Cadbury Commons is fund-raising for MEMORY WALK ’10. We invite you to join TEAM CADBURY as we walk with friends, family members and colleagues taking one step closer to a cure! The Greater Boston Memory Walk will take place on Sunday, September 26th at Canal Park in Kendall Square, Cambridge, with registration starting at 9:00 a.m. and the Walk at 10:00 a.m. Save the date! Cadbury’s fund-raising for the Alzheimer’s Association begins in earnest this month. Our goal is to raise at least $2,000 through our letter writing campaign and special events in the weeks ahead. You can honor loved ones, families or dedicated providers and caregivers through the purchase of a Forget-Me-Not or enjoy a sweet treat as you make a donation at our Bake Sale.

MEMORY WALK is a powerful event that is full of heart and hope. Hope for a cure with the one million plus dollars expected to be raised for research, education and family support. We laugh, we cry, we share stories, we walk, we dance and we celebrate and honor the lives of those who valiantly live with Alzheimer’s disease. Join us in this important fight for a cure.
Contact Marie Curcio, MSW, NHA at Cadbury Commons for further information.

by Marie Curcio

Casey Pons, our Morningside Program Enrichment staff member, will be assuming a new role at Cadbury on September 1st. Casey’s formal title will be Lead Program Enrichment Specialist for Community Programs. How is this role defined and what does it mean for Cadbury’s Morningside and Community Programs?
This role assures that our community programs are taking place as scheduled on a daily basis, evaluates Resident response to current programming and assures that the Resident Calendar Committee members have ample opportunity to bring new and exciting programs and events to Cadbury. Casey will assume responsibility for creating and distributing the monthly Calendar of Events for Cadbury’s Independent and Assisted Living Community, operating the General Store and overseeing the upcoming new and expanded Resident Computer Lab. She will facilitate the monthly Library Committee meeting and, in late Fall, offer a current events group twice a week.

The ultimate responsibility for calendar content, quality assurance in the aforementioned areas and supervision of Community Program Enrichment staff remain with the Director of Resident Support Services. I am pleased to have Casey, a compassionate, creative and talented individual, fully dedicated to the day to day Community Enrichment Programs at Cadbury. This Lead Program Enrichment Specialist role enables me to focus on our Morningside Program and social services for our Cadbury Community at large – a real bonus for me!
That having been said, we will miss Casey in her Morningside role. The good news is that she is not leaving the Morningside Program entirely! Casey will continue in her role as Program Enrichment Specialist every other Saturday and Sunday and will see our Residents regularly as the integrated exercise, music, swing dance and cooking programs I established earlier this Spring take place throughout our Cadbury Community. The full time Morningside Program Enrichment Staff role will be assumed by Paolo Farias, a current Morningside staff member much beloved by all. Paolo has “the knack” for bringing fun to every day and putting a smile on Residents’ faces.

Personally, I would like to extend a heartfelt “thank you” to Casey and Paolo for putting their hearts and souls into their Morningside roles and adding so much to the quality of each and every day for our Residents. I invite you to join me in wishing them both the very best in their chosen new career challenges at Cadbury.

By Marie Curcio

Marie Curcio, Director of Resident Support Service, enjoyed her summer holiday at her home in southern Maine. The 200 year old Cape farmhouse on 20 acres is a renovation work in progress. Marie has had a hand in most aspects of the renovation from re-designing space and re-shingling the barn to painting and installing custom windows, insulating, clapboarding, and tiling in the house. As she states, “It is nice to do something that achieves immediate, tangible results once in while.”
Marie’s peaceful vacation included reading and relaxing poolside during the best weather of the summer, but she did have a few “chores:” She managed to wean baby ducks from the barn to pond, helped a racing pigeon to heal and fly away, captured runaway Draft horses and tended garden.
Oh, those gardens! Flower or vegetable, the weeding never ends! It helps that the land is rich in nutrients – a long, long time organic farm. The vegetable garden – replete with haricots verts, heirloom tomatoes, basil, eggplant, garlic, pumpkins, broccoli, beets and leeks – requires planning for harvest. There is time needed for preparation for canning and freezing and lots of sharing with neighbors. It was a great year for blueberries…so I am I told. The wild turkey babies were fed this year’s crop by their mama bird.
Fortunately, far more time was spent on fun in the sun than chores. Boating in Cape Porpoise, farm to table dinners with friends and family, and a few Stonewall Kitchen Cooking Classes were great adventures. So… if you think Marie “never stops” at work, imagine her at home—relaxing.

