What Does Avatar Have to Do With Aging in Place?
Longtime Forrester Research analyst Liz Boehm and contributor to Aging in Place Technology Watch ponders the question.
New Poll on Health Care Provides Lesson for Going About Change
One of the details of health care we've been focused upon at Ecumen is The CLASS Act. It's a good idea that will come back even if health care reform goes away. There are other good ideas wrapped in the health care bills, too. But few of us know about them.
Where would health care be today if we actually would have had a national discussion of those ideas rather than a free-for-all shoutfest? What if there were 5 points for us to focus upon instead of vagueness? Chances are the President would be highlighting the passage of health care reform in tonight's State of the State Address.
A new poll by the non-partisan Kaiser Family Foundation finds that Americans are divided over congressional health reform proposals, but also that large shares of people, including skeptics, become more supportive after being told about many of the major provisions in the bills. The poll also finds that even after a year of substantial media coverage of the health reform debate, many Americans remain unfamiliar with key elements of the major bills passed by the House and Senate . . .
Information . . . made easy to understand . . . and shared with people . . . is a powerful thing . . .
Putting the Wide Angle on Aging - A New Speakers' Series at Minneapolis Library
Ecumen greatly enjoys working with the neighbors on the Minneapolis Riverfront who have created the Mill City Commons community. They've started a cool new speakers series in partnership with the Library Foundation of Hennepin County. It's called age: wide<ngle
The series begins Tuesday, Feb. 2nd at 7 p.m. (doors open at 6:15 p.m.) and occurs every Tuesday evening at Pohlad Hall at the Central Library on 300 Nicollet Mall in downtown Minneapolis. Here's a brief sketch on the Feb. 2nd speakers. Read more about upcoming speakers here:
Feb. 2, Mary K. Baumann & Will Hopkins, Visual Trends
The extensive portfolio of design firm Hopkins/Baumann includes magazine work with LIFE, LOOK, PEOPLE, ARCHITECTURAL DIGEST, FORBES, FOOD & WINE, BODY & SOUL, L'EXPRESS (France) and CLAUDIA (UK). Hopkins and Baumann have been tracking popular graphic trends and will discuss what it takes to keep pace with our fast-moving visual culture.
How to Help Older Adults in Haiti
A horrid description follows of the plight of a older adults in Haiti from Michelle Faul of the Canadian Press . . . Below is information on how you can help
On the grounds of the Municipal home for the elderly in Port Au Prince, Haiti last Thursday, old people lay listlessly in beds out in the open with sheets smeared with excrement, surrounded by hundreds of people living in makeshift tents. One man wore just a T-shirt, his private parts exposed. A woman, just skin and bones, held her head. A body lay in the debris of the nearby nursing home.
"What can you say?" said Louis Belanger, a spokesman for Oxfam Great Britain. "It is very often the case that the strongest and fittest get help. ...
The older people of Haiti are still in dire need of help and will be for the foreseeable future. If you haven’t given already, please consider donating to HelpAge International (HAI).
The International Association of Homes and Services for the Aging (IAHSA) and HAI are global collaborative partners dedicated to helping elders in the developing world. HAI is the only relief and development organization focused on the needs of older persons in developing countries and has had a presence in Haiti for eight years. They work with local partners to support local people and use local resources to build long term capacity and reduce dependency.
HAI is uniquely situated to meet the needs of Haitian older people on the ground, right now. That is why IAHSA and Ecumen's national trade association AAHSA are joining forces with HAI. Their efforts will address the specific needs of older people – food, water, medicine and mobility aids, emotional support and shelter. HelpAge partners with several nonprofits on the ground in Haiti to help older adults. Their partners help Haitians receive all sorts of resources, from water to healthcare.
You can learn more and contribute here.
Martha Stewart Opines on The CLASS Act
Martha Stewart writes today on long-term care and shares her support for The CLASS Act as part of health care reform.
Vital Aging Forum: Transforming Long-Term Care Financing, You're Invited, Feb. 9th
Tuesday - February 9, 2010
10:30 am to 12:30 pm
Rondo Community Outreach Library, 461 N. Dale St. St. Paul, MN 55103
Presenters:
LaRhae Knatterud, MN Department of Human Services (moderator)
Patti Cullen, Care Providers of Minnesota
Stacy Becker, Citizens League
Thomas Devine, DAVID Agency
Finding effective and affordable new models in long-term care financing will require changes in both individual behavior and policies. Come to this forum to understand the issues and opportunities for long-term care in the future.
