lifelong - rhoda goldman plaza

JUNE2017—SIVAN-TAMMUZ 5777—VOL 17 NO 9

JFCS ............................................ 2Resident of the Month .............. 3President’s Message ................. 4Lifelong Learning ........................5June Activities ...............................6

June Activities, cont. ...................7June Birthdays ..............................8Health Notes ..................................9Dining ...........................................10Marketing ..................................... 11

Lifelong

The Lifelong Learning Edition

The Olive Press

Staff

Adrienne Fair, Assistant Executive Director 415-345-5077Ira Kurtz, Executive Director 415-345-5080Eric Luu, CFO 415-345-5083Van Ly, Business Office Manager 415-345-5073Ron Martinez, Director of Facilities 415-345-5088 Candiece Milford, Managing Director of Marketing 415-345-5072Peggy O'Brien, Director of Resident Services 415-345-5082Emily Steen, Director of Programming 415-345-5084Corey Weiner, Director of Food and Beverage 415-345-5069

2180 Post Street San Francisco, CA 94115

415.345.5060 415.345.5061 (fax) www.RGPlaza.org RCFE #385600125

Rhoda goldman plaza

Don AbramsonKaren Aidem Carla BuchananDavid DossetterNancy GoldbergDr. Carl GrunfeldDr. Lawrence HillJoan Levison David Melnick Raquel Newman Paul SiegelVera SteinRonna StoneDr. Anita FriedmanKaren Staller

Board of Directors

JFCS -Seniors At HomeJewish Family and Children’s Services (JFCS) is one of the oldest and largest human service agencies in the United States. JFCS is guided by the Jewish traditions of advancing human dignity, community responsibility, inter-generational ties, and repairing the world.

Through Seniors At Home, our award-winning senior services division, we help older adults live independently, safely, and with dignity. Highly trained, compassionate caregivers provide extra support through personal care, assistance after an illness or hospitalization, or just for a little company.

To find out more about JFCS or Seniors At Home, call 415-449-1200 or visit us online at www.jfcs.org .

Jewish Family and Children’s Services and Rhoda Goldman Plaza share the commitment to help older adults live with dignity and work together to promote their quality of life.

Introducing the JFCS Seniors At Home “Futures Program”You’re invited to become a member and it’s free.

In the event of a health crisis, the last thing you need is the overwhelming stress of trying to arrange, schedule, and manage your home care. Being a member of the Seniors At Home’s Futures Program means you know exactly who will be there for you.Here’s how it works:1. Enroll. Call us on 415-449-3777 or sign up online 2. Assess. We come to your home and spend an hour

getting to know you.3. Check-In. We will call you every three months to say

hello, check in, and see how you’re doing.Whether you’re in your sixties or your nineties, become a member of the Futures Program to get peace of mind about your care and create a plan before it is needed.Again, to become a member, call 415-449-3777 or visit www.seniorsathome.orgSeniors At Home is the award-winning Senior Care Division of Jewish Family and Children’s Services.

The Olive Press page 3

Resident of the Month—Judith RosenthalHow is teaching MSW/Doctoral students at Smith College, UCLA and USC similar to volunteering on the RGP Terrace and Hospitality Committees? For Judith Rosenthal, both experiences engage people in learning—cognitively, personally, interpersonally, and professionally.

Now retired from academia and living at RGP, Judith believes that moving to a new community requires learning and flexibility. As with her university students, new residents must integrate a new information base (“rules of community living”) with personal experience, all part of the learning process.

Born in Fort Bragg, CA, Judith and her parents moved to San Francisco when she was two years old. She graduated from Berkeley with a BA in Political Theory and completed an MA in Political/Legal Theory at Brandeis University, Massachusetts. After much soul searching and desire for a profession that aided societal change and personal growth, Judith enrolled in UC Berkeley in a combined MSW/Doctoral program, focusing on clinical social work training and research into child development and psychological anthropology. After graduating, she accepted a position at UCLA Graduate School for Social Welfare. Her focus was supporting students cope with learning and change—gaining a new knowledge base for the social work profession.

