welcome to senior centers in action. i'm your host, karla schaffer and on this month's episode, we'll see how our seniors are expressing their creativity, we'll hear the sound of music from the war of 1812, we'll celebrate a very special birthday, we'll learn about the healing power of pets, and we'll give you information on what you needto do to keep your medicare coverage up to date. but first... october was not only disability awareness month, it was also breast cancer awareness month. the pascal senior activity center took a day out of the month to hold an event which featured information, activities, a bake sale and a very special art project.
i'm here with pat, ellen, diane, darlene, margaret, ed, ann and pam... at the pascal breast cancer awareness event. welcome, everyone, and thank you for having us at this event today. thank you for coming. we appreciate it. well, to start us off diane, canyou tell us a little bit about this event and what you have here today? well, we've been planning this event for about the last four orfive months, and we have wonderful things going on here. we have breast cancer items for sale, we have a silent auction, we have breast cancer donations to charity which will be the aiello charity at the... bwmc, baltimore washington medical center,
we also have decorated bras and we're showing one right here, in a contest, our volunteers did that, we're having a bake sale and a plant sale, a lot of giveaways, a lot of literature, and a lot of good fun. and diane is the chair this year of the event, this is her entire committee here, everyone's wearing their pink in support of the event, and margaret, i understand that next year you're taking over as the chair of the committee. yes, i was volunteered...
and we're going to have a contest and you can vote on them in the room there. diane: now this particular bra is our mystery bra, no one will take credit for making it, but it has our pictures on it and i believe it says "pascal pearls" in the front to honor this day and our committee. and we're lucky to have pam jordan here today, she's the director of the department of aging and disabilities. pam, can you tell us a little bit about what this event means to you? thank you karla. i'll go ahead and take the microphone. i know it's not protocol. this is just a very, very special day, we're kicking off breast cancer awareness month here at pascal senior center. these ladies and gentleman have done a fantastic job of bringing awareness to a disease that i think we all know somebody, unlike any other cancer,
i think we all have been touched by this in some way in our families and friends, and i can't think of a better way than what these volunteers have done here today to bring awareness to this so that we can stop this disease and move forward with the right treatments for all of our loved ones, so i just want to thank you all from the bottom of my heart for what you've done today. and thank you all for having us once again. can i say that i have a sister that is a survivor so that's partly why i got involved. she's four years cancer-free. and i am a survivor, i'm eight-and-a-half years cancer-free when i had a prognosis
of less than 45% of being five years. so... this is important. okay. very much so. thank you. in addition to pascal, the arnold senior activity center also held a breast cancer awareness day with various seminars including tips on hair care and how to apply and blend wigs and hairpieces. while we're on the topic of health, i sat down recently with gaman sharma from the ship program to discuss enrollment information for medicare part d. we're here at the pasadena senior activity center with gaman sharma, she's the program coordinator of the ship program at the anne arundel county department of aging and disabilities,
and gaman, i understand that ship stands for state health insurance assistance program. welcome, gaman. thank you. nice to be here. and you're here to talk about that it's currently open enrollment until the beginning of december. can you tell us a little bit about that, and a little bit about medicare part d. right. medicare part d is medicare prescription drug plan, and currently we're in open enrollment. it began october 15 and it's going to continue until december 7. this is a window of opportunity where people can look into different prescriptionplans and different advantage plans and they are able to switch for the following year of 2014,
and this is a good opportunity to do so, so we're here to remind people about that. and do people have to make a change? no, not necessarily. if their current plan continues for the following year they would just be in it, but it's a good practice to do so because the plans change and their needs may have changed so it's just overall a good practice to be able, and this is a good opportunity to do that. and i understand that people can go online to make changes? yes, they are able to go online on www.medicare.gov to be able to do, for people who are computer savvy, or they can call us, we'll do that or they can call 1.800.medicare to do that.