Patti Cullen will explore current and future long-term care models. Stacy Becker will talk about aging-in-place and, particularly, how these models deal with memory care. LaRhae Knatterud will offer the state perspective of long-term care policies and the direction it plans to go. Tom Devine, will discuss long-term care insurance.
Kathryn Roberts - The Woman Behind Ecumen
Twin Cities Business Magazine features an interesting article this month on Ecumen president and CEO Kathryn Roberts. A lot of neat things have happened under her leadership. Read the full article here.
Photo Credit: Craig Bares
What Do You Want to Do Before You Die?
Photo Credit: beforeidieiwantto.org
What make some people more aware of their own mortality than others? What motivates people to take action in their lives? What do people want to do before they die?
Two women armed with a Polaroid camera are finding out what people want to do before they leave this earth. Its 3,000 photos are simply elegant. Visit the site and gallery here.
Jim Klobuchar - The Face of an Unexpected Samaritan
A Story By Jim Klobuchar
He was a lanky kid shambling to the microphone. He walked with a gait the young sometimes adopt when they’re going to speak without high expectations of getting it right.
He’d come to Minneapolis from a small town in northern Minnesota to enroll in a basically marvelous program called Urban Homeworks, which in part reclaims boarded or foreclosed houses in the city. With volunteers, it rebuilds the houses to make them livable and affordable for rent or sale to low income families.
Daniel was one of the volunteers, living on site for two years as an urban neighbor, working on the projects, learning a trade and where possible befriending the poor who were trying to reconstruct their lives. Apart from his work, he told his audience, he was committed to doing something once a week to build a community with his housemates and the families. He would also meet with his neighbors to learn about things related to God and the economically poor.
One thing he had learned, he said, is that a gift is not a possession. He did not immediately explain how that truth had come to him.
Apart from its housing, Urban Homeworks tries to rehabilitate troubled men and women with the offer of community and whatever resources are available to it.
Daniel introduced, in absentia, a 55-year-old man we will call Fred, a neighbor of his in the housing development. He came to Minnesota from New York with his brothers and sisters, lived briefly in an orphanage and has been in and out of adult care homes and shelters and homelessness and since. He was diagnosed at different times with depression, anxiety and schizophrenia.
We sometimes call these people losers. Daniel called him a man who struggles to find a spiritual life and hungered for talk sessions over coffee. It was his quiet cry for companionship. Once engaged he was aggressive with his opinions, but Daniel had to admit that he didn’t know many people in today’s society who aren’t. The young man called him a friend.
In midwinter last year the young man and his friends realized that Fred had no coat worth the name. They prowled the thrift stores without finding an adequate fit. Daniel called his family in northern Minnesota and a week later received a box of used winter coats. One of them fit the older man. “It actually met his needs and made it all the way around him. I felt good about myself. After three weeks we’d found the right coat. We’d done something for a neighbor.” They shared congratulations all around.
Two days later Daniel spotted the man wearing another coat. It was dirty and nondescript and barely covered his belly. “What happened to the coat we gave you?” he asked. The older man stared at the floor. “I traded it for this one,” he said.
Daniel remembers the scene and his fury. He demanded, “After all of that work to find it, you did what?” The older man was silent. “Then he raised his head,” Daniel said. “He had an equally frustrated look that seemed to say ‘how dare you? And then Fred, the man who had slept on park benches and in alleys, said “the other guy was homeless. He sleeps outside, and I sleep in here. He needed the coat more than I did.”
The young man at the microphone teared up and stood motionless, recalling the scene, how he had barely trusted himself to speak his apology. The realization came hard, the piercing truth of a life’s lesson learned. It came from a man who was mentally troubled and couldn’t read, now saying of another man he’d met “he needed it more than I did.”
It was there in front him, the young man said, “what loving your neighbor as yourself looks like.” What he saw was the beauty and the humanity of the power of love when it shines clear and unmistakable in the eyes of a battered man.
Martin Luther King Day 2010 - Longevity Has Its Place
The day before he was assassinated at age 39, Martin Luther King shared these words . . . "There is a place for longevity, but I'm not concerned about that right now" . . . His longevity endures. Watch the 1 minute and 17 second clip below: