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State of the Campus: January 22nd

Fri, January 22, 2021 Published by

Four staff had positive test results this week (two Plaza View Assisted Living direct care staff, one Plaza View Assisted Living support staff and one Independent Living support staff). This past week, several staff have recovered and come back. Right now, we have 26 total positive staff. This past week, two Independent Living residents tested positive, several have recovered, and we now have 19 residents with active COVID-19 (none in Skilled Nursing or Advanced Memory Support, 13 residents in Plaza View Assisted Living/Early Memory Support, and six residents in Independent Living).

State of the Campus – July 31

Fri, July 31, 2020 Published by

On Thursday, Beatitudes Campus did another mass testing of all Beatitudes Campus staff. As I have said in many letters, we feel that this is one of the most important things we can do to slow the spread of COVID-19. We will be getting the staff results starting this evening. We did receive the results of Tuesday’s retesting of residents on the third and fourth floors in the Health Care Center. There were two positive asymptomatic residents and 26 negative results. We have moved the two residents from the fourth floor to our Isolation Unit on the third floor.

The Power of Women

Mon, August 12, 2019 Published by

“Women have a unique power of being able to look at the world’s problems and discover solutions that transform lives and make the world a better place.”

You can witness the power of those words first-hand at the Third Annual Power of Women: Wine, Women and Conversation event, which will be held on Wednesday, September 18, from 5-7 pm in the Life Center. We are shining a light on three women who are shaping the Phoenix community: The Honorable Kate Gallego, Mayor of the City of Phoenix; Dr. Maria Harper Marinick, chancellor of the Maricopa Community Colleges; and Dr. Judy Jolley Mohraz, trustee of the Virginia G. Piper Charitable Trust. They will be discussing their life journeys – the highs and lows and everything in between. We will hear the expansive amount of work they do for our community and how the connections and support they receive from our community has been transformational in their lives. Our own President and CEO Michelle Just and Letitia Frye, our Power of the Purse auctiontainer, author and speaker, will moderate the panel discussion.

Mayor Kate Gallego has spent her career working to find solutions to complex problems. Prior to being elected as Mayor this past March, she served for five years as the City Councilwoman for District 8. She is the second elected female mayor in Phoenix history and the youngest big-city mayor in the United States. She’s passionate about building a Phoenix that works for everyone, including her two-year-old son, Michael. Prior to being elected mayor, she worked on Strategic Planning and Economic Development for Salt River Project. Mayor Gallego graduated from Harvard University and earned an MBA from the Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania.

Dr. Maria Harper Marinick is a national leader in higher education and strong advocate for access, equity, and student success. She has served in leadership positions for 17 years at Maricopa County Community College District, one of the largest community college systems in the U.S. serving 200,000 students across 10 colleges. She was appointed chancellor in 2016. She is the first female and the first Latina to be appointed to lead a higher educational institution in Arizona. She is originally from the Dominican Republic and came to Arizona in 1982 as a Fulbright Scholar to complete graduate work at Arizona State University, where she earned a master’s and doctoral degrees in education.

Dr. Judy Jolley Mohraz has spent her life committed to the community and education. She served as the founding president and CEO of the Virginia G. Piper Charitable Trust, the largest private foundation in Arizona and currently serves as a trustee. She positioned the trust to be a significant partner in civic leadership, constructive change and investment in solution-focused social strategies. Prior, she was president of Goucher College in Baltimore for six years and served on the faculty and administration for 20 years at Southern Methodist University. Her academic focus was American history and she authored a book about Black education in the northern U.S. in the early 20th century. She serves on numerous boards and was a presidential appointee to the Board of Visitors of the U.S. Naval Academy. She earned her doctorate from University of Illinois and her bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Baylor University

Michelle Just, as we all know, is the amazing leader of Beatitudes Campus and has made enormous contributions nationally in the aging services field. Letitia Frye has been involved in Beatitudes Campus for the past five years as auctioneer at Power of the Purse. She has made a big impact on the Arizona nonprofit community and has helped raise more than $400 million for these organizations.

For those of you who attended Power of Women last year, you know how positive and uplifting this evening is. You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, you’ll cheer on your new friends. I hope you will come this year!

We invite you to join us at Power of Women and be part of the Women, Wine and Conversation. Tickets are $45 (wine and appetizers included) and can be purchased by calling me (Barbara Wood at x16136) or coming to the Foundation offices. Please call me if you have any questions. I hope to see you there!

