Changing Aging: Give Together!
Ecumen is participating in Give to the Max Day! www.youtube.com/watch
On November 16, tens of thousands of Minnesotans will join together to give to the causes they believe in. This year, we are calling on Ecumen’s friends and supporters to join us to GIVE TOGETHER TO CHANGE AGING. See a quick video by clicking HERE.
Watch for more information on this blog and in your e-mail – let’s change aging together!
Urge Your Senators Not to Repeal the CLASS ACT - CALL 855-218-2109
Urge Your Senators Not to Repeal the CLASS ACT - CALL 855-218-2109
We must urge Congress not to repeal the CLASS Act. It is the only framework on the books to help transform how our country finances long-term services and supports. Today Medicaid pays for half of long-term care services, which is not sustainable. Before the week's end, we hope you will call 855-218-2109 and follow the prompts to be connected to one of your senators. You can call back to be patched through to your other Senator.
The Message
Once you are patched through, tell the senator's office that you hope they will urge the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to appoint the CLASS Independence Advisory Council that is mandated in the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act .
Thanks for making these calls and your work in changing aging . . .
Please Contact the Obama Administration This Week: Keep Working on the CLASS Act
Please join us and others this week across the country incontinuing our advocacy around the creation of a national insurance program to help people pay for long-term services and supports.
The Community Living Assistance Services and Supports (CLASS) Act is at a critical time. Last week, the administration issued a letter saying that it did not "see a path forward" for implementing the CLASS Act.
Please call: 855-218-2109 (you will be patched to either the White House or Dept. of Health and Human Services where you can leave a message).
Urge the Administration to continue working on CLASS.
The problem of financial protection for Americans is not going away. America has to create a viable solution for people to pay for long-term services and supports they need. Giving up on a solution now after all the work that's been done to this point would be foolish.
Without a solution, Medicaid continues as America's default insurance, which isn't sustainable. . . . America can and must do better!
Thank you for your advocacy in Changing Aging!
P.S. This editorial today from the Minneapolis Star Tribune illustrates why work on CLASS must continue. Also, here is the recent non-partisan Citizens League's Journal, which includes an article from Ecumen and another from Minnesota's Commissioner of Human Services Lucinda Jesson. This issue looks at ways to innovate in long-term care financing. Also, this NY Times article does a good job summing up the issue.
Ecumen Customers in Alexandria Reunite and Rekindle Friendship as They Turn 100
Ecumen customers in Alexandria, MN Iola Stark (L) and Christel Guiles (R)
Iola Stark and Christel Guiles first met in 1929 when attending college in Morris Minnesota Agricultural School, a branch of the University of Minnesota. (Today it's the University of Minnesota-Morris). After graduation, life took off and they lost touch. Almost eight decades later they met again at Ecumen's Bethany Community in Alexandria, MN. They have had a lot to catch up on and they have a lot to celebrate. . .
Born five days apart, they each celebrate their 100th birthdays in December. Iola's 100th birthday is December 13th and Christel's the 18th. Congratulations to both of them! We're looking forward to having them join Ecumen's Centenarian Club.
Funny Video - Trying to Get that Dang Thing to Work
Bruce and Esther Huffman, who live in Oregon, were playing with their new laptop and trying to figure out how to use its camera function. They ended up inadvertently making a video that's been watched more than 8 million times since a granddaughter put it on YouTube recently.
He sings, burps and makes faces — and gets a little frisky. She keeps trying to find out how the dang thing works.
Technology . . . . we've all been there.
Jim Klobuchar: Finding a Lost Virtue on a Ball Field
In ancient times, let’s say as late as the 1950s, the sight of a football stadium in autumn stirred the glands of millions of people who were still able to confess a measureable level of sanity.
The players they watched in the big college games could actually be observed in classrooms during the week. In the professional leagues most of players spent the winter and spring working in steel mills to pay their bills, or they stayed home changing diapers.
This is 2011. It’s not necessary to document the corporate status that pro football has achieved. The game and its promoters have wrapped it in gold and spawned millions of disciples who play fantasy football with the fervor of actual head coaches and with most of their inside knowledge. America goes bonkers on Monday night. Add Sunday night. Add six hours Sunday afternoon. Click on the TV on game day and you get splashed with flying confetti and ten American flags; after which you are overwhelmed by a country western guitar plucker with a cast of thousands inviting you to get ready for some football in surround sound and HD. By then, how can you not be ready? And the country laps it up. Why? Often it IS a good show. The perfect game for television.
But partly because of the omnipresence of pro football, college football has risen with the tide in television exposure and now has created a monster. To compete in the big leagues of the major schools, where the big money is in television and bowl games, they have enlisted the best there is from the high schools. In thousands of homes across the country college scouts become part of the core family, sometimes outranking grandpa. Agents are on the horn the day they can do it legally. Television money into the millions of dollars is now available to the major universities that win football games, and to their lesser competitors who scoop up the leftovers in a classic demonstration of trickle down economics. Coaches who win in the big leagues of college football pull down millions of dollars. To keep pace with each other they send out droves of scouts, who sometimes have to battle the droves of agents who hover on the fringes. They also have to compete with college boosters, the most frenzied of whom eventually embarrass the school with illegal gifts to the players, as we have seen played out in the scandals this year.
So a friend who knows all about this invited me to watch a practice of his own school, one of the private colleeges in St. Paul. He introduced me to the coach, who said his players might be interested in a few thoughts from somebody who wrote pro football for years as part of his exertions as a daily columnist.