for those who aren't as computer savvy. that's true. and now you're going to give a presentation today at this senior center, and i understand that ship is giving presentations at all of the different senior centers in anne arundel county? gaman: that is true. karla: and what's involved in your presentation? gaman: we're actually reminding people about this open enrollment because it's very easy to forget and the next year just creeps on you, that they should be able to switch, and we're doing presentations at all the senior centers. we have put out information in various other places like libraries and stuff, and we did a radio spot, it's also in our weekly newspaper article to do so,
and we're willing to help peoplewho are not computer savvy or who just don't know how to look for a plan and are not comfortable doing it themselves. okay. and for those people out there, what is the deadline for open enrollment? december 7th. karla: december 7th. okay. gaman: december 7th of 2013 for the following year and the new plan, if they switched in to one, would be effective january 1st of 2014. okay. gaman, once again, for those viewers out there who are interested in contacting you or other members of the ship program, what number should they call? they should call 410.222.4464, extension 3080 to contact the ship program in anne arundel county department of aging. we can either see them with appointments in our office or all the senior centers are available,
we have volunteers lined up in each senior center for appointments for people, so there're various ways to contact us and actually be able to be seen if they hurry up. okay. well thank you so much for being on senior centers in action today, and we're looking forward to your presentation. thank you. thank you. it was nice to be here. remember, the deadline to enroll is december 7th. to get more information, call 410.222.4464, extension 3080 to speak with someone from the ship program. studies have shown that doing something as simple as stroking a dog or cat can have a beneficial effect on your health. the paws program of anne arundelcounty is doing its part by bringing people and their pets to our senior centers to help brighten someone's day. well i'm here with diane dzambo who's the program director for paws, or people and animals who serve anne arundel county.
welcome to senior centers in action, diane. thank you karla. it's my pleasure to be here. and we're also here with violet,who's a fifteen month old shar-pei. she's a volunteer with the program as well, and for those out there who are wondering how i know how old violet is, she's the same age as my daughter, so welcome, violet, aswell. now diane, can you tell us a little bit about what paws is and what you do. yes. paws has been around since 1982, and what we do is visit people who are in nursing homes,assisted living facilities hospitals and other special sites in the county. we find that those residents don't get very many visitors so we take our animals and provide pet therapy to them.
karla: now what are the qualifications for being a human volunteer or a canine volunteer in the program? diane: we're looking for people who have life experience and who like to share their experiences with other people. someone who likes to be a friend who's social and out-going. the dogs need to be the same way. people ask often how you train to be a therapy dog, and you can't give a command for a dog to give love. the dog either does or doesn't. they should be well-behaved, have some obedience training, and up-to-date on all their shots. other than that, it's personality. but just so people understand better, these are just ordinary dogs, these aren't dogs that are seeing eye dogs or... absolutely, yes, you're right. they are just ordinary dogs who allow themselves to be handled by strangers and who are social,who can adapt to the environment of a nursing home or assisted living. and you're here today at the o'malley senior activity center to brighten up the day of some of the senior center visitors?
absolutely. we are doing that and they, in return, do the very same thing for us. we're always looking for volunteers... if anyone's interested, they can give us a call at 410.222.0738. well thank you so much for being here today, diane, and violet, it's always nice to see you as well. thank you. i'm here with frank and karen at the o'malley senior activity center. they're both volunteers with paws, people and animals who serve anne arundel county, and i'm also here with tiger, who is a whippet/beagle mix, and squirt, who is a min-pin/beagle mix. they're also volunteers in the program.
so welcome to senior centers in action, guys. how long have you been volunteering with paws? i've been with them for four years. five years. and what are some of the locations you visit with paws? well, squirt goes every monday to futurecare in arnold. that's his primary nursing home,but then we go to different events like this one. they could be anywhere in anne arundel county. but karen can tell you more about that. tiger originally started visiting at sunrise in severna park. he sort of goes wherever we're needed for the county,
so that is all the assisted living centers, the nursing homes, the hospitals, and he's all over the place as we are today here. and why did you decide to join the program? actually it was by accident. i have a friend who retired, and i wanted to go visit, and one day i happened to have squirt with me, and i didn't know if they' would let him in the nursing home but they did. and i noticed everybody that saw him just went crazy over him. and at the time, the wife happened to look in the paper and saw about paws and thought it was a good idea to join it, we tried it, and been doing it ever since. i was in-between jobs and i was looking for something to do, so i found the organization and i decided it would be a nice thing to take tiger and visit people and
make their day, and that's what he does. he certainly looks like he is right here, he's greeting people as we speak. what's really the best part of paws? the best part of being involved with paws? i know... the first times that i went over to the nursing home, futurecare is one of those that's they're beyond assisted living, they have to have a nurse, and i notice when we take him in, people who looked almost comatose and they saw the dog and they get the sparkle in their eye. and people who were getting physical therapy, who were screaming that they didn't want to do something because it hurt and the therapist would say, "you can pet the dog," and all of a sudden here they're reaching out their arm not thinking about the pain because they want to pet the dog. so, and i know for myself, he helps me get out of bed every morning.
