V o lu me T h i rt y O ne , N umber 2
Februar y 2017 ANCIENT, EXOTIC ETHIOPIA has many facets. Top: The fertile volcanic highlands in the Northwest supported a powerful ancient civilization.
Lower Left: Abyssinian lion
Lower Right: Ethiopian wolf
Read more about Ethiopian history and culture on pages 4-5.
Photos by Richard Stephens
Powerful in-house website no longer just an IT dream By George Hollingshead THE GROUNDHOG may have predicted six more weeks of winter, but snowdrops are blooming at Beaumont.
Photo by Lynn Ayres
For many of us, the idea of a Beaumont Senior Portal—an in-house website that would give us fast and easy access to a mass of useful information—is brand new. For Bob Catalano, Beaumont’s Director of Information Technology, it is a years-long dream on the cutting edge of coming true. The Senior Portal program is commercially produced software designed for retirement communities in general; however, each community can use it as a base on IT continued on page 3
I AM TUCKED AWAY on a wedge-shaped piece of land on Pasture Lane, with Baldwin on my right, the Mansion in back and the Health Care Center on my left. Fences, trees, tall shrubbery and a favorably situated S-turn on Pasture Lane provide me with partial camouflage.
Dear Editor,
everyone likes to be taken notice of once in awhile, and that is why I am introducing myself. One problem is, I am not a pretty sight! From my narrow porch I look out on rows and rows of blue plastic barrels filled with refuse and discarded outworn objects awaiting pickup. Close to the porch, right up against it, is a closed red bin, about 12 feet long. Into this bin goes paper trash. When it is full, a button on the porch is pushed and all of it is ground up. My little fiefdom relies on dozens of different workers who help keep me going. I run a tight ship and things are timed so that when the food trucks come there is always kitchen staff waiting to move their contents into the pantries and refrigerators. Less perishable items can be left behind in the back halls to be put away later, but the delivery man himself can’t leave the premises until he gets a receipt from one of the staff. Yes, there are slow times, and then the bench along my back wall is occasionally occupied by a smoker or someone making a phone call or just looking for a breath of fresh air. It’s the least I can do. There! I feel better! Come out and see me sometime! — The Loading Dock
This must start with an introduction because, although I have been a necessary and hard-working part of Beaumont ever since its beginning, I am quite unknown and overlooked by most of the individuals who live here. I am saddened by this and have decided to speak up and defend my role, humble though it is. (In all fairness, I must say that although I seldom see a resident, employees do seem to acknowledge and appreciate my presence here, especially when they want to smoke.) I am tucked away as far out of sight as it is possible to be. Far from the beauty of the drives, the woods, the paths, I am hidden and never praised or fawned upon as are these well regarded Beaumont features. I am the LOADING DOCK! In my lowly concrete and plastic domain, I greet dozens of trucks of food and other products every week, and bid farewell to tons of refuse. Don’t get me wrong! I am not complaining because I feel I am not treated fairly. I am highly prized and they would be lost without me. It’s just that BEAUMONT NEWS The Beaumont News is published by the residents and staff of the Beaumont Retirement Community, 601 N. Ithan Avenue, Bryn Mawr, PA 19010 Editor Associate Editor and Production Manager Co-Editor Graphic Designer Photo Editor Roving Reporter Events Manager Proofreader
In Memoriam
Mary Graff John Hall Marilyn (Lynn) Ayres TJ Walsh Louise Hughes Wistie Miller Caitlin McDevitt Jennie Frankel
Jane Andress January 23, 2017
Ruth Tanseer January 31, 2017
Mary Jane Rhodes January 27, 2017
Jay W. MacMoran, M.D. February 16, 2017
Members of the Beaumont Community extend deepest sympathy to their families and friends.
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Invited to test ‘Senior Portal,’ one resident says she loves it By Lynn Ayres
At the January Town Meeting, IT Director Bob Catalano gave us a preview of how Beaumont’s “Senior Portal” would look on the screen. In early February, two resident focus groups met in the Ballam Theater for a hands-on introduction and an invitation to offer suggestions. I attended one of these sessions. “Senior Portal” is the name that My Senior Portal Inc. gave the powerful website it designed to be sold as a base on which any retirement community could build and upgrade at will to meet its own needs. Beaumont’s Senior Portal designers gave the focus groups full freedom to dive in and splash about. Each person was given a login and password, and off we went, trying out all of the links and menus. The exploration session was exciting and fun. Bob and Brad Siegel were helpful instructors and receptive to our questions and suggestions. Sometimes designers overlook or even dismiss things that turn out to be important to the end-user, but Bob and Brad made it clear that they really want the portal to be a useful tool for Beaumont residents. At home, I continued my exploration. I was able to alter my own Resident Directory file, changing my name to include my nickname and adding my photo and my inter-
THE HOMEPAGE of the Senior Portal contains menu choices with dropdown lists across the top. It also has more general categories in larger print below. When you click a selection on the lower half of the page, the button turns green and then takes you to the selected area on the website. Decorating the page is Joan Bromley at her easel.
ests. A while later, I had to look up the spelling of a name. I reached for the phone directory but then realized that for me the portal would be faster. And it was. The Portal is accessible on desktop computers, laptops, tablets and even smart phones (which I wouldn’t recommend because of their small size). Not all Portal links are up and running yet, but I can’t wait until they are. I’m convinced!
IT continued from page 1 which to build and upgrade to meet its own specific needs. Resident participation in Beaumont’s design stage has already begun. As Bob tells it: Soon we will be able to use computers to see all of the daily menus and fitness schedules, as well as calendar events with interactive sign-up access. We will be able to arrange for special transportation, make requests for maintenance service, and be in communication with all of Bob Catalano our staff members. There will be an online staff directory with names, titles, photos and phone numbers. There will also be a resident directory with all of our names, addresses, phone numbers and photos. Furthermore, all of this will be constantly updated and new items added. In addition, Bob and his staff are working on a host of other new ways to make our lives here even easier. For instance, how about reducing the number of keys we carry around? We will be given a plastic key card that will unlock
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certain doors, check us in at meals and perform other tasks. (At first the key cards will be for exterior and selected office door access only; whether access to residential units will be added remains to be decided.) Our residents now have a 20-year old “nurse call system” with pull cords to call for help. Bob says the BRCI (policy) board has already approved purchase of a new and improved system, but has yet to choose a specific system and vendor. Our IT staff will also be working to put all our medical records into a matrix care system. A “Beaumont Smart Room” has already been established in Guest Suite 305, on a trial basis. Amazon Echo’s Alexa voice service allows guests to set room temperature, turn lights on and off, turn the TV on and off, set an alarm, hear weather forecasts and perform other tasks, all by voice command. Alexa also will communicate with a combination smoke and carbon monoxide detector. It will take a while for all of this to be tested, installed and made part of our Beaumont lives, which is why you do not see Bob, Jeremy Varnis or Brad Siegel strolling through the hallways looking for more work to do.
Economic progress clears mists of obscurity from Ethiopia Text and photos by Richard Stephens
Ethiopia is a fabulous country whose past stretches into the mists of antiquity. It was in at the birth of both Judaism and Christianity, was never colonized, and is currently developing into one of the economic powerhouses of Africa. But most people know little about it; perhaps they’ve heard of Haile Selassie (the last of a 3,000-year-old kingly line descended from King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba) or Lucy (a 3.2-million-year-old Australopithecus skeleton of a lady who walked upright but had not developed our large modern brain).
MURSI TRIBE WOMAN from the remote Southwest wears a decorative lip plate and beaded hair.
The volcanic highlands in the Northwest are more fertile. That region supported a powerful civilization, the Aksumite kingdom, which in the first to seventh centuries controlled much of the spice trade between India and Rome. They trace their beginnings to King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba in the 10th century B.C.E. (modern genetic analysis supports the story) and converted to Christianity in the fourth century. As a result of these connections they claim to hold both the Ark of the Covenant and the True Cross: the Ark spirited away from King Solomon by his son Menelik I, the founder of Ethiopia’s kingly line; the
KARA TRIBE MEMBER leads a pastoral life in the semi-arid Southwest, herding goats along the Omo River. Tribal customs include body and face paint.
