Now, if you don’t live in Morningside Heights, you might not know that in the last week of August, the area is teaming with newly arrived students and academics, with all kinds of residents bustling about as they return from summer vacations, and with shoppers. There’s the added commotion of boxes arriving at loading zones, and vehicles of all sorts stopping and starting or zooming along Broadway. Right splat in the middle of all this, I had a lovely sense of our village life.
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Posts Tagged ‘elderly’
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Saturday, August 28th, 2010Wild Flowers, And Tame Ones!
Thursday, July 29th, 2010As Coordinator of Morningside Village, I felt like the Mad Hatter the night before leaving New York City for a week’s vacation in paradise. I was worried about one the older of our seniors who depends on Morningside Village, and, for her, I am its incarnation. She uses a wheelchair and doesn’t feel comfortable making excursions outside, so several volunteers have formed relationships with her and visit her regularly, but we have a special friendship. Even though I’d told nearly 100-year old Marianne that I would stop by at 8pm for a last visit before leaving, (more…)
Morningside Village Going National…In a Way.
Sunday, July 11th, 2010Once the CNN Heroes piece, featuring Morningside Village, was aired in June 2010, we began to receive email letters with heart-rending stories about institutional abuse that family members discovered at the nursing homes where their parents and grandparents live/lived. We also received numerous inquiries from all over the nation and beyond from people who want to know if there is such an eldercare village in their home towns, or they want to know how to start one. What great news! We are thrilled to learn that the need for our kind of compassionate eldercare resounds with so many.
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CNN Hero!
Sunday, June 6th, 2010This week, I have had the great honor of being featured on CNN network tv as its CNN Hero! It’s been an amazing experience, with lots of support from all across the nation for what we are doing. Naturally in a one and half minute video, the viewing audience only has a very small percentage of my story. Although the huge majority of the many letters I am receiving come from people who want to begin a Morningside Village in their own neighborhoods, a few people have raised vital questions: (more…)
Nuts and Bolts and the Weather
Saturday, May 8th, 2010People have asked for help in creating Caring “Villages” for elders in their own communities. From time-to-time, using the blog, I will comment on the how-to of implementing a successful program.
Matching volunteers with elders, in terms of interests and time of day and date of the week, as we help people to age comfortably in our community, used to be a time consuming occupation indeed for the one Morningside Village Coordinator…especially as we continue to expand the project. Some of our eldest members want several volunteers to visit in the course of a week.
Here’s how we are resolving this: (more…)
It’s YOU, Helene! Its Me!
Sunday, April 18th, 2010[Names changed to protect our Villagers.] This afternoon, I met Barbara, a new Morningside Village volunteer in the lobby of my apartment building, and then we walked 1½ blocks to visit Helene. On the way, I explained Helene’s need for visits, for help with organizing paperwork, and about the problems flaring up between Helene and her care-giver. The latter answered the doorbell and led us down the long hall to Helene’s bedroom, where she was resting in bed, and as soon as the volunteer saw the nearly hundred old woman, she shouted, “It’s YOU, Helene! “It’s me, Barbara!” Helene tried to place the face but couldn’t.
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Santa in Springtime
Sunday, March 21st, 2010If there were a Santa, and if he had elves, they might very well look like the twinkling-eyed team of Morningside Village volunteers who, in the last two weeks, have befriended one of our elders, past her mid-nineties, one with remarkable cognitive powers, who had fallen and badly hurt her back. After visiting the hospital and finding that there were no broken bones, by ambulance, “the system” returned her to her home (of over sixty years) in Morningside Village.
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Och, mój Boże, to cud!
Monday, February 22nd, 2010“Och, mój Boże, to cud!” are some of the words that formed on the lips of Freda, a ninety year old Polish-born Morningside Villager, on a recent Sunday afternoon as she stood in the light of Adelle’s open door, also a Polish-born nonagenarian living in Morningside Village. These two women, both residents of the area for over 50 years (names changed to provide anonymity), had known each other but, with one thing and another, including health issues, they hadn’t spoken for several years.
Both women were in touch with me as part of the network of elders whom we care for. I found that each knew of the other and so I arranged for the Sunday visit. (more…)
I Had A Nightmare! But Also a Dream Is Coming True!
Sunday, February 7th, 2010This morning I awoke, so relieved. It had only been a dream: I was the only one in a large house far from civilization taking care of a 97 year old mother who lay in bed recuperating from a stroke.
I awoke not in a house a mile from a small town, but I was in (more…)
A Theatre Piece on the Way
Friday, January 8th, 2010Over the holidays, I visited with three elders who live within two blocks of each other. They probably never met and maybe never will, for two of them are frail, elderly and housebound, and the third, also quite on in years, is recuperating from surgery. But I’m imagining that there was a time 70 years ago when their paths may very well have crossed. In spirit they surely did.
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