Ecumen Lakeview Commons and VisitingOurs Skype to Bring World Closer Together
Ecumen Lakeview Commons in Maplewood is partnering with community volunteer Tom Sweeney on a pilot. Sweeney heads a volunteer organization called VisitingOurs, which is matching volunteers with seniors to use laptop computers to conduct video chats between family members who live far away. Our customers dig it, and it shows how technology makes the world much smaller, but also how the human touch makes use of the technology possible. It also gives us insight on how we can integrate the video chat function on the social networking tool Ecumen Connects. More information is provided here at Ecumen Lakeview Commons site.
Hip Mill City Commons Hosts Hip Discussion on Changing Aging
Last night a very energizing, provocative discussion on the future of aging was held with about 50 members of Mill City Commons in Minneapolis, a cool neighborhood for a lifetime.
Moderated by Ecumen CEO Kathryn Roberts, panelists included: Marcia Townley, chair of the Mill City Commons Board of Directors; Peter Hutchinson, president of the Bush Foundation; Rep. Paul Thissen, minority leader in the Minnesota House of Representatives; and Stacy Becker, who oversees aging financing work for the Citizens League.
A few of the many golden nuggets heard last night:
We have to tackle chronic care and stop putting acute care and sub-acute care in separate buckets. . . if we don't, there will be no money for anything.
I know an orthopedic doctor who treats an obese 40-year-old. But his practice doesn't want him to talk to that patient about "prevention" and weight loss . . . it's only about the joint replacement. . . . the procedure . . . not prevention.
What legacy do boomers want? How will they become part of the solution in an aging world?
Everyone talks about the boomers. But the generation before the boomers - those who did a lot of major lifting on major issues such as civil rights - are changing aging. They're the ones who have innovated, creating communities such as Mill City Commons.
A panelist's brother died at a a leading hospital in Minnesota, and it cost $51,000 because they didn't know he had an advanced directive.
We have to think about dying now. It should be a patriotic duty to have a living will
Cities need to be part of changing aging with updated zoning laws. In many cities you can't have 4 people living together under one roof who aren't related. But that's exactly what four people might want to do to age in place and stay out of a nursing home.
We have to change public policy for long-term care financing. We have to change the incentives. It would have very positive long-term impacts on the state budget and on people's lives.
Think about this: Right now in Minnesota a spouse can be working making $250,000 per year, her spouse can go into a nursing home and qualify for Medicaid. The nursing home cost is totally covered by the state, with no contribution from the spouse making $250,000 per year.
Ecumen Named Best Place to Work By Minnesota Monthly
Absolutely essential to high-quality senior services is a high-quality, engaged workforce. We're honored to be named by Minnesota Monthly as one of Minnesota's Best Places to Work. The issue is on newstands now in Minnesota. Congratulations to our nearly 4,000 team members who bring our mission "to create home for older adults wherever they choose to live" to life daily. To learn more about Ecumen jobs and The Ecumen Way, visit our employment area.
Will America See a New Green Senior Housing Category?
One of the country's fastest changing professions is senior housing and services. As I was reading the news about the new LEED-certified green senior housing that Ecumen recently developed for North Country Health Services in Bemidji, Minn., I'm wondering if we're going to see a new housing category in America - green senior housing?
Think about land use. My colleagues who develop senior housing often talk about the need to build not just one-off housing, but to develop "villages" that contain nearby shopping, multi-generational housing and other amenities that provide easy access for people and use land in a more effective way. Do you think America will see more green senior housing?
Never Say Die: The Myth and Marketing of the New Old Age
Has anyone read yet Susan Jacoby's new book Never Say Die: The Myth and Marketing of the New Old Age?
Based on her essay in this week's Newsweek (see below), it looks thought provoking, especially as you think about your own aging journey. There was also a big review of it in yesterday's Wall Street Journal (dig the Journals references to Cicero and aging). That she's getting this much space/attention is another sign of Changing Aging in America . . .and it also illustrates how critically important an innovative senior housing and services profession is to the future of our country.
The Myth of Aging Gracefully
Who wants to live to 100? Just about everyone, if old age fulfills the fantasy that we can sail through our 90s with vigorous bodies and minds and die instantly of a heart attack, preferably while making love or running the last of many marathons. As the oldest baby boomers turn 65, it is past time to take a realistic look at old age as it is--not as a minor inconvenience to be remedied by longevity-worshiping hucksters of "anti-aging" supplements or brain-teasing computer games, not as a "disease" that will soon by "cured" by a medical miracle, and not as an experience to be defied and denied, in the spirit of a 2008 World Science Festival panel on aging titled "90 Is the New 50." No, it's not. It's not even the new 70.