My trip there last August showed me fascinating worlds—tribal, religious, natural—uncomfortably butting up against one another as they jockey for position in a country whose population has quadrupled in the last 50 years. Tribal affiliation is important in Ethiopian society, nowhere more so than in the semi-arid Southwest along the Omo River, where we visited pastoralist tribes connected only recently to the outside world. Groups of a few to tens of thousands, each with its own language, customs and dress codes, herd cattle and goats, and raise grain in riverside fields after the river’s annual flood. They rightly worry that their way of life is doomed by government policy to develop the potential of the Omo by damming it for hydroelectricity and lining its banks with large plantations, settling the local tribes in permanent villages and helping them develop new sources of income.
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MESKEL NEW YEAR BONFIRE celebrates the fourth century Queen Eleni (Helena). In a dream, she was directed to follow the smoke from a burning fire to where the True Cross was buried.
revealing struggles within an ancient, once isolated land
Cross found by following the smoke of a bonfire as directed in a dream by fourth-century Queen Eleni. Her discovery is celebrated at the Meskel celebration (September 27, their New Year) with great pageantry and bonfires. A major reason for Ethiopia’s current obscurity in the West is its isolation for the last millennium. Muslim nations spread across North Africa and down the shores of the Red Sea after the seventh century, drying up the Aksum trade routes and leaving Ethiopia as the only Christian nation in Africa. Even their last connection, pilgrimages to Jerusalem, was halted when Muslim forces under Saladin conquered the city in 1187. The western world responded with the Third Crusade, but Aksum turned inward. King Lalibela constructed a symbolic Jerusalem at his capital in the Northeast, carving eleven monolithic churches (and the River Jordan) out of thick beds of scoria (fused volcanic ash and stones). The pictured exteriors are of one dedicated to St. George. The interiors are lavishly decorated, none more so than the church Golgotha-Micael-Selassie which, by tradition, holds Lalibela’s tomb.
BIET GIYORGIS is one of 11 churches in Lalibela hewn from solid rock down to the ground. About 100 others are scattered through the North. Built in the 13th century in a Greek-cross plan, it is accessed by a ramp cut into the surface and then through a short tunnel. BELOW: The cruciform shape of the monolithic church can be most fully comprehended by viewing its roof from above.
All these worlds are struggling with over-population, deforestation, and the occasional drought. Development of large projFRESCOS AND CARVINGS decorate the interior of ects that lift their economy Biet Golgotha Micael. It contains the tomb of King Lalibela, and end the isolation of the who commissioned the rock-hewn churches. smallest tribes are also LAMMERGEYER, also known as “bone The flora and fauna of Ethiopia are as impacting small landholders, breaker” or bearded vulture, rides the thermals. varied as the people. The lakes and savannahs who have tiny holdings and of the Southwest support alligator, ibis, dik-dik get to market on foot. That a minority tribe dominates and undertaker bird (marabou stork). The highlands, the government, and that they react to criticism with where coffee was first discovered, are also home to Abyssuspicion and ham-handed moves, contributes to unrest. sinian lions, and the endangered Ethiopian wolf (it looks A state of emergency was declared just before I was to like a cross between a fox and a dog), and the Lamleave, but I did get to the airport and the country has mergeyer with its 9-foot wingspread. Less formally since settled down. However, tourism (recently 4.5 perknown as a “bone-breaker,” it breaks large bones to get cent of GDP) took a big hit, and it will be a big job to at the marrow by dropping them on rocks. learn to govern more cooperatively.
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Howards now settled in Villa 56 with black Lab, springer spaniel and endangered screen doors
was much easier to get into,” followed by two years of “washing dishes and driving trucks for the U.S. Army,” as there was no war going on. He has since found a far more interesting profession, that of being a stockbroker, ending up with the Bryn Mawr Trust in 2012. Susan and Mote were married in 1960 and went on to produce four “fantastic” children (three boys and a girl) and 10 “fascinating” grandchildren (five boys and five girls). All are “passionate” and “thoughtful” about the world they live in and the environment. Susan has done lots of volunteer work over the years: Channel 12 and English as a second language. She has taught kindergarten and worked with dyslexic children at the Bryn Mawr College Child Guidance Center. Both of the Howards love the outdoors, their beautiful house and garden in Maine, their hikes and exploring the area up there, plus preserving the environment. Also, of particular interest to Mote is studying and discussing the many religions of the world. Around Beaumont you will often see them being walked by “Mattie,” their black Lab, and “Chahti Mahti,” their springer spaniel. That is, when the springer isn’t destroying the screen doors in Villa 56. So far three have become “history.” Mote, with a twinkle in his eye, adds: “Susan is responsible for the dog training.”