by Barbara Booras, Director of Hospitality

Often times an Assisted Living Facility’s biggest competitor is a potential Resident’s current home. It is not always easy to leave behind the sentimental connection to a house you’ve spent a lifetime of making memories . In addition, by the time an individual may be considering senior housing, chances are they have accumulated quite the collection of personal items Antiques, knick-knacks, photos, furniture, you name it, they’ve got it. So how do you pack it all up and move it into a few square feet? The thought of “the big move” can be a little intimidating. When I started as Director of Hospitality, I was introduced to an industry I never knew existed: Senior Move Management. So, what exactly does a “Senior Move Manager” do? Whether it’s downsizing, organizing, packing, designing or the actual move, many managers do it all.
Some of our Residents have received the help of local Senior Move Managers and have been extremely satisfied. According to the National Association of Senior Move Manager’s website, “a Senior Move Manager is a professional who specializes in assisting older adults and their families with the emotional and physical aspects of relocation and/or “aging in place.” Though some have backgrounds in gerontology, social work, health care, nursing and psychology, others come to this industry from the corporate world of project management, technology, accounting or marketing.”
If you would like more information on how to get assistance with an upcoming move or to find a Senior Move Manager near you, please feel free to contact me for more information.

Reception Sunday, September 19, 2010, 2:00 – 4:00 p.m.

For more than 30 summers, Jeannie Motherwell drew inspiration from the view in her studio overlooking the Provincetown bay. Now living in Cambridge, MA, she continues to draw inspiration from frequent visits to Provincetown where she exhibits her work annually.
The following is an excerpt from “Sea Change”, American Airlines ‘American Way,’ December 1, 2005, an interview between the artist and artist/writer Necee Regis:

JEANNIE MOTHERWELL spent every summer of her childhood in Provincetown with her father, artist Robert Motherwell, and her equally well-known stepmother, Helen Frankenthaler. In the late 1950s, their circle of friends included luminaries in the fields of painting, writing, and psychology.
While their parents worked in their studio, Jeannie and her sister played on the beach with the children of other artists and writers.
“Dad’s theory was that this was better than camp,” she says. Motherwell was raised in a world where creativity and psychoanalysis were part of her daily routine.
“We’d talk about our dreams every morning,” she says. “Then Helen and Dad would ask us to write something and make a drawing from it. We had no coloring books; nothing was pre-made. We were asked at an early age to think about our thoughts and emotions.”
A seminal moment in her artistic development occurred when Motherwell moved to Provincetown full-time in the late 1970s, when she was in her 20s. As she was riding her bike through town, a local fisherman waved and asked her to join him for a drink.
“He pulled a wad of $100 bills from his pocket and said, ‘I have all this money and I can’t even give it away,’ ” Motherwell remembers.
The next day his boat, the Patricia-Marie, sank. All that was found was his wallet.

Filled with emotion and a sense of loss to the community, Motherwell began a series of abstract paintings and collages of draggers (fishing vessels), which were bought by both local fishermen and art collectors.
“It was my first sense of finding community and my identity in painting,” she says.
In the past decade, she’s used collage, digital photography, painting, and text to create complex, subtle works that evoke the Cape’s Province Lands. The images straddle abstraction and reality.
Motherwell currently lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts, but returns to Provincetown every summer to exhibit her work and find new inspiration. When asked if it’s hard to follow in her parents’ larger-than-life footsteps, she smiles.
“My audience is different than Dad and Helen’s,” she says. “It took me a while to realize I’m not trying to change the world with my art; I’m trying to use what I know to make good pictures.”

by Robert Genn
Ed. Note: The following is shared from an email letter, © April 9, 2009 from Canadian landscape painter Robert Genn, reprinted here with the express permission of the author.
Dear Susan,
Abstraction ranges from the meaningless abuse of paint to the most lofty and exciting of surfaces. Each effort can be a creative event – a vehicle for the mysteries of the subconscious mind and an opportunity to flirt with pure forms, symbols and metaphors. It’s an art of hiding and disclosing. More than simply playing with the materials, abstraction is a discovery of motifs that happen to be part of a painter’s personal legend. Personality counts.
Abstraction also holds the promise of dreams, fears, fetishes, fancies, intangibles and wills.
The willful artist marches to his own drummer. As in the composing of music, in pure and practical terms, the resulting work will be the painters own composition.
Perhaps one of the best understandings came from [artist] Marc Chagall: “Abstraction is something which comes to life spontaneously through a gamut of contrasts, plastic as well as psychic, and pervades both the picture and the eye of the spectator with conceptions of new and unfamiliar elements.”
Abstract art has the power to show us something we may not have seen before. It implies both thought and no thought. Thriving on unconventional tools and a unique sort of energy, it’s also a collaboration of mind and spirit. As a form of wizardry and magic, an abstract may speak both to you and for you. More than anything, abstract art can be a conversation piece.
“Abstraction is an esoteric language,” said [artist] Eric Fischl. It is a language unique to the individual artist. In a way, it can be more unique than the similarly legitimate language of realistic work, because no matter how realists pull Nature’s reality this way and that, they still have Nature’s reality, however, nuanced. The more modern idea, however it may be seen by some as flawed, is to be the inventor, creator and patent holder of your own Nature. Painter and art instructor David Leffel regularly asks his students a simple but profound question: “How do abstract artists know when they’re getting better?” The answer lies in whether the artist is able to express will. Artists without the ability to express will, will never know.
Best regards,
Robert
p.s. Abstract art requires something of the viewer. It demands contemplation. Study. Flights of fancy. Feeling.” (Svante Rydberg).

To subscribe to his free twice-weekly email letter, contact rgenn@saraphina.com.

We are always eager to see the first signs of spring—the daffodils and tulips and flowering shrubs and trees – that signal imminent warm weather and undiluted sunshine. Fiery pinks and vivid yellows explode in front of our eyes and white pears bloom in elegant profusion, creating a delirium of spring fever. But the growing season in New England will continue for another five or six months before the first frost lays down any new shoots. It is after all the hoopla of spring’s and early summer’s showy blossoms that late bloomers arrive, taking a little longer to make roots and shoots, and to muster their strength for blooming. But once they finally establish themselves, they seem to bring much more to the game. Among the brightest lights are asters, mums, sunflowers, sedum and late roses that can be appreciated in abundance long after the earlier blooming bulbs have turned to seed. These late blooms have staying power: in fact, they are often dried and placed in arrangements that look beautiful all winter long.

If you are a gardener, you know something about living in the moment, as well as in the past and the future – concurrently. That is what a gardener does: appreciates and cares for what is there, plans for what is to come, and knows what was there before – the history of what worked, and what did not. That perspective is always open to receiving information, processing it and creating something new, no matter what point one might be on the time-continuum. For example, U.S. Poet-Laureate (2000) Stanley Kunitz was 95 when he received that honor, and in his 70’s when he wrote the poem “Layers,” (see page 3) included in his last book “The Wild Braid: A Poet Reflects on a Century in the Garden” (2005). Anna Mary Robertson ‘Grandma’ Moses was 76 when she began painting her well-known homespun country scenes and age 80 when she took the art market by storm. Before she died, at age 101 in 1961, she had completed 3600 paintings in only three decades!