i love visiting all the people and tiger loves visiting everybody, he wants to be everybody's friend, but the best part for me is... visiting the dementia and alzheimer's people. they might have no conversation with anybody but they certainly connect with tiger and it's just such a great feeling to know that you've made a difference in somebody's life, even if it's only for a couple of minutes or once in a while or, you know... so it's a wonderful feeling. well it looks like our dogs are anxious to greet more people at the senior center so i will let you two go but thank you so much to both of you and to both of you as well for donating your time and your energy to the county. paws is a wonderful program and you can just see faces light up when those little dogs come for a visit. now have you ever wanted to express yourself but just couldn't find the right outlet for your creativity? not everyone can paint or create music, but you may be surprised to find writing may be the outlet for you.
we visited the south county senior activity center to speak with susan moger, who teaches a creative writing class at the center. well i'm here with susan moger, who's an instructor at anne arundel community college and also the instructor of the writing courses here at south county senior activity center. welcome to senior centers in action, susan. now today we had an interesting event, it combined the different students from the writing classes here at the center. yes, i think about it as a writing community. there are two parts to it... autobiography writing and creative writing. some students take both, so that's really great for me. it's a double... get to hear their stories twice. but we fall in love with each others' stories, and it's really a tight-knit community.
now this is the first time that you've all gotten together at the center to read your works of art. how did you get the idea todo this today? susan: i had it because i was so impressed. people have been taking the class, some of them for four years and getting better and better. there's a group of students who formed, started a website called "wrinklings" and they're really taking their writing to another level and i thought this is the time to share it with people here at the center. they agreed, so that was good. karla: well it seemed like people really enjoyed sharing their work, and there was so many different kinds of things expressed today through poetry or just people telling their life stories. yeah, and the poetry is really interesting because we introduced that in creative writing and people were like, "no, no, i never wrote a poem, i don't know anything about poetry," and then we do some exercises and then they're so into it, and you saw some results today. it's really great. well sharon hinted that perhaps you'll be back in the future to do this again, so we certainly hope so.
i think we have a taste of bright lights, and definitely enjoyed it today. just great. we read our work in class, it's a workshop-style class, so everybody's used to reading to each other. now they have a taste of an audience, so, there's nothing like applause. well thank you so much for entertaining us today, susan. karla: i'm here with gene way at the south county senior activity center and gene was part of today's sharing of different stories and poems all written by south county senior activity center members. so gene, you're part of a writing class here at the senior center. yes, i'm taking susan moger's autobiographical writing for seniors here at the senior center. and that class meets every week?
it meets once a week on tuesday afternoon for two hours. and today you read a poem about your dogs, or actually a poem written from your dogs to you. a letter. it was an imaginary letter. susan issues an invitation each week, an invitation to write, and this was a response to, "write an imaginary letter to yourself from somebody," and so i thought, well, imagined it would be to write from dead dogs, so that's why i set them in a biscuit bistro. now how did you choose your dogs as the subject of the letter? well, they were the four dogs we had who had already died. and that's who were writing to me. it was silly but it was imaginative. well thank you so much for sharing your work today and for joining us.
thank you. it was wonderful. bye. we look forward to hearing more from our aspiring authors. october 19th was a very special day for one of our senior center members. that day was catherine edgar's 100th birthday! catherine is a very active member of the pasadena senior activity center, which threw a big birthday bash in her honor on october 18th. delegate nic kipke was on hand to present catherine with a special proclamation, and proclamations also came in from county executive laura neuman and president barak obama. catherine enjoyed cake, gifts, dancing and the music of frank sinatra. we want to wish catherine all the best in her 100th year and in the years to come.
that wraps up this edition of senior centers in action. if you'd like to find out more information about a senior activity center near you, log on to www.aacounty.org/aging for phone numbers and newsletters highlighting the various activities happening each month. and don't forget, you can watch senior centers in action right here, every day at noon and 7 pm, or anytime online. like us on facebook at arundel tv or anne arundel county department of aging and disabilities. you can also find us on google plus and youtube by searching arundel tv. we'll leave you now with music from the war of 1812 era performed by members of thirst n' howl. we'll see you next time.
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