our readers in the North Branch, Minnesota, area: You’re invited to a special photo exhibit featuring the Beauty of Aging on Thursday, Feb. 5th from 4:30 to 7 p.m. at The Villages of North Branch, Ecumen community. Appetizers and refreshments will be served. Carol Seefeldt is a wonderful photographer, who has volunteered her time and skills with Ecumen communities. Thank you to her and our customers who shared themselves with us for this show.
Minneapolis' Take on Beacon Hill Village and Redefining Senior Living
A group of seniors takes a near-daily walk along the Mississippi River near downtown Minneapolis. Organized by a seniors co-op, they are, from left: Mary Margaret McMillan, 60; Ellie Hands, 69; Suzanne Joyce, 75; Peggy Lucas, 67; Delia Bujold, 70; and Barb Goldner, 64. (Pioneer Press: Scott Takushi)'You can see the tracks,' said Ecumen trustee and Mill City Commons member Peggy Lucas in Jeremy Olson’s Saint Paul Pioneer Press article. She was talking about the resident deer near the Stone Arch Bridge on the edge of downtown Minneapolis, but she also could just as well have been talking about the groundbreaking tracks she and her neighbors are making by creating a new kind of community. Ecumen is proud to be working with these trailblazers to forge a new way. To read the full article, go here.
President Obama’s Web Site Features Long-Term Care - An American First
This is an American first … a presidential web site that features long-term care and long-term care financing. In the agenda' section on the White House web site, President Obama highlights long-term care with this paragraph below.
Strengthen Long-Term Care Options: Obama and Biden will work to give seniors choices about their care, consistent with their needs, and not biased towards institutional care. They will work to reform the financing of long term care to protect seniors and families, and to improve the quality of elder care by training more nurses and health care workers.
As the President and other policymakers think about innovating in long-term care financing reform, here are two great resources: AAHSA’s Long-Term Care Solution web site and Ecumen CEO Kathryn Roberts' whitepaper on long-term care financing, which you can download here in the long-term care section.
Ecumen Changing Aging Writer’s Work Hits White House Super Bowl Party
Changing Aging contributing writer Jim Klobuchar’s work was present at the White House for President Barack Obama’s Super Bowl party. Senator Amy Klobuchar (D-Minnesota) was one of several guests who made up a politically diverse gathering at last evening’s White House Super Bowl gathering. For our readers outside of Minnesota, Sen. Klobuchar is Jim’s daughter.According to MinnPost, the Minnesota senator brought the Presidential host a signed copy of her father’s 1977 book, “Will the Vikings Ever Win the Super Bowl?”And, though the answer to that question might still be no, Jim wanted to make one point clear.'Dear Mr. President,' he wrote inside Obama’s copy. 'I would consider apologizing for the Vikings season, but the Bears was worse.'Watch for Jim’s next Changing Aging column this week. You can read his previous columns here.
Vital Aging at Ecumen’s Parmly LifePointes Community
Just wanted to share this story done by WCCO-TV last week on the Vitalize! Wellness Centre at the Ecumen community of Parmly LifePointes in Chisago City, Minn.Curious, what other innovations are you seeing in senior living? Would love to hear about them.[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7CgSfGIhFoc[/youtube]
Dying a Good Death and Dr. Mark Bowron
The other day Changing Aging featured an article written by Dr. Mark Bowron on dying and end of life care. (If you haven’t taken our poll question, please do so … it’s here.) If you’d like to hear an interview with Dr. Bowron on this subject, he’s on Minnesota Public Radio today at 10 a.m. for an hour. MPR archives all of their broadcasts, you can pull it up and listen to it later also. He’s being interviewed by Kerri Miller on Midmorning. Here’s the link.
Seeking Your Book Ideas for Our Leadership Conference
Have you read any good books recently related to leadership, change, innovation, wisdom, aging well, and spirituality and aging, or other subjects that can help us in innovation in our profession? If so, we’d love to hear the name of the book and a brief synopsis in the comments section below.At our annual Ecumen Leadership Conference, which is an annual gathering of about 500 Ecumen leaders, Borders Book Store holds a book fair. So, if you have any good suggestions that we can pass to them, please leave them here.Thanks.
Take Our Poll: Should the U.S. Have a Culture of Caring or Curing
[poll id=10']Thanks to Changing Aging reader Chuck Zimmerman for bringing a thought-provoking article written by physician Craig Bowron, a Twin Cities hospital physician. The article originally appeared in the Washington Post and appeared earlier this month in the Minneapolis Star Tribune. It is entitled 'On Not Going Gently Into That Good Night.' Here are a few key excerpts from Dr. Bowron’s writing that bring us to our poll question above and a question at the very end of this post:
I’m a physician in a large hospital in Minneapolis, where I help care for patients struggling through the winter of their lives. We’ve got a lively spring unit, an obstetrical ward where fresh-faced tulips are popping up at all hours, but that’s not my specialty. As a hospitalist, I see adult patients of all ages and complexities, most of whom make good recoveries and return to life as they knew it. But taking care of the threadworn elderly, those facing an eternal winter with no green in sight, is definitely the most difficult thing I do.That’s because never before in history has it been so hard to fulfill our final earthly task: dying. It used to be that people were 'visited' by death. With nothing to fight it, we simply accepted it and grieved. Today, thanks to myriad medications and interventions that have been created to improve our health and prolong our lives, dying has become a difficult and often excruciatingly slow process … .To be clear: Everyone dies. There are no life-saving medications, only life-prolonging ones. To say that anyone chooses to die is, in most situations, a misstatement of the facts. But medical advances have created at least the façade of choice. It appears as if death has made a counteroffer and that the responsibility is now ours …If we can be honest and admit that we have no choice about dying, then the only thing we do have a say in are the circumstances. Everyone wants to grow old and die in his or her sleep, but the truth is that most of us will die in pieces. Most will be nibbled to death by piranhas, and the piranhas of senescence are wearing some very dull dentures. It can be a torturously slow process, with an undeniable end, and our instinct shouldn’t be to prolong it. If you were to walk by a Tilt-A-Whirl loaded with elderly riders and notice that all of them were dizzy to the point of vomiting, wouldn’t your instinct be to turn the ride off? Or at the very least slow it down? Mercy calls for it.This isn’t about euthanasia. It’s not about spiraling health care costs. It’s about the gift of life -- and death. It is about living life and death with dignity, and letting go.In the past, the facade of immortality was claimed by Egyptian kings, egomaniacal monarchs and run-of-the mill psychopaths. But democracy and modern medical advances have made the illusion accessible to everyone. We have to rid ourselves of this distinctly Western notion before our nation’s obesity epidemic and the surge of aging baby boomers combine to form a tsunami of infirmity that may well topple our hospital system and wash it out to sea.At some point in life, the only thing worse than dying is being kept alive.
Changing Aging readers, What Do You Think?
Wellness Center at Ecumen’s Parmly LifePointes Community to Be Featured on TV
If you’re near a TV Friday night in the Twin Cities viewing area, check out the 10 p.m. news on WCCO-TV in Minneapolis. The station is scheduled to feature Vitalize! Wellness Centre at Ecumen’s Parmly LifePointes community.