Ecumen’s Kathy Bakkenist Discusses Technology on The Daily Cafe
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WCggLxEbJ8s[/youtube]Technology is an essential part of changing aging.' Yesterday, Kathy Bakkenist, Ecumen’s chief operating officer and senior vice president of strategy, appeared on the show 'Daily Cafe' in New York City discussing the use of QuietCare technology at Ecumen. Daily Cafe is a co-production of NBC and Retirement Living TV. We’ve provided the clip above for you to view.(Yes, the co-host is Fred Grandy, the former Iowa congressman, most recognized as 'Gopher' from The Love Boat show.)
Minnesota Can Be a Leader on Long-Term Care Financing
Ecumen’s CEO Kathryn Roberts and Jan Malcolm, CEO of Courage Center and former Minnesota Health Commissioner, had a joint op-ed in today’s Minneapolis Star Tribune on developing a new way to finance long-term care. Below is the text of the article.
Minnesota Can Be A Leader on Long-Term Care
Namaste by Jim Klobuchar
Last week we announced that legendary journalist Jim Klobuchar would be joining Ecumen’s Changing Aging blog and posting monthly. Jim is an incredible story teller with incisive insights and vast life experiences. He’s epitomizes successful aging and living to the fullest. Welcome to Jim’s first post.
A Boy in the Mountains
He was a boy on a mountain trail, a poor kid with large brown eyes and floppy hair, staring at me where I sat on a great flat-topped boulder high in the Himalayas. He seemed bewildered. But now I remember him as a child who altered a part of my life.I may have been the first westerner he’d seen--an alien creature on a rock, clad in the trekker’s garments of wool cap, expensive down jacket and multipocketed Patagonia pants. In three days my friends and I had hiked down from the base camp of Mt. Everest. We’d camped beside the roiling Dudh Khosi River and, with supper still a half hour away. So I walked up the trail and scrambled to the boulder top to admire the vast Himalayan panorama. and dozed beneath the streamers of sun radiating off the glaciers. I woke to sounds on the trail. A young Sherpa couple was returning from the potato patch they farmed. Neither noticed me. The boy fell behind and for a few moments stood motionless, regarding me. Then slowly he raised his arm and waved.I waved in appreciation. He smiled. I smiled. He scrambled to catch up with his parents, turned at the head of the bridge, and waved. I waved. By now we were friends. His parents, oblivious, crossed the bridge. The boy followed and waved. Because the trail through the rhododendron forest was steep and rose 500 feet to their village home, it switched back five or six times. At each switchback the boy stopped and waved. Some times he had to duck beneath branches. Our mutual arm thrashings became very aggressive and more or less fun. At the top of the slope the mother saw me, noticed her son’s excitement and then said something to him. The boy turned, slowly put his hands and fingerips together beneath his lips and said something. I couldn’t hear, of course. But I knew what he was saying:'Namaste.' In the Himalayas Namaste (Nah-mah-Stay') means in its most lyric sense, 'I praise the God who lives within you.' It’s the most beautiful word I know. It’s the greeting you exchange there. Consider. The God within you. Within me. Something divine dwells there. And if we allow it, if we release our resentments and fears, it can bring us closer together; to better understand each other, to forgive when we are wronged, to cleanse us when we need.I put my fingertips to my lips, turned to the boy a half mile away and said 'Namaste.' And at that moment, the poor boy and I were together, perhaps for the rest of our lives.Jim
The Future of Senior Living: The Eskaton Home
At the end of the day, caring will re-center in the home, where compassion and personalization reside.- Mike Magee, M.D.
90% of Minnesota baby boomers want to live at home, even if they or their spouse of a debilitating illness or disease.- Ecumen Age Wave Study, 2007
This is cool. And it’s the senior housing and services profession that is leading the way.
It’s a national demonstration home for advances in housing for seniors or multiple generations. The single-story model house is a creation of our colleagues at Eskaton, a senior housing and services non-profit company in California. The home opened last month.