After teaching for fifteen years, ending in 2005, Judith moved back to San Francisco to assist her mother who lived at RGP. On “retirement from academia,” she worked as Program Director for a residential treatment facility for young children who had been removed from abusive or neglectful parents. When Judith retired, she chose RGP because her mother had positive experiences on the Memory Care unit. Judith saw that the benefits of RGP were the confluence of social, educational, spiritual, and nutritional (i.e. kosher, vegetarian) aspects of life which were very important to her.

Lifelong learning at RGP is extremely important. Residents enjoy the opportunity to continue educational activities, for example, at the Fromm Institute or at lectures and discussions at RGP. For Judith, although she never had time to “play games”, she has grown to appreciate the cognitive stimulation of Rummikub, the socialization opportunities of Bingo, and the life-enhancing benefits of morning exercise classes.

Three of her visions for enhancing Lifelong Learning at RGP are: lectures/support groups on issues which affect residents—the Memory Support Group, for example. Another is specific programming which addresses health needs, such as palliative care, hospice, power of attorney, and safety which allows residents to bring up their own concerns in a confidential and safe place. The third is a social work internship program where an intern could meet with residents around concerns and provide resources for meeting their needs.

Everywhere, change is an integral part of life. For new residents starting a new chapter in their lives, and for seasoned residents coming to terms with change at RGP, these processes involve learning and finding ways of making lives meaningful. “I believe that we can create successful transitions and learning opportunities in a supportive community such as RGP.”

The Olive Press

RGP Resident Council President Hal Auerbach's MessageOnline Learning Resources

In addition to the speakers, programs and exhibitions presented at Rhoda Goldman Plaza, this city offers many educational opportunities for seniors. Several of us attend classes at the Fromm Institute, an independent non-profit

educational program situated at the University of San Francisco, which offers a wide variety of college-level courses taught by active and emeritus professors. Imagine college without tests or term papers! Those of us who attend its classes find the courses enlightening, the teaching extraordinary and the entire experience stimulating and rewarding. Schedules permitting, our front desk may be able to arrange transportation. Typical of ecumenical San Francisco, the Fromm Institute was founded by Jewish philanthropists Anna and Alfred Fromm and is housed at a Jesuit university. How appropriate, considering that Alfred Fromm’s business included the distribution of Christian Brothers wine and brandy worldwide.Ira and our staff are working to obtain access for us to the Frommcast, the Fromm’s on-line life-long learning educational platform, so that we could be able to view the Fromm’s most popular courses on an internet connected big screen in our own Activity Room. More news on that later.

Mark Twain said it best:“Anyone who stops learning is old, whether twenty or eighty. Anyone who keeps learning stays young. The greatest thing you can do is keep your mind young.”

Schmoop – This free beta site makes it fun to study literature, poetry, and U.S. history. Schmoop features include easy-to-read study guides, homework helpers, and other educational materials.

History.com – The official History Channel website is one of the best places on the web to learn about a broad range of history topics. You can read articles, watch videos, and explore many other resources.

OpenCourseWare (OCW) Consortium – The OCW Consortium is a collaboration of more than 200 higher education institutions. The Consortium’s website is an excellent place to find free courses and course materials from some of the world’s best colleges and universities.

Lecturefox – Lecturefox is an online directory of free audio, video, and text-based lectures from universities like MIT and Yale.

Livemocha – Livemocha is an international community of foreign language learners. You can use it to study almost any world language at your own pace.

This is a guest post from Karen Schweitzer, the About.com Guide to Business School. Karen also

writes about online colleges for OnlineCollege.org.

http://www.missiontolearn.com/lifelong-learner-free-resources/

Lifelong


Lifelong Learning

Wish you knew more about newts in Madagascar? Well..., if that’s not what interests you, then maybe there is some esoteric bit of the unexplored lifeworld

that arouses your interest. What amount of curiosity engages your motivation to find out more, to learn something new? As one RGP resident observed, “you can’t help learning.” But there is a vast difference between learning because you have to and learning because you want to.