I am reminded of two conversations recently with two different individuals over the age of 80. Last night, a friend – a tiny lady with an awesome personality – recited the aforementioned poem, “Layers,” at a dinner with other friends. At 90 years of age, she recalled the poem from memory and related its advice, to “Live in the layers, not on the litter” to her own life, layered with losses as well as accomplishments and dreams, to the group at the table. In another conversation, a Cadbury Resident revealed how he had awakened that morning from a dream in which he was backstage at an opera, just before the curtain rose. He awoke before seeing the opera in the dream, but was so moved by the feeling of anticipation that he sang opera to his cat, and continued singing it while walking in the park that morning. That sense of joyful spirit permeated his day—and no doubt his cat’s too!

According to the New York Times’ obituary, poet Stanley Kunitz, who wrote “Layers,” ‘insisted the secret to his longevity was his attitude: “I’m curious,” he told People [Magazine]. “I’m active. I garden and I write and I drink martinis.” ….Of his work he told People: “The deepest thing I know is that I am living and dying at once, and my conviction is to report that self-dialogue.” ’ And thereby hangs yet another garden metaphor.

by Susan Burgess

In April of this year, I took on the delightful task of bringing Cadbury Commons outward into the larger geographic and social communities. As the Community Program Director since the spring of 1997, I already was doing some outreach, such as writing monthly newsletters, arranging art shows in our new gallery, adding to our online website and ‘blog’, and producing public programming. My new duties now include more personal contact in the outside communities, such as meeting counterparts from other Assisted Living sites and establishing personal relationships with referral sources, elder agencies and social networks. The task is somewhat similar to planting and sowing seeds in the larger community. Wherever we extend a hand to assist a community agency (such as Cambridge Council on Aging or Somerville-Cambridge Elder Services) to reach the seniors it serves, we are creating something that will support every Resident at Cadbury, directly or indirectly. Like nature’s cycle, everything extended outward will find fertile ground back home at Cadbury. Commons

by Marie Curcio

It’s not too early to start thinking about the Alzheimer’s Association Annual Memory Walk!  The Greater Boston Walk will take place in Cambridge at Canal Park on Sunday, September 26^th .  Cadbury Commons will be forming its own TEAM to help the fund raising efforts of the Association.  We hope you will give some thought to joining us as we support the research, care and education fundraising efforts of the Alzheimer’s Association.

We will be coming together to change the future.  There are more than five million Americans living with this illness and, according to the Association, nearly ten million more are serving as caregivers.  There is no better time than the present to act!  Our goal is to get creative and raise $2000.00.  More information about our Cadbury Team and fundraising kick-off event will be forthcoming during this month.  Think about walking with us.  Help MOVE us closer to a world without Alzheimer’s!

by Marie Curcio

The Mayor’s Picnic in Harvard Yard is August 4th!

The Cambridge Senior Picnic will take place on Wednesday, August 4th from 11:00am – 2:00pm in Harvard Yard. This event, sponsored by the Mayor and the Harvard University President, is a very festive occasion including great camaraderie, delicious picnic fare, giveaways, music and singing.
It has been a long-standing tradition in our city and a “must attend” destination for Cadbury Residents over the years. Youngsters from Cambridge Youth Volunteers donate their time and energy to serve the meals and beverages and there are many opportunities to meet and chat with numerous local and state politicians during this event.

Cadbury Commons will provide two shuttle trips to and from Harvard Yard to facilitate your participation in the Senior Picnic. We have reserved two tables of ten so up to twenty residents are welcome to sign up for the Picnic. It is a good idea to bring a sun hat or cap and sunscreen, but we will also try to seek out tables that are under the trees (for shade).

Oh, yes, don’t forget to bring your appetite for food and fun! You are welcome to sign up (first come, first served) by letting our Receptionist know of your wish to reserve a seat at the table. You will not want to miss this opportunity for a most enjoyable afternoon.