'Three hundred-some people have toured this house,' said Sheri Peifer, vice president with Carmichael-based Eskaton Senior Residences and Services. It’s a daily pilgrimage of architects, home builders, technology insiders and elder-care professionals. Visitors came this week from Florida, Georgia and Oregon. The 1,850-square-foot house is a joint venture with Roseville builder Lakemont Homes.Most people associate 40-year-old Eskaton with assisted living. But its demonstration house is a pitch to the design and building industry for what’s possible now in standard senior housing. The new in-home technology on display helps seniors with what they want most: to stay in their own house as long as possible.So think fitness centers for the brain instead of biceps. (A special computer designed with help from the UCLA Center on Aging offers memory exercises to ward off dementia). Or picture in-home blood pressure checks on a wireless device that sends results to nurses. Webcams offer personal medical consultations without an office visit. (Intel’s new touchscreen Health Guide device asks: 'How are you feeling today?' If not so good, it suggests what to do before it turns into trouble).The remote monitoring, however, is most interesting to children of aging parents. A 'Grand Care' digital system 'allows seniors to live at home and offers family members peace of mind they’re doing fine,' said Kathy Hatten, an Eskaton guide who takes people on tours through the house.Sensors that look like computer mice and detect motion can be placed throughout the home. If motion falls to an unusually low level €“ suggesting a fall or medical problem €“ alerts are sent to children or others who may be down the street or across the country.This two-bedroom, two-bath house, however, is not just about technology. It also contains small touches you never think about when you’re younger. The air filter is near the floor instead of in the ceiling. Doors are 36 inches wide to accommodate wheelchairs. There are no steps to trip on. Shelves are low and electrical sockets are high.Welcome to the future of senior living.
Want to Learn About Other Senior Living Technologies?: Visit Our Technology Page
Successful Aging Profile: Ecumen customer Art Tysk, Selling With Purpose
Last weekend was the Prep Bowl in Minnesota - our state high school football tournament. Amid the youthful achievements on the Metrodome field, 93-year-old Art Tysk was giving lessons on growing old well by doing what he loves to do.Tysk, 93, is a familiar face at Minnesota state tournaments and the Minnesota State Fair where he’s sold popcorn and candy since 1956. He’s been selling game programs since the 1920s. He started in sales as a kid, hawking the Pioneer Press and Dispatch newspapers. It’s the Pioneer Press' Brian Murphy, who featured Art on the front page of the sports page during Saturday’s Prep Bowl festivities. When he started selling, thepapers cost a half-cent wholesale, and he sold them for 2 cents a piece.Art is an Ecumen customer in the Twin Cities. All four of his kids have worked in the family vending business that Art started. His company became the 'official' game program supplier of the Minnesota State High School League in the early 1970s.His daughter Frid recalled attending an Alice Cooper concert at the Saint Paul Civic Center in the early 1970s and waiting impatiently to greet the origional Goth rocker as he talked shop with her father.'My girlfriends and I were teenagers, and we’re hoping to get a picture with Alice Cooper. He’s in full makeup, sitting there talking business with dad, about how to put on a show.'Frid used the word purpose in describing her dad’s love for sales, crowds and persuading others to buy his products. She says 'it is part of him …' Valuable insight as we all grow older … love what you do … do the things that give you purpose and joy … and even if you can’t do them as fast as you once did, or you have to sit down instead of standing … you can still tap that purpose and joy.
Changing Aging Welcomes Jim Klobuchar as Monthly Contributor
We’re very pleased to announce that legendary newspaper columnist and author Jim Klobuchar has joined Ecumen’s Changing Aging blog as a monthly contributor. His first monthly post will appear next week. Jim is someone who, like our readers, is changing aging. We welcome Jim to the discussion and his insightful views on living. Following is background information on Jim:
An Eye and Ear on the World
In 45 years of daily journalism, Jim Klobuchar’s commentary and reportage 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 summit ridge of the Eiger in 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. As an energetic builder of communities, has found a way to teach football clinics for women and to lead 500-mile bike rides. In the 1970s he organized a non-denominational church service in a hockey arena for Minnesota pro football fans who felt spiritually deprived before the noon kickoff at the adjacent Metropolitan Stadium next door. A few years later he organized the unthinkable--a weekend canoe trip for 90 teenagers in northern Minnesota. According to all accounts, all survived, including the leader.The longtime observers of these encounters€”sometimes amused and sometimes startled--were the readers of the Minneapolis Star Tribune, for whom he wrote a popular column for 30 years, and readers of the 22 books he has authored. He retired as a columnist in 1996. His columns represented the wide changes in mood and the field of action in which he’s lived