What is Lifelong Learning?

The term lifelong learning does not relate to the content of learning, but reflects a lifestyle— people continuously explore their world through a combination of curiosity, motivation, and action. Learning includes academic and experiential learning, and involves critical and reflective thinking.

“Lifelong learning is an ongoing process; it is an attitude,” said one resident. The strong version—“learning is living” emphasizes the integrative holistic benefits of learning, while the weak version—learning is fun and prevents cognitive decline suggests than learning is somewhat like busywork, but good for you. The strong version includes learning as development, engagement as ongoing growth. Lifelong? Of Course!. For many, lifelong learning provides a means of personal fulfilment, a means to engage with and learn about the continuously changing world and oneself in the process.

Why is it important?

Lifelong learning mitigates some of the negative consequences that sometimes occur as people age. “Gerontological research has shown that enriched learning environments can help reduce cognitive decline due to aging as well as helping older adults deal with depression and poor self-image. A study conducted on adults studying at a Spanish university for three years indicated “Although these results are still preliminary, the study shows evidence that

university programming, oriented to older adults, can be beneficial... An enriched environment, whether through a formal university program or self-directed learning, has an important role in active aging and helping older adults compensate for cognitive and emotional decline... While it is likely too soon to determine whether enriched learning and active aging can actually delay dementia and other serious health problems that come with time, the older student movement is just beginning.....That lifelong learning can help older adults remain active and healthy is just another benefit.” 1

Learning Opportunities

Collaborative learning, learning communities, learning groups, and self-directed learning are some examples of the many ways people organize themselves in order to learn. Learning groups are created by members who determine what they want to learn and decide how to do it. There are formal learning opportunities, for example, lecture series offered locally at the Fromm Institute, the Lehrhaus Judaica, SF City College, and at the JCC. RGP offers lectures and discussions; Ken Blady and John Rothmann lecture monthly and Jim O’Dea facilitates discussions on current events. Yet-to-be-tried at RGP are learning groups composed of residents where members determine their own subjects and learning processes. For individuals, or small groups, the computer opens up a wealth of college courses at outstanding universities.

What about newts in Madagascar? Amazing! There are none; there are no newts, salamanders, or toads in Madagascar, but there are 300 species of frogs..Wow! I never knew that... ! Wonder why...... ?1 https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/media-spotlight/201210/can-lifelong-learning-help-we-age

Lifelong

The Olive Press

June Activities

Special Events 2 Fri 10:30 Freda’s Extended Parlor 8 Thurs 3:15 Freda’s Extended Parlor Exhibition and Celebration 14 Wed 3:15 Memory Loss Support Group 30 Fri 10:30 Camp Israel Students

Outings 6 Tues 2:00 Outings: Sequoias Garden 13 Tues 1:15 Outing: Sansome Rooftop Deck 15 Thurs 1:30 Outing: Drew School’s Living Vertical Wall 17 Sat 3:30 Outing: Scenic Drive 20 Tues 1:30 Outing: Tour of City Hall 22 Thurs 11:45 Lunch Outing: Cliff House 27 Tues 1:30 Outing: Sloat Garden Centrer 29 Thurs 1:30 Outing:Transamerica Redwood Park

Lectures/Discussion 1 Thurs 10:15 TED Talk with Discussion Sundays 4:15 Current Events with Jim 7 Wed 10:30 Poetry with Elizabeth 5, 19 Mon 3:30 20th Century Jewish Women with Melanie 12 Mon 10:30 Openhouse Senior Panelists 15 Thurs 10:30 John Rothmann Lecture 16 Fri 10:30 Paul Rodler City Hall Lecture 29 Thur 10:30 Chasing Portraits with Elizabeth Reinki