By Wistie Miller This scribe feels as if she has known both Susan and Morton (Mote) Howard most of her life. Susan lived in Narberth, Wayne, Villanova, Haverford and Bryn Mawr (she could have been a conductor on the Paoli Local) before she left Agnes Irwin to go to Westover, a boarding school in Connecticut, followed by Smith College and Penn. Mote grew up in Haverford and graduated from Haverford School in 1952. He and fellow Beaumont resident Dick Graham were in the same class together. Mote graduated from Yale at a time Susan and Mote Howard when, as he said, “it
It’s not too late!
Green Promise
By Irene Borgogno
We talk about a flu season, but influenza viruses can be detected year-round. The “season” is when they are the most active. This starts in October, peaks in February, and drops to a low in May. This flu season is not over. You can still get the flu—and you also can still get a flu shot. Flu immunization is a boon both to you and to your community. Your flu shot greatly reduces your likelihood of getting the flu. If you do get the flu after the shot, the symptoms are much milder. And your flu shot provides enhanced protection to the community by decreasing the number of potential flu sufferers, who become havens where flu viruses shelter and multiply while awaiting new victims. This is called “herd immunity,” and you contribute to it by getting a flu shot. If you have not yet had a flu shot, get one now. It is not too late. Call the Wellness Center for more information.
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Now earth is bare And gray skies arch Over the fields Where cornstalks march. Brooks are encased In shining glass; Leaves crackle in The withered grass. Tarnished by frost And bleached by cold, Nothing remains Of harvest gold. Spring’s promises Are veiled and deep Where fallow land Lies locked in sleep. How welcome, then, To eager eye The sudden green Of winter rye! —Bette Keck Peterson
Wherein two soft-hearted gents restore a wren’s winter refuge By Dean “Doc” Snyder What you see is a recycled New Year’s Eve top hat! For lo these 12-plus years of my residency, the Nalle garden shed has been a winter haven and summer nesting site for a Carolina wren. Notice I said has been! Until this winter the shed door has remained open through the winter, and during inclement weather a wren has FESTIVE NESTING BOX created for sought refuge therein. wrens’ black-tie celebrations.
Deciding to bring the Bard to the Ballam was easy; but which play in which version—That was the question! By Ginny Rivers
Moviegoers at Beaumont can choose to watch a Shakespeare film every month for a while, thanks to the efforts of a few Shakespeare lovers here. Choosing which of the Bard’s 38 plays to present has been relatively easy, although the process is not yet complete. Many of them are still being presented by theater companies in a vast array of cities and languages. “Even after 400 years,” says Beaumont’s ad hoc committee spokesman, Tuppie Solmssen, “Shakespeare is surprisingly topical.” Turn to film, and the choices multiply. Tuppie said the committee found that more than 500 movies have been made from Shakespeare plays, starting with a French adaptation, Romeo et Juliette, in 1900. Full adaptations number 294. “The challenge,” she said, “is choosing which play—and then, whose version of it!” How to decide between Kenneth Branagh and Laurence Olivier as Hamlet? Worldwide, the plays adapted most often have
No more. Just recently, my friend George Gay sought refuge in the shed to enjoy his corncob pipe, only to find the shed door closed and the wren perched on the doorstep apparently hoping to find entrance. To George this was very unsettling, as for years off and on, he and a wren have co-inhabited the shed, summer and winter—he to enjoy his corncob pipe, the wren for winter refuge and summer nesting. Fortunately, George attended Beaumont’s New Year’s Eve Party and claimed the top hat that I had unsuccessfully attempted to toss onto the Beaumont Room chandelier. Being a soft-hearted sentimentalist, he immediately decided that the top hat could possibly be retrofitted to an attractive winter haven and suitable nesting site for a wren. Guess who did the retrofitting? Yep, another soft-hearted sentimentalist, yours truly.
