Ecumen Expanding Home Care Services in Mankato
One of the things fascinating about our profession is the evolution.
University of Minnesota Seeking People for Alzheimer's and Exercise Study
The University of Minnesota's School of Nursing is seeking Twin Cities volunteers with a diagnosis of Alzheimer's Disease to participate in a study on the the impact of aerobic exercise on people with Alzheimer's.
This is a great opportunity for a person with Alzheimer's who is looking for a way to safely increase their activity level. The researchers are trying to learn regular aerobic exercise training can slow down the progression of dementia and improve cognitive function.
- A fitness trainer will train the person to cycle on a stationary cycle 3 times a week for 6-months. The
trainer will monitor the person's responses to exercise. If the person cannot cycle, other exercise will be used.
- The participant will receive a gym membership and compensation.
- The U of M will provide transporation to and from the exercise facility, so the U is looking for people in a 20-mile radius of the U of M.
FOR MORE INFORMATION OR TO ENROLL, PLEASE CONTACT:
Dr. Fang Yu at 612-624-5435
Christine Peterson at 612-626-9669
The Opportunity for Social Media in Senior Housing and Services
In senior housing and social services, we work in the ultimate "social" profession. We're people serving people. We're people building community. We're people who either thrive or fail because of people. Our profession is perfectly built for social media.
Last week, I had the pleasure of being on a panel with Ted Goins, president of Lutheran Services for the Aging in North Carolina; and Larry Zook, CEO of Landis Homes in Pennsylvania, the AAHSA Future of Aging conference in Washington, D.C. It was a great discussion. If you get a moment, check out Ted's blog post on his journey into social media.
Good stuff.
Earlier this week we started our Ecumen Facebook work group. It was driven by colleagues who want to use it at our local sites to enhance their community building work. Again, good stuff. We'll share things we're learning in our Facebook pilot. Hopefully, they'll be helpful to others. And a heads up . . . the invite will be coming to you to join our fan pages. Have a great day.
Jim Klobuchar - Dwindling Candidates for Trust
Ecumen guest blogger Jim Klobuchar is a journalist, author, and global travel guide. He wrote for the Star Tribune in Minneapolis for three decades and is the father of two daughters, including United States Senator Amy Klobuchar. To read past blog posts, simply use our "search" box and type "Jim Klobuchar."
Basically for re-assurance, I dug out a $5 bill from my pocket this morning. On its well crumpled reverse side I read the inscription, which said “In God We Trust.”
This is good, I told myself. But I had to intrude a well-intended question: What else is left?
Bad news and daily chaos were my natural habitat for 40 years in daily journalism, which I survived with reasonable health and happy vibrations. In that condition I don’t find myself filing for protection from the normal calamaties of the world that are available in the morning newspaper or on the television screen. A lot of the news is bad. But it might have been almost as bad when they were building pyramids and even worse when they lived in trees.
Events of the past few weeks led me to wonder how much further do we have to go in the legally-protected scamming and chiseling of the buying public?
I walked into my favorite office supply store for a stapler and computer paper and, spotting a familiar salesman, said: “That printer I bought here two weeks ago is doing well. But I’ve had it only two weeks and it’s telling me I need to change the ink cartridge because the ink is running dangerously low. I got the impression that if I ran one more sheet of paper through that printer I was going to get blown through the roof. ”
He shrugged, suggesting “Why should you be surprised?”
The salesman broke the news gently. “I thought everybody knew by now,” he said. “The companies sell printers. They keep the prices low (and changing models) so they can make their big money on the cartridges.”
So I was being muscled. “I just checked those prices” I said. “changing cartridges every two weeks would put me in the poor farm. And it wasn’t one color. I’m looking at your shelves here and if I want black ink in this standard printer, which is basically all I need, I have to buy four cartridges-in-one—black, raspberry, a mellow yellow and, would you believe, a magenta!! The only people I know who need magenta make flight maps, and you can’t read the magenta in half them. I want to write letters and files. I’m not decorating a birthday cake.”
The salesman tried to be kind, suggesting “it’s life,” in other words a ripoff but legal.
But it’s not all that different, when you think about it, from the infuriating daylight theft by the credit card bankers and hustlers-- exposed in recent legislation that took effect two weeks ago—but which the card companies already are finding ways to avoid by inventing new language in their indecipheral billing policies.
The old policies gave the most prominent credit card companies doing business today, including companies whose cards you may be carrying, permission to swamp gullible users with penalty fees. Under the old license-to-steal policies some of the card companies were increasing the base payment rates of their customers by up to 25 per cent or more, including those who paid on time. Millions of others who were as little as one day late found their actual billings doubled in penalty fees.
In the time of the country’s deepest economic crises in 70 years, the opportunists and sharks were making up for lost revenue from millions of Americans unable to spend as much on essentials—or to spend at all—by soaking those least able to pay.
What the new legislation does fundamentally is to set new boundaries on leeching practices in the credit card industry.
It doesn’t prevent them from finding new dodges, which already are being seen.
Only a genuine consumer protection agency with powers of enforcement to launch criminal prosecution can do that. In the meantime, you might keep a magnifiying glass at hand. Most of that small print is not going to get much larger.
The Upside of Old Age
The New York Times is doing some of the best, freshest writing on aging. In a column today, physician Dr. Marc E. Agronin explores how often we make the wrong assumptions about old age. He share a story of an older woman in a nursing home. He expected her to be grieving for her late husband, but instead found she had thrown herself into new activities and relationships. I know that's not surprising to many who read this blog, but it highlights how our impressions of old age can be mistaken from time to time.
“So what’s it really like to be old?” I often ask my patients, who are mostly in their late 80s and 90s, and the responses are unexpected. “I forgot I was so old,” a 100-year-old patient recently told me, and then excused herself to make it to bingo on time.
Read Dr. Agronin's full post here. Also, read 50 Tips on Aging Gracefully courtesy of Ecumen customers and team members.
What's Shakespeare got to do with dementia?!
Recently, I witnessed the one-woman performance, Tales from a Trunk: Shakespearience, the brain-child of Marysue Moses, Memory Care Coordinator at St. Therese Southwest. Heavy on audience participation, Marysue involves all the senses in her fast paced, 45-minute show designed to engage memory care residents mentally and physically. Using a trunk filled with simple props, she keeps things lively from role-playing brief Shakespearean scenes to smelling herbs & flowers from the old Bard's garden. Some memory care residents will actually remember the program the next day, and compliment Marysue on it.
Moses has a theatrical background and figures she's performed Shakespearience 40 times over the years. Her inspiration came from personal experience with dementia: "My mother was living in a memory care community in Denver and I was notably unimpressed with the activities that were being offered. I wanted her to have something more stimulating, engaging, and respectful of her intelligence as well as her capacity to appreciate art and humor." She has created three other Tales from a Trunk, including one entitled The Fisherman and His Wife.
Often residents' family members are present and they too enjoy participating with their loved-one & learning a little Shakespeare. Beyond it being a nice activity or diversion, Marysue notes positives outcomes: "I notice that some residents are transported during the performance. They are really with the story, or the action, or totally in the participatory moment. In those moments, their dementia doesn't matter to them or to anyone else one whit, and it's those moments that I seek to create more and more of for persons with significant memory loss." Now that's Changing Aging!
Marysue Moses is available for bookings. ~Helen Rickman
Ruben Berg - A Senior Olympian Who Made Living Better
Ruben Berg, was a Senior Olympian who died Monday in a community that loved him - Ecumen's Parmly Lifepointes. Many of us were introduced to Ruben in 2004 when Warren Wolfe of the Minneapolis Star Tribune profiled him. As Warren shares in the story below, Ruben didn't let getting cut from his high school swim team hold him back. Ruben began competitive swimming again at age 79, going on to win more than 250 medals. Here's to Ruben: a role model for all of us in aging gracefully.
Ruben Berg's Story . . . . by Warren Wolfe, Minneapolis Star Tribune
His big, work-roughened hands pulling his hefty frame through the water, Ruben Berg touched the pool's edge, shouted out "four," and switched to a side stroke to start his fifth 50-yard lap.
"I've slowed down a lot since my heart bypass surgery back in 1999," Berg said after his 400-yard workout, scrunching his craggy face as he sought the right words.
At age 91, he uses a walker to trudge from the dressing room to the pool and his swimming strokes have lost some power. But he remains an intense competitor.
Since his first swimming meet in 1991 when he was 79, the former auto mechanic who washed out of his high school swim team has won 253 medals - nine this year.
At the Minnesota Masters swim meet last month in Minneapolis, Berg took 5 minutes and 41 seconds to cover 100 meters with his backstroke.
He has been among the top 10 swimmers in his age class - now age 90 to 94 - in the national Masters Swimming Organization since 1996 and is the oldest Minnesotan in the program.
"Sounds impressive, huh?" he said after emerging from the pool sporting his black-and-orange competition "dress-up" swimsuit. "But at my age, well, most of the competition is dead."