Committees/Resident Council/Clubs 2 Fri 1:30 Activities Committee 8 Thurs 10:30 Movie Committee 21 Wed 1:30 History Committee 22 Thurs 10:00 Dining Room Committee 28 Wed 2:00 Resident Council Meeting 28 Wed 10:30 Gardening with Elizabeth

Art Classes Mondays 10:15 Ceramics with Jeannie Tuesdays 3:30 Painting with Kimberley 14 Wed 2:30 Flag Making 7,14 Wed 3:00 Knitting with Max 9,23 Fri 2:00 Mask Making 13, 20 Tues 10:30 Rainbow Beading with Melanie 16 Fri 2:30 Pride Poster Making


June Activities

Music 4 Sun 2:00 Tin Pan Alley Singers 9 Fri 10:30 Interactive Music with Kathy 11 Sun 3:00 Glenda Bates Song Book Trio 18 Sun 2:30 Gustavo Romero 21 Wed 3:30 Frank Cefalu Concert 22 Thurs 2:00 Phyllis Aboaf Piano Recital 25 Sun 2:00 Lovin Harmony

Games 3 Sat 2:00 Virtual Reality with JT Saturdays 1:30 Rumikub 5,19,26 Mon 10:30 Bingo 6 Tues 10:30 Blackjack with Emily 11 Sun 10:30 Scattagories with Bethany Mondays 4:30 Crossword Tuesdays 1:00 RummiKub 27 Tues 10:30 Blackjack with Ira Wednesdays 2:00 Scrabble

Exercise Classes 1,15,29 Thurs 3:00 Free to Move with Greacian 4,18 Sun 10:00 Exercise with Phil Mondays 9:00 Exercise with Rowena Tuesdays 9:15 Tai Chi with Janet Wednesdays 9:00 Exercise with Rowena Wednesdays 11:00 Open Gym with a Trainer 1,8,22,29 Thurs 9:30 Walking Club Thursdays 10:30 Chair Yoga with Ilya Fridays 9:00 Exercise with Phil Saturdays 10:30 Chair Yoga with Ilya

Shabbat Services Fridays 4:00 Shabbat Services with Rabbi Me’irah

The Olive Press

June BirthdaysPeggy Gordon 3John Durcanin 6Naomi Lauter 8Tsuneko Hellerstein 9Yetta Pollack 12Noel Kirshenbaum 14Jay Beadner 18Normadine Berger 21Maureen Rittenberg 21

Guess the Collective Age of RGP Residents!

a) 8,929 b) 10,838 c) 11,305Answer on Candiece’s page.

Upcoming Maintenance

June 6-9 Window Screen Removal

June 7-8 Sprinkler Testing

June 16-19 Window Washing

The Maintenance Staff will be entering residents’ rooms to remove window screens and test sprinklers. If you have any questions, please contact the Front Desk.

At the SF JCC

We will be starting a Lifelong Learning Club, which will meet twice a month where residents can discuss

ideas for learning opportunities. What do you want to learn about? Join the club and discover new resources for learning. Check with Emily for more details at 415.345.5084.

Lifelong

Jack Leibman Book DiscussionSunday, June 111:30 – 3:00 p.m.Olive Room

Jack Leibman will discuss the Yizkor Book originally written in Yiddish by 23 survivors of the shtetl now named Golshany.

It is a comprehensive history of the town and its ultimate destruction in the Holocaust. Dr. Leibman’s father came from this town and it took Jack over 2-1/2 years called to translate it from the Yiddish.)


Adrienne Fair, MSN, RN, Assistant Executive Director

Health Notes

Mental Engagement

My daughter is 13 and I have been thinking a lot about the teenage brain. On the radio, you may have caught interviews with neuroscientist Frances E. Jensen, MD who has written a book on raising teenagers with their brain development in mind.1

The frontal cortex is actually really late to develop –it is not thought to fully develop until age twenty-five! The frontal cortex is responsible for reasoning and logic and for essentially putting the brakes on risky behaviors.

