A 25-Year Bon Odori Tradition

 United Buddhist Women’s Association, Nakayama Minyo Kai & Maui Taiko

Residents Herman, Helen & Shigeko join in the Bon Dancing

Resident Nancy joins in the dancing with a volunteer dancer

Staff perform Soran Bushi for the audience

Resident Portrait Series

Resident Peter Kaina gets a dose of meaningful activity by calling out the letters and numbers for resident Bingo at Hale Makua Wailuku.

Heads Up!

Jessie Morales, Maintenance Technician, joined in some balloon volleyball play time with residents. This is a great example of a spontaneous moment. Activities Director, Lynsey Capone, shared that Jessie had stopped by to fix something at Hale Makua Wailuku, but took some time out if his busy schedule to play some volleyball and put some smiles on residents' faces!

Eden Alternative Tip of the Week

Celebrating the sacredness of life & death at Elmhurst Extended Care, Providence, Rhode Island

As we change the way we look at the lives of Elders, we also recognize the importance of how we look at death. In a typical nursing home, the spiritual needs of care partners working in the home and Elders are rarely considered following a death. The team at Elmhurst continues to address this issue through a specific set of actions and beliefs. The first belief is that death is sacred and no one should die alone. Care partners working at Elmhurst are trained in comforting and supporting Elders, their family members and each other through the process of dying. Care partners working in the home are supported in various ways, including the allowance of time to personally grieve or attend wakes or funerals for Elders. Memorial services are also held in the neighborhoods at Elmhurst, where Elders and the care partners working in the home can memorialize the person who has passed away.

Our work in recognizing the sacred nature of death is balanced by our joy in celebrating the lives of Elders. Elmhurst has a Celebration of Life committee that does just that. We have been home to weddings, Veterans' Day celebrations, and a number of other memorable activities that celebrate the importance of each individual. Some, like an event we held to honor of an Elder who was a former New England boxing champion, are decidedly non-traditional. On this occasion, the event included a boxing ring, videos of the Elder's boxing matches, and a number of local boxing personalities who joined his family to celebrate. Another event transformed our café into a diner, where all the details including the menu and decor were designed by an Elder who had owned a diner in his younger years. On that day, he was the maitre d' and manager of a diner once again. Another highly successful program features a volunteer who interviews Elders and then presents them with a typewritten book detailing their lives. Elmhurst has also launched an Elder Venture program that allows Elders to fulfill long-held wishes. Through this program, people who live at Elmhurst have gone fishing, boating, and even horseback riding.

Our advice is: ask Elders and their care partners, including those working in the home and their family members,how you can best celebrate both life and death. It is an incredibly fulfilling question to ask and respond to.

Resident Artist

While this artist isn't a resident at Hale Makua, she is a regular client of Adult Day Health by Hale Makua. Elayna Kaplan, who was also featured in the June 16th blog post, is pictured here with her subject, another Adult Day Health client. Elayna is working on a series of portraits while she's at Adult Day Health. She works in several different mediums including painting, charcoal, and pastels. We'll be featuring Elayna's series of portraits in a future blog post. 

Let's ZUMBA!

On Friday Maui's Zumba craze reached Hale Makua Wailuku. Residents enjoyed Zumba Gold with Jocelyn. Zumba Gold is a variation of the original Zumba that is for anyone, any age, and any ability level. This is the newest fitness dance routine created by Alberto Beto Perez, and was designed for participants with very little exercise experience, individuals that have physical limitations or inactive older adults. Zumba Gold was created to be easier than Zumba, but just as much fun! The moves were carefully designed to be easy to follow by individuals of any size or age. The music and dance moves have their origins in the Cumbia, Salsa, Merengue, Tango, Rumba, and Cha-Cha.

Gardening Opportunities

Marigolds growing in a planter box alongside one of our courtyards

Strawberries and lettuce growing in the East Neighborhood garden

With our indoor outdoor living environment, there are so many opportunities for residents to participate in gardening activities. Many of the neighborhoods at Hale Makua Kahului have fruit and vegetable gardens that are cared for by residents and sometimes even their family members. Residents select what type of plants they would like to grow in their gardens and often take are of the watering, fertilizing and pruning.

There are also dozens of planter boxes that local Rotary Club members helped residents install around the courtyards complete with a drip irrigation system. If independent gardening isn't their thing, our Activities team organizes afternoons of re-potting plants that have outgrown their current pots. No matter if a resident is a full fledged gardener or just occasionally likes to get their hands dirty, we have gardening that can suit any desire!

Wailuku Word Find Winners

Ricki Tokoki and Faye Kaaihue are the two Word Search winners from Hale Makua Wailuku. Ricki is pictured above with his completed word search puzzle and bag of goodies. Faye asked that her photo not be taken. Congratulations to our word search winners! Stay tuned for another round of winners when the Fall issue of Ho'olaha comes out in November.

Mangia! Mangia!

Carmela Prucha holding the original recipe that she wrote for her son 20 years ago! Her son has been entrusted with it for safe keeping.

The Pizzelle maker at work

Carmela and Bill with the finished Pizzelles

This past Friday we had Bill Prucha, the son of resident Carmela Prucha, join us to make his mother's Pizzelle recipe. Pizzelles are an Italian tradition; wafer-like cookies with snowflake designs. Bill brought in Carmela's pizzelle iron which is similar to a waffle iron in appearance. The pizzelle maker is a staple in the household of many Italian families. Making Pizzelles filled the room with the wonderful smells of vanilla and anise. Once cooled the cookies were crispy and melted away in our mouths.

Submitted by Lynsey Capone, Activities Director

Eden Alternative Tip of the Week

A lonely person needs companionship the way a thirsty person needs water. Companionship is one of the essential ingredients of well-being, yet we pay it little mind. It is too often confused with friendship or even passive participation in group activities. In fact, companionship is the product of knowing and being with others. We are not the companions of people seated near us on a flight to Los Angeles because we do not (and may never want to) know them. Similarly, our best old friends from high school, while still dear to us, are not our companions because we no longer share the rhythms of daily life with them. The professional staff of a nursing home may well take pride in how well they know "their" residents, but they offer little in the way of companionship because they have so little time to be with the Elders. The cult of adulthood demands that staff members always remain busy, and so it structures human relationships around the routines required to ensure that work gets done. Long-term care encourages friendliness in the place of true companionship.

The Eden Alternative shows people how to integrate knowing and being into the daily rhythms of life in long-term care settings. The Eden Alternative Philosophy helps people develop meaningful relationships with each other by teaching them how to learn and understand each others stories. The art of giving care depends on companionship to give the care depth and substance. Without companionship, long-term care can offer only the cruel comfort of strangers feeding, bathing, dressing and entertaining strangers."  

From What Are Old People For? by Dr. William Thomas

Word Search Winner

Shigeko holds up her completed word search as Activities Assistant Jodi hands her a prize bag filled with goodies

Hale Makua Kahului resident Shigeko Nemoto was the first winner for our word search contest. The puzzle was printed in the Summer 2010 issue of Ho'olaha, our newsletter for residents and their families.Resident Vilma Sanchez initially proposed the idea of including a word search in the newsletter in a resident council meeting, however this was the first issue to offer a prize to the first three residents who completed the word search correctly. The newsletters were handed out on August first, and to-date there have already be five residents at Hale Makua Kahului who have correctly completed the word search! With such speedy word finders we're thinking about increasing the number of winners at Hale Makua Kahului to five. Be on the look out for the next issue of Ho'olaha, expected in homes on November 1, 2010.