Senior Caveats

Paul, here: proudly, gratefully designated The Dancer by the HSC Board of Directors. I have a few comments about seniors dancing: testimonies for, and a caveat or two of warning. First, the good side: Last autumn I was invited to the Lake Placid American Legion by a table full of widows, all seniors. Three of them had recently had heart problems: strokes, heart attacks. Everyone at the table loved to dance; but those three needed help just standing up let alone dancing. Stand they did, and dance they did: and here's the point: by spring time all three were standing and dancing without support!!! Jerry, in her upper eighties, still had a bit of a body tremble, but much less so. Ann, who'd hang on for dear life in October, was independently jitterbugging, twisting, doing the Charleston, by March! And Maxine got trimmer, stronger, younger looking!

A couple of months ago I gave some dance lessons to Hildy and Larry. The HSC remembers Larry falling over a chair last January and breaking his hip: here he was in early summer, his 90^th birthday coming up, taking dancing lessons, planning to take a paddle boat excursion with his new girl friend Hildy, and making real progress: with the foxtrot, the waltz, the rumba ... Look at him now; you'd never believe he'd broken his hip (let alone been a bachelor!)

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Caveats

OK: there's no limit to what endorsements for dancing I or others could gather here; but there are also warnings appropriate, especially for the elderly: especially where the man has not danced much before, or the widow hasn't danced in the decades of her late husband's illness ... I'll leave such as obvious though for the moment: to get to a warning about line-dancing that may not be obvious:

I hear that there's a high incidence of injury among line dancers. We can imagine some of the possible reasons: one line-dances typically in a group, and group mentality can keep one going on where caution might have occurred to an individual not swept up by the group ... True enough, and we can imagine others. But I jump straight to a reason I wound't have suspect before I began line-dancing myself: last autumn, right here at the HSC: Jean our teacher for the Electric Slide:Line-dances, nearly all of them, make sudden turns toward a new wall. Many of the turns are ninety degrees, but some are 180 degrees, and some are 270!

Be careful. Don't blow your knee trying to keep up when you haven't yet had time to drill your body in unweighting at exactly the right time, swiveling at exactly the right time ...Meantime, at HSC, I, Paul, try to avoid dances with some of the more violent turns. We're seniors after all.

The Boot Scootin' Boogie has a 180 degree turn on the 20^th count — but lots of us are already rehearsed in that one. If you're not in practice, if you don't have the timing coordinated just so, your weight transfers graceful, take it easy, slow it down, dance to the side where you won't get run over by the stampede of your fellow dancers.

And there's another recommendation, a positive: coordinating as a group is a pleasure in itself. Ballroom dancing mixes independent couples; line-dancing is group-coordinated: like Rockettes.

Last Wishes

The HSC's Vice President, Dick Miller, celebrated his ninety-fourth birthday a few months back. Last week Ahn emailed friends that visiting Dick in his assisted living facility she found him neglected, without the assistence he needed or that the Palms was getting paid to provide.
Another email announced that Dick had said that his last wish was to attend the Social one more time!

By golly, she arranged for the Palms to deliver Dick to the club house Wed, August 19 at 1 PM. She had us prepared to receive him warmly. Dick was wheeled in, wheeled to the dance floor. We formed a dancing circle around him.

Individuals, featuring Dick's known favorites, females, went up one at a time to greet him.

And so forth.

I presume that Dick has been found to be terminal by the medical professionals. It was said without joking that this was his "last" wish. Boy, did he get it.

Ahn, currently crippled herself with a badly contused ankle, wearing a cast, assigned crutches and/or a cane, abandoned her supports to dance with Dick's wheelchair!

I'm not always sure that Ahn shows the best sense – like putting her crutches aside – but boy, does she show love.

Memorial Service

The HSC is I emphasize a senior group. Mortality is common in our midst. Every Wednesday we announce a Prayer List: members, relatives of members unwell. Some members we loose to assisted living programs, to Nursing Homes, to hospitals, and to the mortuary.

I've been attending for one year now, commencing last August. This August 14, 2009, we had a memorial service for late-BOD-member Mary Oakum.


Lorraine sings a spiritual at Mary's memorial service.

Ahn, amid board members,
holds Mary's granddaughter.


Ahn and Bob transform a bingo parlor into a buffet lunch and dance hall for each Wednesday gathering. For Mary, Ahn and Bob transformed the same hall into a chapel. Board members, executives, volunteers, family members, friends ... shared reminiscences, read poems, sang spirituals ... a preacher read scripture, offered prayer ...


Nicest such service I have ever seen, let alone participated in.

Development Plans

Hi, pk here, Paul Knatz.

I love the Highlands Senior Center. I love to dance. I love Ahn: and a bunch of the rest too. I even love the many enemies I have there!

But: my blog set at blogspot.com should not be the official blog for the HSC. I put it up just to show Ahn and Bob what could be done. I have an appointment with Ahn this Tuesday to transfer the project from my name and my Mac to her name and her PC. She can choose which blog name she can find available. She can have this name, HSCenter, if she wants it. I'll delete this blog, she can apply for the name which should then be free, and post and repost whatever she likes. I expect that she'll give me webmaster and editor privileges to the blog, but again: I'm giving the blog to her. In a sense, as she is the creator of the Social, the blog is already hers: even though I have a long long standing claim to ownership of anything connected to the internet, the whole thing having been plagiarized from Jesus, Ivan Illich, and ME!

I propose that we post Ahn's flier for the HSC as our top page. I propose that she keep the page I offered here, editing it ad infinitum or as future considerations find appropriate. I propose putting up sections on Ahn; on Bob:
on the HSC Board of Directors;
on the Volunteers;
on the kitchen staff;
on the other volunteer specialties: the sign in desk, the Greeter ...
I propose pages on our music suppliers: Cecil Schultz and his SingAlong Band, George Filip and his Sunshine Band ... Lois McClean, widow of the late Billy Warren, bandleader nonpareil, has been playing piano for us during lunch, the normal interval between the two dance bands.

Some BOD members have complex functions: take me for example: I lead the line dancing, now I also direct the ball room dance teaching. Lately I've been responsible for the beverage tables. Now I'm also the webmaster:
We'll have a site with the Chamber of Commerce: sebring.org; and possibly a domain of our own.

Highlands Senior Center

Hi. We're the Highlands Senior Center. That's Highlands County, in Florida, specifically in Sebring Florida. We meet for dancing and singing and lunch, with snacks and beverages throughout the day, every Wednesday. The line dancing starts at 9 AM. The first live band for ball room dancing begins at 10. We dance and schmooze till 3 PM. Currently we're in the Sebring Hills Club House at 200 Lark Avenue. Take Highway 27 to Thunderbird Road, turn west, take the first turn south and our parking lot is right in front of you.

Here's how we looked last Halloween: in costume.

Ahn McQueen is our leader, our heart and soul. That's Ahn, the Witch, kneeling in the front row center. Bob McQueen is our President: that's him kneeling by Ahn, wearing a skull and holding a pirate sword. See that we also have sorcerers and Dracula and vampires ... and nurses and fairy godmothers ...

Here's Ahn again:

That too was on Halloween 2008.

I'll add more in a moment. Lots of great pictures coming, and some funny stories too: together with essential information about the Highlands Senior Center.