been Hamlet, Romeo and Juliet, King Lear, Macbeth and Othello. The committee polled the audience at the first showing, Henry V with Laurence Olivier. Othello, Macbeth, Taming of the Shrew, The Merchant of Venice and Hamlet were popular choices. The group also consulted a Shakespeare scholar and other academics, along with professional reviewers, to help them make their selections. Among the contenders were Orson Welles’s Chimes at Midnight, My Own Private Idaho, based on Henry IV, and the great Japanese director Kurosawa’s Ran, based on King Lear. For now, the committee is sticking with relatively traditional film versions of Shakespeare (although Taming of the Shrew qualifies best as “loosely based on”). With the assistance of Resident Services’ Caitlin McDevitt and Paige Welby, the Shakespeare film series began with Henry V (Laurence Olivier) on January 11, followed by The Taming of The Shrew (Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor) on February 8; after that will come Othello with Laurence Olivier. After that? Hamlet? Still undecided.
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Thanks to donors for our new piano
pressed, would acknowledge the serious deficiencies of the old pianos in both the Music and Beaumont rooms. 60 gifts paid for Bösendorfer semi-concert grand Confronted with the challenge of obtaining a piano to By John Gregg complement our extraordinary In 1828, Ignatz Bösendorfer Music Room, the Music Comstarted a piano manufacturing mittee, led by a small band of company in Vienna. His reputation piano lovers, took upon themwas established when his concert selves the task of raising the grand held up to the vigorous play needed funds. of Franz Liszt. The company was Calling upon friends and off and running, with emperors and neighbors, and with the benczars among its customers. efit of the tax deductibility of Now preeminent within the current contributions made industry, the Bösendorfer committhrough the Beaumont Fund, ment to quality results in only a this dedicated group received few hundred pianos being made more than 60 gifts totaling each year. Beaumont now has one more than $115,000, enough of these rare instruments, the Bösento enable it to purchase the Photo by Lynn Ayres Bösendorfer 225 semi-condorfer Model 225, a semi-concert BEAUMONT’S NEW BÖSENDORFER was a star grand. Its design and size allow a cert grand. An inaugural attraction as pianist Viktor Valkov (above) performed with wealth of tone colors all the way violinist Eunice Kim in the Music Room on February 21. champagne concert followed from sensitive pianissimo to powerful fortissimo. the acquisition, and a packed Music Room was treated Four additional bass strings expand the total range, one to the artistry of Marja Kaisla, whose assistance to the reason for its popularity as the best chamber music and committee in the selection process had been invaluable. solo instrument in its class. On behalf of the entire Beaumont community, The impetus for our acquiring a new piano had the Music Committee expresses its thanks to all who been building for some time. Our guest musicians, when made this project possible.
An LPN here for almost 20 years, Alex Ramirez also stars as a pianist, teaches music and aims for a Ph.D.
By Rena Burstein Alex Ramirez is a Beaumont employee about to mark his 20th anniversary here. For almost all that time he has been the night charge nurse in the 15-bed Personal Care (assisted living) unit. He is also a concert pianist who has performed often in solo recitals and concert series in this area, including several very well-received concerts at Beaumont. He teaches music in his private Alex Ramirez studio in Abington many afternoons, and serves as music director at the Philadelphia First Church of the Brethren in Wyndmoor, a position he has held for 23 years. Alex was born in El Paso, Texas, into a musical family, and began piano studies at the age of 3. At the age of 5 he became the youngest person ever to study piano at the University of Texas, being a student of
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the chairman of the piano department there. While in middle and high school he won every major youth piano competition in the state of Texas. Following graduation he entered the University of Texas, graduating from there with honors at the age of 19. In 1991 he moved to Philadelphia to study at the Taubman Institute, where a specific approach to piano playing was being taught. Started by Dorothy Taubman, it involves a special technique of coordinated motion. This technique continues to be taught at the Golandsky Institute of Piano in New York. Since July of 2001, Alex, a bachelor, has shared his home with his mother, who had been a professional singer. Being a lifelong animal lover, he more recently introduced a dog into the household as well. His goal now is to earn a doctorate in music, possibly at Temple University, Juilliard or the Manhattan School of Music, and to pursue a career in teaching. Alex’s confidence in his musical talent and his ability as a teacher are truly admirable, yet he is quite modest in his manner and easy to talk to. He is a gentle person with a clear-cut ambition. Perhaps on the way to his goal he will play one more concert for us on our new piano in the Music Room.