A Place for the Tiger

Sun, February 10, 2019 Published by

There’s a story about the famous painter Leonardo da Vinci.  During the time when he was working on his famous painting “The Last Supper,” he became angry with an acquaintance of his. The two men had words and parted from each other on very bad terms. Leonardo returned to the church on whose wall he was painting the fresco.  It was no use. Leonardo could paint nothing he was happy with. He had reached the point in the project where he was doing the face of Jesus. Time and again he tried to render a likeness of the Lord, but he was unable to do so.  Finally the great artist realized that he had work to do, but it was not in the church he had been commissioned to decorate. Leonardo put down his brushes and sought out the man who had been the subject of his wrath. He asked the man’s forgiveness. The man accepted his apology and offered an apology of his own. It was only then that Leonardo was able to return to the church and finish painting the face of Jesus.

St. Paul wrote a letter to the church at Ephesus because he knew that the church was engaged in quarreling that threatened to tear them apart.  He counseled them: “No more lies, no more pretense. Tell your neighbor the truth. In Christ’s body we’re all connected to each other, after all. When you lie to others, you end up lying to yourself. Go ahead and be angry. You do well to be angry—but don’t use your anger as fuel for revenge. And don’t stay angry. Don’t go to bed angry. Don’t give the Devil that kind of foothold in your life.” Sometimes we feel we should never be angry, we should repress our true feelings.  However, when we do that, our anger continues to simmer within us and ultimately festers or blows up and can be terribly destructive.  Avoidance of conflict makes room for the devil.  Anger is a natural part of our emotional makeup as humans.

Think back on your own life and reflect on what role anger has played in your relationships—was it healthy anger or destructive? Are you a spewer or a stewer?  Anger itself is not a sin. Sometimes we are called to be angry.  The world would have lost much without the blazing anger of William Wilberforce against the slave trade. If Martin Luther King had not been angry at racism, the civil rights movement would not have flourished. If Gandhi had not been angry at oppression, India’s independence might not have happened. Anger, channeled in a positive way, can be a catalyst for change.  The famous writer Dr. Samuel Johnson was once asked to temper the harshness and anger in a book he was about to publish.  His answer to that request was that “he would not cut off his claws, nor make his tiger a cat, to please anybody.”  There is a place for the tiger in life; and when the tiger becomes a tabby cat, something is lost.  How many relationships have been forever destroyed because some small issue was left to fester, grow, and divide the best of friends? Resolution of differences may take a long time but Paul is telling us to put aside our anger quickly.  If we have been in the wrong, pray to God to give us the grace to go and admit that it was so; and even if we have been right, pray to God to give us the graciousness which will enable us to take the first step to put matters right.

 

Thinking God’s Thoughts

Sun, January 6, 2019 Published by

It is an exciting time for space exploration. Not only has China successfully landed an exploratory craft on the far side of the Moon, but humanity has been boldly going where we haven’t gone before. NASA’s New Horizons probe, launched in January 2006, has successfully flown by a small snowman shaped object (see the picture included, taken from the probe’s telemetry) named Ultima Thule, meaning ‘beyond the farthest frontiers’. That object is a billion miles further out from Pluto. It is quite incredible to think of how far, both literally and metaphorically, we have come since the advent of space exploration. In 1961, during the first manned spaceflight, Yuri Gagarin, according to some sources, remarked ‘I see no God up here’, although those words were not in the official transcripts.  Those words seem to firmly put the exploration of the cosmos and faith at odds with each other. However, in reality, the historical interaction between theology and outer space has been more subtle and much more fruitful than a simple conflict. Some historians point to the positive influence of belief on the very growth of science. Four hundred years ago, Galileo and other scientists of his generation understood by their faith that God was free to create in whatever way God wanted. Therefore, the only way to understand creation was to observe it, and thus was the real origin of empirical science. A similar argument led to theologians being foremost in the speculation about life on other planets. If God is free to create  not just human life, the only way you would know whether other life was there would be to actively search for it. Rather than religious belief and scientific exploration being at odds with each other, this understanding, in fact, adds a sacred dimension  to that exploration. At times, this exploration will no doubt be puzzling and surprising, but ultimately always awe-inspiring. Fifty years ago, as Apollo 8 orbited the Moon on Christmas Eve, the astronauts took turns reading from the Book of Genesis. The sense that the world is created and good continues to inspire many to look beyond the farthest frontiers, and to see science, as the sixteenth century astronomer, Johannes Kepler, described it as “thinking God’s thoughts after him”. *

 

Positive Aging

Sun, August 19, 2018 Published by

Positive Aging: Changing Your Mindset About Growing Older

What is your attitude about the aging process? Do you view it as a positive rite of passage or a negative phenomenon that must simply be endured?