and has written. As a columnist, he dealt with the humbug and the fixations of politics, with adventure and death, with the follies of life, and with the doleful end of a skier who lost her pants halfway down the run. He sifted through the wackiness of life and the small revenges we extract from life. He didn’t ignore the nobility in the lives of people both famous and obscure, those who have dealt bravely with pain and tragedy and in doing so have deepened our own lives. He has been called a minstrel, which means as a journalist-adventurer he was and is a teller of stories and a witness to his world. His journalism today includes periodic commentary and reports in the Christian Science Monitor, including his coverage of the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City. For his reportage and writing, the Monitor in 2003 nominated him for the Pulitzer Prize in journalism.Jim Klobuchar is a native of Ely, Minn., and a graduate of the University of Minnesota. After army service in the early 1950s, he worked for eight years with the Associated Press before joining the Minneapolis newspapers. Apart from his career in print journalism, he has hosted several TV and radio series in the Twin Cities . He is president of Jim Klobuchar’s Adventures, a travel club, and as a mountaineer has climbed the Matterhorn in the Alps eight times and also made ascents in the Andes, Himalayas and the American West. He annually leads a popular bicycle tour through the Minnesota countryside and in the 1970s cycled alone the 1,100 miles around Lake Superior. With his daughter Amy Klobuchar, who is now a U.S. Senator from Minnesota, he has biked through the land of his roots in Slovenia and from Minneapolis to the Teton Mountains in Wyoming. A veteran of cross-country skiing and winter camping in Yellowstone, he has ranged in winter from the Alaska mountains to the island of Spitzbergen near the North Pole. He is a licensed pilot and has flown in balloons and parachuted.His readers came along vicariously, in his columns and books. His latest book, published in 2005 by Nodin Press of Minneapolis, is “Walking Briskly Toward the Sunset,” a compilation of some of his writings since his retirement from the Star Tribune. Other recent books, are “Sixty Minutes With God,” in which he imagines a free-wheeling conversation with God and explores the dilemmas of his faith; and “The Miracles of Barefoot Capitalism,” co-written with Susan Wilkes, his wife. The book tells the story of the phenomenon of microcredit around the world, a movement that has empowered millions of ambitious poor women by giving them access to small loans. Also published recently were “The Cross Under the Acacia Tree,” the story of the remarkable 48-year-mission in Africa of the Rev. David Simonson,; and “Pursued by Grace,” which tells of Jim Klobuchar’s recovery from alcoholism and his spiritual reawakening. His other books include “Over Minnesota,” a personalized view of Minnesota’s history, its place and its people. He has also written “Where the Wind Blows Bittersweet, ” a collection of his western mountain experiences and “When We Reach for the Sun,” a testament to the spiritual values he’s found in the outdoors, with photographs by Bishop Herbert Chilstrom of the Lutheran Church. He is also the author of several books on pro football, including “Tarkenton” and “True Hearts and Purple Heads,” a rollicking biography of the Vikings” early years. In 1984 the National Society of Newspaper Columnists named him the outstanding general columnist in America for newspapers over 100,000 circulation. In 1986 he was one of the finalists in NASA’s journalist-in-space project, a venture that ultimately was cancelled because of accident involving the space shuttle Challenger. He lives in Minneapolis and in 2001 married Susan Cornell Wilkes, who manages family foundations.Welcome, Jim!
College Hoops Comeback at 73
Imagine making your college basketball playing comeback at age 73, after 53 years away from the hardwood. Ken Mink is doing it. Check out this video shared by Ecumen colleague John Boughton:[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QvkmqbgUU_E[/youtube]
Ecumen Expanding Senior Housing and Services
There are a lot of people busy within Ecumen in shaping new senior housing options and services. We want to share with you some new development and service news from around Ecumen:
Detroit Lakes, Minnesota
Ecumen’s Emmanuel Community in Detroit Lakes has opened The Cottage & Day Spa. It provides expanded options to families in Detroit Lakes who are caregivers and need day services for their loved one.'We wanted to get away from the adult day care name,' said Steve Przybilla, 'Our day services go beyond care. They are very engaging and nurturing, and tie directly to our wellness value.'The Cottage and Day Spa includes the WellSystem Aqua Massage System, which other Ecumen communities also are using. A person can get a private relaxing whole body massage without removing clothing.The Emmanuel Community expansion also includes 16 memory care residences, 3 respite care suites and a large conference room and kitchen expansion.'This allows us to build upon our value of service, and serve customers in Detroit Lakes in new and expanded ways,' says Steve.The $6.9 million expansion was supported by a $250,000 grant from the Minnesota Department of Human Services. According to a state study informal caregivers provide more than 90% of care at home and each 2% reduction in those caregivers costs the state nearly $10 million annually.