The truth is that we are all capable of aging successfully--until we aren't. The media love to uphold examples of "ageless" aging like Betty White, a scintillating comedian at 89, or Warren Buffett, an investment sage at 80. These exceptions are easier to think about than the general rule that physical and financial hardships mount as people move beyond their relatively hardy 60s and 70s, classified by sociologists as the "young old," into the harsher territory of the "old old" in their 80s and 90s. There is a 50-50 chance that anyone who survives to blow out 85 candles will endure years of significant mental or physical disability. The risk of Alzheimer's disease doubles in every five-year period over 65. Furthermore, two thirds of Americans older than 85 are women, who usually become poorer as they age. Many won't die at home, with the best care money can buy, as Sargent Shriver did in January, but in a Medicaid-funded nursing facility after their life savings have been exhausted. There is nothing wrong with hoping for a medical breakthrough to alleviate age-related diseases--especially Alzheimer's--but hope is not a plan of action. Age-defying hope and hype do nothing to address either the overwhelming political issue of how to pay for Medicare and Social Security as the population ages or the many personal decisions about retirement and end-of-life medical care that each of us must make.
This is not to say that anyone should give up on the rewards life can offer the very old, but that, as individuals and as a society, Americans must prepare for the possibility that not the best, but some of the worst years of our lives may lie ahead if we live into our ninth and 10th decades. Geriatrician Muriel R. Gillick, in her book The Denial of Aging, emphasizes the social consequences of faith in an ageless old age: "If we assume that Alzheimer's disease will be cured and disability abolished in the near term," she writes, "we will have no incentive to develop long-term-care facilities that focus on enabling residents to lead satisfying lives despite their disabilities." More important, blind faith in medical solutions prevents discussion about the urgent nonmedical needs of the old. Americans need not only better long-term-care facilities for the sickest old but community-based services to foster independence for the healthier old. When politicians advocate raising the retirement age to bolster Social Security, they also need to consider the dearth of jobs for old people already looking for work. Only when we abandon the fantasy that age can be defied will we be able to begin a conversation, based on reason rather than on yearning for a fountain of youth, about how to make 90 a better 90.
Can a Mall Become Senior Housing or a Regional Senior Service Center?
Architect Ward Issacson, AIA, a member of Ecumen's senior housing development team, writes about repurposing existing buildings into senior housing. Interestingly, Ecumen recently helped turn a school in Detroit Lakes, Minn., into senior housing that's a great asset to the community and helped preserve a treasured building with great community memories.
The Collegeville Cane Club
Last year students of Ecumen's employee leadership development program called Velocity spent time learning from people in other settings, including 3M, Mayo Clinic and St. John's Abbey and University in Collegeville, Minn. Curriculum during each of these visits centered around part of our brand promise: Innovate. Empower. Honor. An article in Saint John's Abbey's Banner Magazine recently caught my eye. It's a neat perspective on aging and a longtime global tool of empowerment called "the cane."
The Collegeville Cane Club
By Dan Durken, OSB, a member of the St. John's Abbey in Collegeville, Minn.
Any photograph of the Collegeville Cane Club should include all the monks who have celebrated their 50th anniversary of monastic profession. On that occasion a cane is blessed and given to each jubilarian with this prayer: “Bless + them and bless the canes they carry. Sustain their hope in the saving love of your Son . . . and help us all to support one another as brothers of your Son, Jesus Christ.”
The monks you see here daily carry their canes to give them the support they need. The curly maple cane I received on July 11, 2000, was not put to use until Abbot John suggested several months ago that I use a cane after I had taken a few falls that gave me classic bruises. Since then my trusty cane has not been a stigma of frailty and old age but a sturdy friend whose support I appreciate.
The blessing of the cane calls upon all of us “to support one another.” No matter how young or how old we are, the support of others is absolutely essential. Only the hermit monk chooses to be “self-reliant, without the support of another” (Rule of Benedict, 1.5). I pity more than envy him.
As I prepare and present my last edited issue of Abbey Banner, I am filled with gratitude for all the people who have supported me page by page, picture by picture of these first thirty issues. Cane in hand, I now move on to whatever the future brings. If the past is preview to the future I am looking forward to more “good ol’ days.” Thank you and God bless you.
Jim Klobuchar Shares How Jack LaLanne Helped Him Change His Life
You can lay reasonable odds that Jack LaLanne, at the age of 96, charged through the pearly gates a few days ago doing 25 push-ups and prodding St. Peter to spend more quality time on the treadmill.
In Jack LaLanne’s unsinkable commitment to rehabilitate America, there was no such thing as a hopeless slob beyond his powers to salvage. To demonstrate, he would clench a nylon rope in his teeth and tow a school bus up the hill, with or without passengers. He would then modestly acknowledge the applause of onlookers and complain that he had done it faster when he was 60 years old.
Not many years ago I telephoned Jack LaLanne to thank him. “For what?” he said. He was amiable. He was also in a hurry, probably to run ten miles around the golf course. But he listened and didn’t seem to be all that startled by my testimony.
I don’t have much doubt that old fitness warhorse was almost singly responsible for the last 30 or 40 years of my life.
In the late 1960s a promotional newsletter from Jack LaLanne arrived at my desk in the morning mail at the Minneapolis Star Tribune, for which I wrote a daily column. Beneath the letterhead was a photo of a beaming Jack LaLanne doing one-handed pull ups and inviting the reader to join him on an exciting plunge into a new realm of physical fitness. Add self-esteem, he said. Add new attitudes of self-confidence, and rediscovery of the essential you.
I weighed 205 pounds at the time. This was 50 pounds more than my high school playing weight, most of it compiled in the previous five years when I traveled with a professional football team, ate and drank excessively and badly and confined my physical exertion to walking
to the popcorn stand in movie theaters.
After reading LaLanne’s publicity release, I tossed it into the waste basket. I can’t say I thought it was rubbish. The guy made a reasonable case, but this just wasn’t the time in my life for a revival of the silken me. I turned back to my typewriter, caught sight of my reflected jowls in the window—and went back to the waste basket.
I re-read LaLanne’s offer to rearrange my body and my life. Start, he said, with a simple call to your doctor.
I picked up the phone. “What do you want to do?” the doctor asked. I said I wanted to take off 55 pounds.”How much time do you want?” Four months, I said. “What are you going to do?” I said I was going to give up all fattening foods, between meal snacks and start running. I said I was also disgusted to be smoking and I was giving that up forever. The doctor whistled. “That’s a lot sacrifice. It might, well, shock your body.” I said when I indulged I did it full time and if I was going to rehabilitate it had to be the same. I apologized for not having discovered the joys of moderation. Which, praise the saints, came a little later.
So I joined the YMCA, ran four miles every other day. I ate salads for lunch and dinner. For breakfast I had unbuttered toast. In addition I joined a fitness class at the Y. We did exercises and ran around while a little old lady at the piano played popular tunes like “I’ll be Glad When You’re Dead You Rascal You.” I felt so good about the declining weight that I would burn up calories jumping up and down the scale. When we went to a play at the Guthrie I would carry a little plastic bag containing carrots and raddish bits and munch them between acts. After three months the doctor, a little overweight himself, was calling me for advice. I lost so much weight so quickly some of the office wags were referring to me in the past tense.
It cost me $3,000 to buy new clothes but it was glorious. I started climbing mountains, bicycling a hundred miles, rediscovered wild nature and, every now and then, check up on Jack La Lanne to see what bus he was towing this year.
I kept that press release for years, kept the pledge of 40 years ago, and still do. And when I’d hear of some new motivational whiz on the circuit who tops them all, I’d tell myself:
“Except one.”
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.
Social Networking Beyond Facebook in Senior Housing and Services: Ecumen Connects
Ecumen CIO Larry Jorgensen discusses using social media to build community and provide value in senior housing on services . . . .
Social networking is growing among seniors. According to a recent report by the Pew Research Center's Internet & American Life Project growth of social networking among those 65+ has grown about 26% over the last several years. Yet seniors' total use is much smaller when you compare it with other generations in the chart above from Pew.
Why is this and what can we provide that our customers will find valuable and useful?
I recently informally polled a number of people why they think this trend might be occurring including members of my own family (my parents as well as my wife’s mother for example still won’t use Facebook). I received expected responses such as:
“Younger people have adopted this new technology much quicker because they generally just like the latest and newest gadgets and software”
“The younger population segment is now saturated and now older generations are catching up.”
“Seniors are waiting to see the value in the new technology before investing time in it.”
“It’s too scary because it compromises security and privacy. People are out to prey on seniors.”
We have to provide value!
I think it largely comes down to value and, of course, having access to a computer. It’s our job in senior housing and services to provide that value that is worth our customers’ investment of time. So how do we do it? Here’s one approach we're using:
Ecumen Connects – Building Community.
At Ecumen, we are rolling out in our housing communities what we call Ecumen Connects. It is a community portal for use by our prospective residents, current residents, their family members and their friends. Ecumen Connects provides a wide range of capabilities including staying connected with friends, family, and staff; personalized calendars for keeping informed about special events and activities; books and newspapers online, virtual visits to museums, shopping, brain fitness, games, etc. It even provides the ability for a person to manage their health information.
Through technology provided by our technology partner Sitelligence, we’re building and strengthening community within our existing community. It also helps future customers get a sense of what type of community we’re offering. They can also use this social networking tool to talk to current customers about their experience living at an Ecumen community. It’s by no means a replacement for Facebook, but it does different things and is specific to each of our housing communities. It also empowers people who have a fear of social networking and a fear of a breach in security. We’re operating from one platform with an encrypted connection from our secure network and it allows us to personalize tools, such as event calendars or newsletters for each site.
We must honor our customers and meet their changing needs. Our customers needs and interests will continue changing and we will need to adapt and change with them. I believe that Ecumen Connects will provide the value that our residents and customers need and expect today, and we will continue to explore new opportunities to use technology to enrich the lives of the people we serve. We’re now working on taking Ecumen Connects into our at-home services, so we can empower people in their own home and connect them to a larger community. We see significant opportunity to connect the various people in a person’s life – family, friends, care professionals, case managers and others - to further empower our customers to live fully where they most want to.
Sign Up for Ecumen's Changing Aging E-Newsletter
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Thanks for your interest.