Ecumen 11th among Minnesota's Top 100 Workplaces
The Star Tribune's "Top Workplaces 2011" recognizes the most progressive companies in Minnesota based on employee opinions about company leadership, communication, career opportunities, workplace environment, managerial skills, pay and benefits. We're thrilled to add this distinction to our six year run as one of Minneapolis-St. Paul Business Journal's "Best Places to Work" and our recent ranking by Minnesota Monthly as, you guessed it, one of Minnesota's "Best Places to Work."
Michael Graves New Design on Target for Changing Demographics
Just added a post at Minneapolis Star Tribune.com on Michael Graves, designer of those hip Target housewares, and his new designs that are focused on empowerment and a "new normal" in America.
Ecumen Leader Kathryn Roberts Featured in Radical CEO Series
Kathryn Roberts, Ecumen CEO, was featured in today's Radical CEO blog series at Star Tribune.com. You can read the post and about other radical CEOs in the Twin Cities here.
Jim Klobuchar - The Treasure Masked by an Ugly Slag Pile
A new post by Ecumen Changing Aging contributor Jim Klobuchar:
It was not the prescribed atmosphere for a harmless reverie: drizzly Sunday morning at daybreak on a lonely highway, snags of cloud hanging low. Apart from my car, nothing else moved though the shapeless mist that lifted every few minutes. It revealed man-made buttes hundreds of feet high, dull red, formed by the abandoned tailings of the now-silent iron ore pits that are part of the landmarks of the northern Minnesota mining country.
When we were children they dominated the environment of our growing up, engineered by giant power shovels carving those vast canyons that produced 90 per cent of America’s steel.
Over the years the government and tourism agencies have invested sizable cash into removing or cleaning up the unlovely detritus. They have succeeded remarkably in some places by creating permanent blue lakes, camouflaging the old open pits, or by growing virtual arboretums in some of them.
But what I was thinking on this damp Sunday morning had nothing much to do with sprucing up old ore dumps, beautifying them--if you don’t mind-- as a sensible salute to a heritage. I was thinking about the America I had lived; about gifts that had come into my life because there was iron ore, and there were miners. I remembered the muted thunder-claps thousands of feet beneath the surface that I could hear in my bed as a child, dynamite being a detonated by a night shift, possibly by my dad’s crew.
In my town the steel-building iron ore lay nearly a half mile beneath the earth’s surface and could not be reached with the huge steam shovels that created those vast open canyons. Where we lived the ore was extracted underground with dynamite and winches through a network of tunnels and then lifted nearly 2,000 feet in big elevator cages.
My father had labored in the underground since he was 15, leaving school to work after the eighth grade after both of his parents had died and he was the oldest boy in a family of eight. There were few safety nets then and even fewer when the Great Depression struck the country. The children wanted to stay together. So the oldest boy became their support.
It was his choice and the mining company pretended not to notice his age. And yet he lived a fruitful life, working, hunting and fishing, helping to raise two children. It’s what was done in those years. He and my mother were the children of immigrants, most of whom came to America in who like the others came in part because of their hunger to educate their children. This they did, with the security of work in the mines.
So that became the progression. The immigrants mined and built their homes and told their kids to study. Their children could go into adult life with a high school education and the chances that came with it to expand their lives; and their grandchildren could attend college if they studied and if it meant enough to them.
And so this happened in our household: my brother and I could attend the junior colleges that flourished in northern Minnesota, and advance those credits directly to the big university. And my dad’s grandchildren, the third generation, both have significant government positions today, one in Washington, the other in Iowa.
So driving through the north country the other day I felt no esthetic pain seeing those slag piles penetrating the fog, even the uglier ones that had eluded the beautification patrols. Like my brother, I had worked underground between college terms to help pay the tuition, which wasn’t all that onerous to begin with.
What was painful in that morning mist was the glimpses it revealed of a time when America was beginning to surge; when a quality education was coming available to almost all who wanted it. It was a time when America was beginning to discover the genuine power of democracy, building a society in which almost everybody had a chance to compete at some level. It was a time of an America that recognized the sins of its discriminations against people of color, against women and tried to meet the responsibilities of a truly open society.
America’s people hold so much potential, but we’re not fully mining it. Yes times change, but something that should never diminish is the conscience and promise of the country in opening the door to everyone for a chance at a quality education. It’s education that carries a person through life and empowers one to the very end.
Those silent slabs of ore might be reminding us of a better way. One in which we’re interconnected. And that’s a treasure worth preserving.
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.
Age Wave = Change Wave Video
The future announces itself from the horizon. And look at the unprecedented statistics before us in this short video. The age wave is the change wave, an unprecedented opportunity for innovation.
Harmon Killebrew's Insights on Living and Dying
Six years ago, we did an interview with Minnesota favorite and Baseball Hall of Famer Harmon Killebrew on aging. He had great insights on living and dying. I've included excerpts from that interview at our blog at Star Tribune.com, which you can read here.
Empowering Gift Idea: Ecumen Offers Presto Computerless Email to People Who Don't Have Computers
Do you have a loved one who doesn't have a computer, yet you'd love to email them photos of the kids, big events or a variety of documents? Now you can!
Ecumen has joined with Silicon Valley-based Presto Services, the leading provider of computerless email, to offer through our Ecumen at Home services Presto Mail for $14.99 per month plus a one-time charge of $99.99 for the Printing Mailbox made for Presto by HP. The Ecumen-Presto offer is here on the Ecumen at Home technology page.
Presto Highlights
- Allows you to send email to people who don't use a computer
- Uses an HP Printing Mailbox and Presto Mail service
- Transforms emailed messages into beautiful, easy-to-read e-letters with photos and attachments automatically printed
- Nothing new for your loved one to learn — messages and photos are automatically printed
Presto is a combination of the Presto Printing Mailbox and Presto Mail service. It allows you to use the convenience of email to communicate with loved ones who don't use a computer or the Internet.
How it works
1. Send email, photos and other documents to a Presto-provided email address
2. The Presto Mail service transforms emailed messages and photos into printable, full color e-letters
3. The Presto Printing Mailbox automatically retrieves messages via the phone line and prints them out
Before and after
Easy to use
This is the one electronics product your loved one will actually use, because they don't actually need to "use" it. They simply pick up the printed messages from the tray, read and enjoy! No checking a computer for messages or struggling with email attachments. It's all done for them, automatically. There is nothing they need to do or learn.
Ecumen CEO Kathryn Roberts Drives Tech Innovation for Aging
Neat story today at TECH{dot}MN on Ecumen CEO Kathryn Roberts' leadership in bringing technology to aging.
Happy Holidays From Ecumen
Holiday wishes to you from Ecumen.There are a number of holiday traditions at Ecumen communities. Today, we’d like to share with you one of them. Glen Glancy is the leader of dining services at Lakeview Commons, an Ecumen community in Maplewood, Minn. Each year Glen creates a beautiful Gingerbread house for the Christmas season. It’s a big hit for all who live and visit Lakeview Commons, especially area school children. Below are some of the key stats on Glen’s Gingerbread creation this year:- It took 120 hours to build.- The icing is comprised of 30 lbs.- 20 lbs. of Gingerbread were used.- Features 30 different kinds of candy.- All the building are lighted and it features a working fire engine.-