In contrast, the emotional part of the brain develops much earlier in life and emotions can feel very intense to teenagers. I certainly remember small social slights as a teenager. I once cried for hours over a bad haircut, something I couldn’t even imagine caring about today.

Neuroplasticity is a term for how the brain can create new neural connections – and, in essence, learn new things. The child and adolescent brain is creating new connections at a rapid pace, absorbing all sorts of new information. As we get older, we may not have the same speed of neuroplasticity, but we can certainly continue to learn new things.

Although there is no clear evidence that doing brain games, such as crossword puzzles and trivia, will improve cognition, there is evidence that engagement helps maintain brain health. Specifically, people who are engaged in “a range of intellectual pursuits are diagnosed at later ages with Alzheimer’s”.2

But what is engagement? Lucky for us, engagement can be anything that you enjoy socially or cognitively: visiting with friends and family, learning a new language, trying new types of art, playing or appreciating music, volunteering with young people, and generally being involved with other people in your community. As with exercise, the ideal type of mental engagement is one that you will actually do.

So why not try a new activity, learn something new, or meet some new residents at RGP? You will be doing your brain a favor. And by the way, since we are lucky enough to have made it out of adolescence, we don’t have to worry about the stress of those intense adolescent emotions or worrying about how we are being judged by our peers. Get out there, in the words of San Franciscan Grace Slick, and “Feed your head”!

1 Jensen, F & Nutt, A (2015). The Teenage Brain: A Neuroscientists’s Survival Guide to Raising Adolescents and Young Adults. New York: Harper Collins.2 Park, D & Bischof, G (2013). The aging mind: Neuroplasticity in response to cognitive training.

Dialogues in Clinical Neuroscience 15(1): 109-119.

The Olive Press

Corey Weiner,Director of Food and Beverage

Dining—Eat to your heart’s content

Lifelong Learning

What does lifelong learning mean to us in Dining Services? I know what it means to me, after seventeen years. I see I am saying the same things. What does that indicate? It means we are continuously educating our new residents to RGP’s arcane dining culture.

What can Dining Services do for you to facilitate your life-long learning? We can fill your water glass. Drinking water can help with cognition, prevent constipation, and frankly alleviates many conditions. But, on our long learning curve, trust me, have a glass of water; it will help your cognition and you may continue to learn.

Read our menus carefully; (don’t miss the joke of the day). All that small print can be very helpful. What the heck is Okonomiyaki? (A learning opportunity!) Better to read the description before you order something you don’t want. How about jellied moose nose, a Canadian dish. Is it really what it seems to be? Or is it like our faux crab cakes which are delicious, but totally without crab. That’s right, if you’ve been reading your menu, you’ll know it’s made with halibut cheeks. Halibut cheeks, really isn’t that odd enough? Who goes around collecting cheeks anyway? (An interesting research project!)

Learning a foreign language qualifies as lifelong learning project. Can I recommend Chinese? Can you imagine? You would be the queen (or king) of your table. Translating for everyone and stepping in to smooth out miscommunications. Staff will be eternally grateful. Gentlemen, the ladies will swoon when you order for them....!

Foods that rocket-propel the brain into functioning, you may know already. Although I don’t want to rant, you could request a second serving of kale (see what I mean about repeating myself, year after year, at least since kale was “discovered” as a super-food). After (actually EATING) the first, rich in nutrients, high in K, A, and C, a super food for anti-aging, you will actually feel the difference!

Serendipitously, summer fruits are brain food too, and we are coming into stone fruit season. Berries, too, are great—they reduce inflammation (in the brain as well as the joints) and they scavenge free radicals (I know it’s good, but I really don’t understand or want to think about anything scavenging in my brain. If you want to scavenge, go to Goodwill.) Also flavonoids in fruit “have the potential to inhibit cell death of nerve cells and improve connections between neurons” Whatever… (Remember that I am, by trade a cook, and get all my information off the internet, making me a lifelong learner too.) Some research shows Anthocyanin-rich fruits can boost learning ability and memory and possibly stave of dementia. Anthocyanins provide the reds, blues and purples in fruits and vegetables (think berries, cherries, grapes...). You can also follow that up with a glass of red wine on Friday, coffee and tea every day, and purple vegetables including red onion whenever available.