It was a lovely day on campus, the fall coming in, sunlight engulfing the field, making the water cooler a popular destination. Something like 55 or 60 young men were on the field, running plays, scrimmaging, slapping each others’ behinds when the play worked, or the defense doing it when the linemen made a stop. It was the football atmospheric I remembered from my high school years. They were football players for sure, getting ready for the games on Friday nights or Saturday. The coaches moved in their midst, upbeat, teaching, clapping their hands, changing a lineman’s stance, laughing at the kid’s rebuttal. I saw very few out there who were going to get acquainted with an NFL scout. What I saw were college students playing football and playing it well enough to compete.
When the coach ended practice he introduced the visitor. He said I had known the pros up close, and that they might be interested in some of my thoughts.
I told them I could have spent all day watching. It restored the football I knew, the random horsing around, but also the hitting, the satisfaction of making a good tackle, faking out the linebacker, but doing it with the kids who were my classmates. It was the same mix of laughs, a little goofing around, and the coaches putting a damper on that in a hurry. What else was it? It was still something close to family; it was practice, and then grabbing the books from your locker and bicycling home.
I told them what playing the game had meant to me. I talked about the idea of it, Team, the hours they’d shared reaching for a goal, they would not forget: the nuttiness of some of the days and the characters on the team—their faces and quirks, some of the tears, the coach who taught and supported them. It was their special community.
But it was something beyond that. They would discover later in life that whatever their success and rebuffs, the relationships in their lives would be the most important part of their lives, and one those relationships that would really not end grew right here on the field.
Does the game matter? I remembered a football player named Walter Payton, a Hall of Fame running back of the Chicago Bears. Everybody who played football, teammate or opponent, loved Walter Paton. He played a football of joy. Once after being tackled, he was caught untying the shoe laces of the referee, Bernie Kukar, who was busy pulling bodies off the pileup.
When Walter Payton he died of cancer not long after his career ended, one of the networks did a program bringing together some of the men he played with and against. It was a remarkable testimony. These were aggressive people who made a living beating on each other for big money, scheming against each other in a concussive game. But in remembering Walter Payton, all of these people came together in a solidarity of grief and gratitude for his life. He was the rare football player who could reach a willful man like Mike Ditka and touch him with humility; an undemonstrative man like Bud Grant and touch him with tenderness; an uncompromising competitor like Mike Singletary and touch him with peace.
Sometime, it’s still a kid’s game, which we tend to forget.
About Jim Klobuchar:
In 45 years of daily journalism, Jim Klobuchar’s coverage ranged from presidential campaigns to a trash collector’s ball. He has written from the floor of a tent in the middle of Alaska, from helicopters, from the Alps and from the edge of a sand trap. He was invited to lunch by royalty and to a fist fight by the late Minnesota Viking football coach, Norm Van Brocklin. He wrote a popular column for the Minneapolis Star Tribune for 30 years and has authored 23 books. Retiring as a columnist in 1996, he contributes to Ecumen’s “Changing Aging” blog, MinnPost.com and the Christian Science Monitor. He also leads trips around the world and an annual bike trip across Northern Minnesota. He’s climbed the Matterhorn in the Alps 8 times and has ridden his bike around Lake Superior. He’s also the proud father of two daughters, including Minnesota's senior U.S. Senator Amy Klobuchar.
91-Year-Old Gertie Crosses Skydiving Off Her Bucket List
The 2007 movie “The Bucket List” has inspired millions - both young and old - to tackle their list of fun and exciting “things to do” and bring more joy to their lives. Ecumen Parmly LifePointes resident Gertrude “Gertie” Nelson checked skydiving off her list after her 91st birthday. WCCO’s Jason Derusha was on-hand to capture the story of how Gertie is changing aging in this WCCO video.
Ecumen Honors National Alzheimer's Day
Pictured: Hazel Eng, 89, who lives at the Ecumen nursing home in North Branch, Minn., sharing a laugh with her daughter, Jane Lynch.
It's National Alzheimer's Day today. In the United States, an estimated 5.4 million people are living with Alzheimer’s disease, and unless something changes, as many as 16 million Americans will have Alzheimer’s in 2050. Alzheimer's is one of the most serious challenges faciing our aging population -- and caregivers. In 2010, 14.9 million family members and friends provided 17 billion hours of unpaid care to those with Alzheimer's and other dementias -- care valued at $202.6 billion!
Ecumen is proud to join the fight against Alzheimer's in many powerful ways. Read about "Awakenings", our nationally recognized initiative to improve the lives of our care center residents who live with memory loss. Through Awakenings, we are reducing or eliminating the use of anti-psychotic drugs widely prescribed to "calm" the sometimes challenging behaviors of residents with dementia. We are literally Awakening our residents from the effects of their medications. More information about Awakenings can be found on our website here. Also, this month, our senior living communities across the state are joining the Walk to End Alzheimer's. Hundreds of Ecumen employees and friends are raising thousands of dollars to support research and education through the Alzheimer's Association.
We're in this together. We're proud to be leaders in Changing Aging.
Kudos to Minnesota's Outstanding Senior Citizens!
Out of a pool of nominees from each county in the state, two Minnesota's Outstanding Senior Citizen winners are chosen for their outstanding commitment to community service since reaching the age of 65. This event is sponsored by the Minnesota State Fair, the Minnesota State Fair Foundation, and the Federation of County Fairs. Our sincere congratulations to Joan and Ronald for their valuable contributions to their communities. Read more about it HERE at the Grand Rapids Herald Tribune.
Skydiving with your Grandpa?
The Roers' three-generation skydiving group included (left to right) George Roers, son; Marvin Roers; Anna Roers, granddaughter; and Aaron Roers, grandson.
Each jumped from the plane at 13,000 feet, free-falling 120 miles per hour for just under a minute before drifting another two-and-a-half minutes under open parachutes. “I thought it would be a little bit of a jolt, but it wasn’t,” admitted Marvin.
Read the full story in the Echo Press HERE.