Coming Courses at KoH

The Kendal Education Committee continues its outstanding list of courses which are now scheduled though June.

Feb/Mar. Courses via Zoom – 2 to 3 pm

Tuesday February 23 “Religion and Society: Judaism from 18th Century to the present” (Jean-Marc Oppenheim)

Tuesday March 2, 9, 16, 23, 30 “American Impressionism” (Jill Kiefer)

Future Courses via Zoom – 2 to 3 pm

Tuesday May 4, 11, 18, 25

“New York City: From Colonial Outpost to Capital of the World” (Professor Edward Berenson). The course will cover: From Dutch Settlement to Ellis Island; Harlem and the Harlem Renaissance; Robert Moses, the Haussmann of New York; and Jane Jacobs, Brownstoning, and the anti-Moses Movement.

Chair of NYU’s Department of History, Dr. Berenson is Senior Fellow at the National September 11 Memorial and Museum. A cultural historian, he specializes in the history of modern France and its empire, with additional interests in the history of Britain, the British Empire, and the US.

Tuesday June 8, 15, 22, 29

“Criminal Law” (Bennett L. Gershman, Distinguished Professor of Law, Pace University). More information on the course will follow.

Professor Gershman received his B.A. from Princeton and his J.D. from New York School of Law. A frequent pro bono litigator, his courses include Criminal Procedure, Investigation, and Constitutional Law.

To enroll, contact Fran Kelly

Getting to Know You Program: POSTPONED

The “Getting to Know You Program” hosted by Amelia Augustus will interview new Kendal resident Cecily Cannan Selby on Wednesday, February 17 at 3:00 pm via Zoom.

According to Amelia, Cecily is a “Renaissance woman who promotes integrating the Arts, Humanities, and Sciences”.

Cecily’s lifelong devotion to science began with a B.S. degree in physics from Radcliffe and then, at the age of 23, a Ph.D. in physical biology from MIT.

Choosing to concentrate on independent research at the Sloan-Kettering Institute and Cornell Medical School, she was among the first to use X-ray diffraction and electron microscopy to explore the intimate structure of cells. After the birth of her three sons, she sought and found ways to pursue science in a more family friendly environment than available on academic tracks. Heading a private girls school added management and administration to her skills.

Cecily served on Fortune 500 boards and as a university trustee where she found herself a minority in science literacy as well as in gender! Inevitably, Washington called and she became CEO of a Washington, DC-based national NGO for nuclear energy and co-chaired the National Science Foundation‘s first commission to make K–12 science, mathematics, and technology education for all a national priority.

Cecily concluded her professional career one month ago as Professor of Science Education at NYU where her students were experienced NYC science teachers. She decided to write a book to share how her science experiments, art, and humanities experiences have much in common. The processes of human inquiry are shared by all academic subjects and thus accessible and ready to be mixed and matched by everyone… worldwide.

Make sure you tune in to find out more about this truly unusual individual who has now become one of our Kendal neighbors.

Free Workshop on MS WORD

The Computer Committee announces a Free Workshop on MS WORD.

It will take place on Zoom on Friday, February 19 from 2-3 pm with Joe Bruno, Caroline Persell, and special guest, Fran Kelly, a serious WORD user.

Residents can sign up by sending an email to Caroline or putting a note in her cubby stating the most important thing you want to learn: e.g., start and quit WORD, create and save a document, understand the user interface, edit and format text; cut, copy, and paste text; add page numbers, preview and print a document, insert a picture into your document, do a spelling or grammar check, add borders, or something else.

This is a great opportunity to upgrade the quality of the notes or letters you send. Don’t miss it.

New Art Show Scheduled

Kendal announces an upcoming Art Show on the Rue des Artistes. It will run from April 20 to October 15.

What have you been doing creatively in the Arts during this Year of Covid?

Our next Art Show, entitled “Creativity in Solitude,” will focus on just that, works done between March 2020 and March 2021 by residents and staff in areas of visual arts, fiber arts, sculpture, photography, assemblages, wearable arts; whatever hangs on a wall or fits in a case.

If you have questions, please contact one of the curators:

Lynn Brady

Ann Holloway

Judy Baker

A Hope Cooke Book Review

The Residents Website continues to present book reviews by one of our own, Hope Cooke.

Recent acquisitions of the KoH library include DIRT: Adventures in Lyon as a Chef in Training, Father, and Sleuth Looking for the Secret of French Cooking by Bill Buford, Alfred A. Knopf 2020

Readers looking for atmosphere, a whiff of romance or the picturesque, even of landscape pure and simple, will not find it here. You would not know that Lyon, set on two rivers, the Saone and the Rhone, is a world heritage site famed for its architecture—particularly its ‘traboules’, covered passageways some dating to the fourth century when they served as shortcuts to the Roman built aqueduct and eminently from the 15th century when they served the same purpose for the town’s silk workers (Lyon, the first French city to weave the luxury fabric after it arrived from Italy - it is close to the Alpine border - via the Arabs and Chinese). So powerful had the Lyonnais silk workers become by the 18th century that it was they who forced Marie Antoinette to revert to the material after she and her female court affected simple muslin (the ‘dairy maid period’) hastening her reputation as a spendthrift, contributing not just to her and Louis XVI’s downfall but also to their beheading in 1793. There is only a short bow near the end of DIRT to Lyon in WWII that neglects to mention the role these same traboules (over 500, many alas now closed to tourists) played in the war’s most dramatic street fighting; local knowledge of the winding alleys critical to the Resistance’s success over the German occupiers; or Lyon’s location as a vital node of control. There is also no glossy paean rhapsodizing about Lyon as the long-term gastronomic capital of the western world. (Though there is awed homage to its expat chefs, Daniel Boulud and Michel Richard, whom Buford gets to know.)