Lifelong eating (the right food) will facilitate lifelong learning.........


Candiece Milford,Managing Director of Marketing

The University of Rhoda Goldman PlazaThat has a great resonance, doesn’t it? It connotes an idea that we might want to pursue to create a program of lifelong learning as a way of life at RGP. In fact, we already offer a rich variety of classes and learning opportunities onsite. Many programs for lifelong learning exist throughout the Bay Area through the Fromm Institute, Leherhaus Judaica, City College, SF State University, and other organizations. Although RGP was not founded as a learning community, the seed of the Lifelong Learning ideal is growing here. Read on and think about what could be done at RGP!

The concept reflects a term coined by Andrew Carle* called “university-based retirement community” (UBRS). In 2014, it was estimated that there were over 100 UBRS’s in the U.S; two are in California: University Retirement Community near UC Davis, and the Vi at Palo Alto at Stanford University.

While these communities are quite diverse, there are a few characteristics which they share: proximity to the campus, a formal financial relationship and program between the community and university, and a strong alumni base.

My personal favorite is UBRS in Lasell Village at Lasell College in Newton, Massachusetts. Residents don’t just have the opportunity to take college classes, they are REQUIRED to complete 450 hours of learning and fitness activities during the year. A “connected learning” approach to education credits learning both inside and outside the classroom. Fortunately for residents, there are many ways to fulfill the lofty 450-hour learning and fitness goal:

Some of the ways are through:

• Participation in courses/educational events at Lasell Village

• Enrollment in courses at Lasell College or other educational venues

• Mentoring Lasell College students• Volunteering or community service• Teaching or tutoring• Travel study through Road Scholar or other

groups• Pursuing one’s own artistic endeavor• Physical fitness activities• Independent study or research

Sounds exciting! What an inspiration to stay involved in living and learning. I’m sure there are several RGP residents who have already earned a college certificate through all their participation in these types of activities.

But if we were to start a program like that here, I promise, we’d lower that 450 hour goal (whew!) so you can spend time enjoying each other and the delicious home cooking that brings us all together “like a family.”

* Founder of George Mason University’s program in senior housing administration

Answer to Collective Age of RGP Residents:

c) 11,305

There are 133 residents ranging from 69 to102 years of age at RGP

Rhoda Goldman Plaza

Rhoda goldman plaza 2180 Post Street San Francisco, CA 94115

415.345.5060 415.345.5061 (fax)

www.RGPlaza.org RCFE #385600125

Founded by Jewish Family and Children’s Services and Mount Zion Health Fund

The appeal of Rhoda Goldman Plaza is undeniable. Older adults and their families prefer our unsurpassed assisted living and memory care community enriched by culture and tradition.Residents enjoy superb, “made-from-scratch” cuisine that is always well reviewed by our most vocal critics; our residents! While our dining selections please the appetite, accommodations showcase spacious, private apartments designed to maximize space and comfort. In fact, we’re re-defining your life as Living Well With Assistance — we believe our community is every bit as good as a five-star hotel. And, professionally trained, courteous staff promotes your health and well-being with choices of activity programs both on and off-site.

Our Terrace Memory program provides specialized memory care to residents through therapeutic activities that enhance physical, mental, and emotional health. Both privacy and companionship are afforded on our self-contained Terrace. Living Well With Assistance is more than a promise, but a way of life for our like-minded residents and staff who share the vision of our upscale community.

Visit Rhoda Goldman Plaza today by calling 415.345.5072.

Founded by Jewish Family and Children’s Services and Mt. Zion Health Fund in 2000, Rhoda Goldman Plaza (RGP) was established as a non-profit assisted living facility to provide a better and more secure life for older adults.

lifelong - rhoda goldman plaza

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