'Learned on the job'
Berg, who lives at Point Pleasant Heights senior community in Chisago City, has been an avid swimmer since childhood. He grew up in St. Paul near Berg Auto Repair on Selby Avenue and took over the business from his dad. He passed it on to his son before the shop closed.
A self-taught swimmer, Berg was cut from his Mechanic Arts High 
School swim team because "I didn't know how to do the strokes right. Heck, I still don't do the backstroke the way you're supposed to, one arm back at a time. Mostly I've learned on the job."
He suffered a stroke in 1986, and therapy has restored some strength to his speech, right leg, arm and hand. But at his daughter's suggestion, he took up competitive swimming in 1991 in Arizona, where he and his late wife, Clarice, spent their winters.
"I tell my daughter, Barbara, it's her fault I'm still alive," Berg said. "I don't think swimming will keep you young, but it keeps your joints moving and your heart ticking."
Ten years ago, he started volunteering four hours a month at the Hazelden treatment center, 7 miles up the road, in part so he could use its pool for his workouts. He works in the mailroom and occasionally conducts tours, as he did last week. Hazelden recently honored him as its oldest volunteer.
Olympics fan
Usually, Berg is not big on spectator sports. "Mostly I'd rather do than watch," he said. "I mean, what's the point?"
But he's made an exception for the Olympic Games in Athens. For the past week, Berg has been glued to his television between his twice-weekly swims, watching the athletes compete.
"This morning I was up at 5 to watch the American women's basketball team," he said Friday before his swim. "Have you seen the muscles on those athletes? It's almost unbelievable, even the women. We're all pikers compared to them. I don't know anybody with muscles like even the table-tennis players have."
At times, Berg said, he is a little sad that his muscles won't carry him as fast or as far as they used to.
"Well, I don't work out with weights like I used to, but even so, I can't do the crawl anymore and my speed is pretty much in low gear," he said.
"But the thing I have to remind myself is that when I started swimming competitively in 1991 I'd swim 25 meters and then die. Then I built up my strength so I could do 50 meters before I died.
"So when I do 400 yards twice a week, I guess that's OK."
His next Masters swim meet will be in April, right before his 92nd birthday, at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis.
"I'll probably win something because I may be the only one in the 90-94 class," he said.
"To be honest, I like the medals. I like winning. But really, I just do this for my health now, so I can keep moving," he said.
"If somebody beats me, that'll be OK. Hell, now I'm happy just to be upright."
More Seniors are Smoking Marijauna
Photo: Associated Press
The Associated Press has put Matt Sendensky on the aging beat. The fact that AP sees aging as an important beat is one sign of Changing Aging in America and here's another one courtesy of Sedensky on how marijuana use is increasing among U.S. seniors.
In her 88 years, Florence Siegel has learned how to relax: A glass of red wine. A crisp copy of The New York Times, if she can wrest it from her husband. Some classical music, preferably Bach. And every night like clockwork, she lifts a pipe to her lips and smokes marijuana.
The number of people aged 50 and older reporting marijuana use in the prior year went up from 1.9 percent to 2.9 percent from 2002 to 2008, according to surveys from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration.
The rise was most dramatic among 55- to 59-year-olds, whose reported marijuana use more than tripled from 1.6 percent in 2002 to 5.1 percent.
Observers expect further increases as 78 million boomers born between 1945 and 1964 age. For many boomers, the drug never held the stigma it did for previous generations, and they tried it decades ago.
Some have used it ever since, while others are revisiting the habit in retirement, either for recreation or as a way to cope with the aches and pains of aging.
Siegel walks with a cane and has arthritis in her back and legs. She finds marijuana has helped her sleep better than pills ever did. And she can't figure out why everyone her age isn't sharing a joint, too.
"They're missing a lot of fun and a lot of relief," she said.
Why We Gain Weight As We Age
One of the most popular events at Ecumen communities is exercise class. A story this morning on National Public radio - Why We Gain Weight as We Age - illustrates how important exercise is to wellness as we age.
Rock On, Dick Clark: Vance Opperman's Letter to the Wall Street Journal
Vance Opperman, publisher of Twin Cities Business Magazine, sent an extremely good letter to Wall Street Journal Editor- in-Chief Robert Thomson. Click here for full text. It's the subject of his "Open Letter" column in his Twin Cities Business Magazine. Vance says, "People who keep working in their golden years should be celebrated, not denigrated." Couldn't agree more. In fact, states that figure out how to tap the skills of older workers are going to find themselves better positioned economically and competitively.