What you will get in DIRT is a portrait so passionate it feels drawn in blood, of Buford’s apprenticeship in learning the art of French cookery, a dedication so entire it transforms this brilliant polymath, demanding man (reader beware, he treats his wife, a well-known wine critic and their endlessly adaptable twin children pretty much like baggage in their five year sojourn here) into a servant of culinary science, a shriven monk in the master’s kitchen he serves. BUT, the subjugation in the holy cause, like the books title, “Dirt”, Buford’s muscular American word for ‘terroir’, is actually the essence, the root of transmission of an authentic and glorious flowering-- the classic local cuisine. By book’s end Buford’s radiant devotion results in savory –oddly homey sounding delights, among them duck braised in a veil of brown butter and local cider sauce. Yet again (he has done this before both in learning Italian cooking from scratch and becoming an insider American scholar at an exclusive Oxford College) Buford has mastered another field through brutal immersion, gone from consummate neophyte to consummate master.

Witnessing this process is rather like watching a very slow daube simmer for hours on the back of the stove. The long book, while punchily written (Buford was editor of the exalted literary magazine Granta and fiction editor at the New Yorker), is somewhat tedious albeit fragrant before it ‘comes together’ at the end. My advice: skim the middle from time to time.

THREE STARS

Covid-19 Update

Kendal is moving ahead with its Covid-19 vaccination program.

The professional staff from CVS, which administers the program has paid two day-long vaccination visits to Kendal so our residents would not have to travel elsewhere to receive the shots.

It should be mentioned that to receive the shots there is a great deal of paperwork that has to be filled out. “To keep the line moving” Ellen Ottstadt and her assistant Briana Giuliano filled out all the proper forms in advance by hand for everybody getting a shot. A truly massive undertaking.

The second session covered the vast majority of our staff and residents. We must all wait for a period of two weeks so the vaccination can do its job, and in two weeks residents will be able to dine with each other in apartments. A great step forward in socialization.

The February 11 report follows.

Staff vaccinated:

88 have received 2 doses

23 have received 1 dose

Residents vaccinated:

280 residents vaccinated from all levels of living.

Clearwater/skilled nursing residents, of those medically eligible, 94% of census has received 2 doses, 6% has received 1 dose.

Adirondack and Sunnyside/assisted living-- 100% of census has received 2 doses.

238 Independent Residents have received the vaccine.

How to Communicate While in Seclusion

Jeff O’Donnell has written a very helpful guide to using FaceTime, Skype, and Zoom, in addition to the telephone, for keeping in touch with family and friends.

Click here to read it. Reprinted from last year.

Vaccination and Coming Clinic Information

A COVID-19 vaccination clinic was held this week to provide second doses for staff.

CVS will be on site again for two upcoming clinics – Tuesday, February 9 and Wednesday, February 10. These clinics are to provide second doses or, in some cases, first doses for residents or staff who were ineligible on prior dates. All eligible individuals will be notified of when your next vaccination appointment will be.

NEXT STEPS

Beginning on March 1, independent residents may once again eat and drink together in apartments. If visiting (of any type) does occur, the limit is still four resident guests per apartment.

The Bistro will remain as take-out only. We continuously monitor the overall COVID positivity rate in our region to evaluate when it may be safe to reopen for seated dining.

Slow and steady progress with a light at the end of the COVID tunnel. Management wants us all to get there in a state of good health. We applaud their efforts.

Monday Night Programs on Zoom

Looking Beyond This Week

February 15 - Local Charities Reports: RSHM Life Center; Open Door Family Medical Centers

February 22 - Nicholas Meyer, Author, Screen- writer, Director: “My Sherlock – Some Observations on the Relations Between Art and Artists”

March 1 - Louis Bauer: “Nature into Art, the Gardens of Wave Hill”

March 8 - No Program (Residents Council meeting in afternoon)

March 29 - Nick Robinson, Professor of Environmental Law: “The Next Pandemic Is Here”

April 5 - Masha Turchinsky, Executive Director: “The Hudson River Museum”

April 12 - No Program (Residents Council meeting in afternoon)

April 19 - Residents Association Quarterly Meeting

April 26 - Peter Iskenderian, Park Manager: “Rockefeller State Park Preserve”

Health and Wellness Committee

The Health & Wellness Committee meetings give the Residents an opportunity to meet with the staff of Kendal’s Health Services Department. It it an opportunity to hear about the health practices in Kendal and to share feedback with the staff.

The Health and Wellness Committee next meets on Friday, February 12, 10 am on Zoom.

The meeting will include a report on what the Committee is doing and how residents might like to help.

A Zoom invitation and meeting link will be sent to all residents with email.