I recently read an inspiring article written in 2017 by oil tycoon T. Boone Pickens in which he reflects on his life’s “fourth quarter.” Having suffered several strokes in the past few years, which necessitated extensive speech therapy, and a bad fall that required hospitalization, he acknowledges that he is facing his own mortality.

Yet, at 90 years old, Pickens remains invigorated by life. “Be the eternal optimist who is excited to see what the next decade will bring,” he advises. “I remain excited every day, engaged and thrilled in the office and on the road. I thrive on that activity, and I’m going to stick to it, no matter the setback.”

Pickens’ attitude is inspirational by almost anyone’s standards, yet not everyone views the aging process as positively as he.

How ageism distorts views on aging

Much has been written about ageism. It’s a hot topic and a societal issue that some say is becoming more endemic than even sexism or racism.

The World Values Survey (WVS), which is an ongoing research project conducted by social scientists around the globe, asked over 83,000 people of all age groups in 57 countries about their feelings on aging. The World Health Organization (WHO) analyzed the WVS data and found that 60 percent of survey respondents said that they don’t think older people are respected. Interestingly, the lowest levels of respect for older generations were reported in higher income countries. These negative attitudes about aging and older people reflected in the WVS can have a significantly detrimental impact on the physical and mental health of seniors. A 2002 study by psychology researchers in Yale University’s department of epidemiology and public health looked at the long-term health consequences of ageism on seniors. The researchers determined that age discrimination actually has the potential power to shorten seniors’ lives. The Yale study followed 660 seniors age 50 and older. Among the study group, seniors who held more positive views about the aging process actually lived 7.5 years longer than people who negatively perceived aging. Older people who perceive themselves as a burden to others view their very lives as less valuable, which in turn ups their risk for depression and social isolation, both of which have been shown to be “silent killers” for seniors.

The positive aging movement

Of course, some facets of a person’s health, good or bad, are genetic and thus out of their hands, but many aspects of health and the aging process in general are well within our control. However, as we age, “health” isn’t just about the absence of ailments. The concept of “positive aging,” also referred to as “healthy aging,” is achievable by every older person as we work to make better choices in the near-term to improve our lives in the long-term.

Positive aging is basically adopting a positive view of aging as a healthy, normal part of life. I see this happening is so many of our Beatitudes Campus clubs, service groups and our Life Long Learners program.  And it’s the mindset that you will do whatever is needed in order to continue doing the things that you love and are important to you as you grow older. Just like T. Boone Pickens working hard to regain his speech after his strokes and getting back to work — in a 60-year career he still loves — after his fall.

Tips for positive aging

Dr. Manfred Diehl, professor of human development and family studies at Colorado State University, focuses on successful and healthy aging. He has done extensive research on adults’ perceptions and understanding of their own aging process and also how changing middle-aged and older adults’ negative views on aging can facilitate the adoption of behaviors that are known to promote positive aging.

Dr. Diehl created a list of ways to adopt a more positive attitude toward your own aging process. He suggests that seniors:

Stay physically active by doing at least 30 minutes of movement or exercise every day.

Exercise your brain by engaging in mentally challenging activities, and never stop learning new things.

Adopt an overall healthy lifestyle by eating healthfully, getting enough sleep, managing weight, and not drinking in excess or smoking.

Stay connected to other people by nurturing relationships with your spouse or partner, family, friends, neighbors, and others in your community, including young people.

Create positive emotions for yourself by practicing positive emotion exercises and learning to feel good about your age.

Don’t sweat the small stuff; accept what you cannot do, and ask for help when needed.

Set goals for yourself and take control of the steps needed to achieve them.

Minimize life stress; practice healthy coping techniques, and learn to relax and unwind.

Have regular medical check-ups, take advantage of health screenings, and engage in healthy preventive behaviors.

A positive outlook for a healthier life

With his positive outlook and can-do spirit, T. Boone Pickens seems to have mastered the art of positive aging. For those of you who may struggle with maintaining optimism about the aging process, you’re certainly not alone. But by reframing your thoughts on growing older and focusing on Dr. Diehl’s healthy suggestions, you can improve your mindset, and hopefully, following your example, your fellow campus residents see an example that they can embrace, as well.

Drop me a note anytime you have an example of how the positive aging environment at Beatitudes Campus has enriched your life.  We’re kicking around the idea of a marketing piece that highlights these benefits.  Stay cool!*