Apple Valley, Minnesota
Construction has begun on 20 memory care residences at The Centennial House in Apple Valley. The $3.7 million expansion will be completed next spring. It will be connected to the existing area of The Centennial House community, which includes 60 assisted living apartments.'Ecumen and its professionals at The Centennial House have been great assets to Apple Valley, and I am very pleased that they are expanding and bringing these important services to the residents of our community,' says Apple Valley Mayor Mary Hamann-Roland.
Sandpoint, Idaho
Ecumen is developing Luther Park at Sandpoint, which will be owned by First Lutheran Church of Sandpoint.(If you’ve never been to Sandpoint, let me share a secret: it’s stunningly gorgeous - see area photos here and here.)Luther Park is slated to open next month. It will offer independent living apartments, assisted living apartments and memory care apartments. The focus is to provide services as people need them, so that they can 'age in place' and stay in the home they love even if they need more intensive care. The housing will be physically connected to First Lutheran Church of Sandpoint. Pastor David Olson and his congregation are enhancing their already vibrant community by expanding their community and creating new service options for Sandpoint-area seniors.Here are a couple of photos from construction. This fireplace is going to be absolutely awesome. What a great place to nestle on a snowy day amid the mountains surrounding Sandpoint.One of the things that we’ve done at several of new communities is integrate artwork or other 'very local' features into the 
architecture. Check out the stair railing over to the right. That symbol in the stair railing is a branding iron from a local rancher. We’ve used local branding irons in a number of the stairwells.
Bemidji, Minnesota
Last Thursday was a groundbreaking ceremony for what could become the first 'green' senior housing community in Minnesota and one of a few in the country. Ecumen is developing the community for North Country Health Services, one of the Upper Midwest’s leading healthcare providers.North Country’s mission is to assure a lifetime continuum of quality healthcare services. North Country’s new community will underscore that mission, providing independent living, assisted living and memory care. It also will be physically connected to their new care center, providing easy access in this wellness community.The new community will be submitted for LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) certification from the United States Green Building Council. Among the green features will be underground parking that will lessen impervious space and reduce water use, and lighting features that prevent light and energy waste. Many of the construction materials also will be harvested locally.
Tom Daschle and Long-Term Care Financing and Services in America
Reports are that former Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle from South Dakota is President-elect Barack Obama’s choice to head the Health and Human Services department. Daschle would take that position at one of the most critical times in the U.S. history of aging services where there is so much opportunity for change.So is there anything from Sen. Daschle’s past that gives us insights into how he might approach long-term care financing and services?' Check out these opening comments he made at a Capitol Hill press conference in 1999. A decade later could an administration that pledges change and innovation, turn to innovation in long-term care financing?'You wouldn’t appoint Tom Daschle to be secretary of Health and Human Services if you weren’t serious about making healthcare reform a priority,' said Drew E. Altman, president of the nonpartisan Kaiser Family Foundation in an interview with the L.A. Times.
Sen. Daschle’s opening statements at a 1999 press conference:
Bette Davis once said that it takes courage to grow old. And I believe that anyone who has had the experience of watching their parents struggle with the challenges of age and the extraordinary physical and mental pressures that older people feel, understand what it is to be courageous as one grows old.
We believe that you have to be courageous in Congress as well, in dealing with the problems of our elderly and recognizing the importance of a population that will continue to be larger and larger as a percentage of our country and its demographics. That is why we’ve been concerned over the last several months about the inaction we’ve seen in the Congress on an array of issues that we believe are critical to addressing the needs of this nation when it comes to the elderly.
And the list continues to grow as we look at failures on the part of the majority in addressing the needs of the elderly this year and the needs of the elderly as the baby boomers grow older: They failed to enact the Medicare prescription drug benefit. They failed to establish a national family caregivers support program to help families with long term needs. They failed to establish long-term care tax credits. They failed to strengthen the retired health coverage. They failed to combat crimes against seniors. And they have failed now to authorize the Older Americans Act.There is an array of failures there that I think point to the need for greater bipartisanship, greater efforts to reach to common ground and to build a consensus in addressing the problems of the elderly.
New Connections in the Age Wave
Innovators are making new connections in the age wave … Thanks to Ecumen colleague Robin Dunbar for sharing this video story: