Mystic Geriatrics Institute

Connections
Puzzle #356
🟩🟩🟩🟩
🟨🟨🟨🟨
🟦🟪🟦🟦
🟦🟦🟦🟦
🟪🟪🟪🟪

Wordle 1,077 5/6

⬜🟨⬜⬜⬜
⬜⬜🟩⬜⬜
🟩🟩⬜⬜⬜
🟩🟩🟩⬜⬜
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

Another successful Intergenerational Poetry Project! Thank you Melanie and Chris for your hard work! It was a beautiful program.

Connections
Puzzle #205
🟨🟨🟨🟨
🟩🟩🟩🟩
🟦🟦🟦🟦
🟪🟪🟪🟪

Wordle 818 3/6

⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜
⬜⬜🟩🟩⬜
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

MGI Senior Strong Communities- our very own Dr. Michael Feltes!!

Wordle 761 4/6

⬜⬜🟩⬜⬜
⬜🟩🟩⬜⬜
🟩🟩🟩🟨⬜
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

The Intergenerational Poetry Program-an unbelievable program! So so wonderful! Students and seniors sharing and learning. One woman (Kristen) stated, “After hearing all of you I’m so excited about the world to come.”

Robin Ely: Caring for the Matters of the Mind They say necessity is the mother of all invention and often a great idea is a simple one. Dr. Robin Ely spent decades as a nurse and administrator when her idea for a senior daycare and dementia care ...

PRESIDENT’S LETTER FOR WINTER 2023

Happy New Year. 2022 was a good year. In January we held a caregiver conference at the Mystic YMCA. We connected with the Pawcatuck Neighborhood Center (PNC) who invited us to repeat our caregiver conference in May. In February we discussed improving the website and finding a facilitator to help us define who we are and where we go from this point. In March we started to prepare for another caregiver conference. We contracted with Bridge Marketing to help us redefine our mission. In April, in collaboration with Melanie Greenhouse and Gray Dawn Breaking, we had a wonderful Intergenerational Poetry Project conference with four high school poets, their mentors, their parents and their subjects at the Mystic-Noank Library. . Melanie and I submitted a grant to the Eastern Connecticut Chamber of Commerce to establish a scholarship program for student poets. We never heard back from them. In May there was a sudden uptick in COVID infections in our region, forcing us to cancel our conference at the PNC.

Over the summer and fall we had several meetings with David Labbe and his staff. We rebranded our name to more accurately reflect our ties to the community: mgi: senior strong communities. We redesigned the website to bring more information to the caregiver community. We rescheduled our caregiver conference at the PNC for October. Despite our efforts very few people signed up, so, again, we had to cancel it. We spent the rest of the year developing material for the new website. I want to give credit to my wonderful board members and their unity in focus and purpose. I feel we came together in recognizing both our strengths and our limitations. I wish to recognize David Labbe for his patience, his enthusiasm, and his ability to motivate us.

Looking ahead we will continue to focus on the caregiver. We will reorganize our conference program providing short sessions, one to two hours, in each of our areas of expertise rather than schedule day-long programs. We will look to integrate our presentations with other programs such as health fairs. We will use several venues. We have expanded the Intergenerational Poetry Project to include three area high schools: Stonington, Fitch and East Lyme. We plan a program of poetry in April. The Nominating Committee will meet to create a slate of new officers. 2023 will be an exciting year as we grow our website and use our expertise to bring more information to our communities.

Sincerely,
Christopher Morren, MD President

PRESIDENT’S LETTER FOR FALL, 2022

I’ve always thought our name was a bit presumptuous, conjuring images of a large structure not unlike the Lincoln Memorial. I think, when our founders conceived of our future they felt there was a certain manifest destiny: geriatric training programs for physicians, geriatric research on a university level, conferences in classrooms, all inside a building to be erected on the Perkins Farm site, a geriatric mecca that would make Mystic a center of geriatric excellence. The reality however is that we have become a group of dedicated individuals motivated to improve the health and wellbeing of elders in our extended community. We have focused on the fundamental concept of caregiving, and have devoted our modest resources to the project of educating family caregivers. So with this more realistic vision we all felt a name change was needed, and the name we have selected is:mgi/senior strong communities. New names are always hard to swallow, but this one is much closer to what we actually do.

Next issue is COVID. Is it gone? Not by a long shot, but we have learned to live with it and know that the consequences of acquiring it are far different in the age of vaccines and good medications. As recently as May we were forced to cancel a caregiver conference due to an uptick in the Omicron variant. Now we are preparing to do the same program at the Pawcatuck Neighborhood Center on November 5th. Vaccinations and masks will be optional. We will begin publicizing it in the near future.
Our Intergenerational Poetry Project is underway. This year we will add Fitch High School to Stonington and East Lyme as sources of young poets. We are looking for six elders to work with our six high school students. If you know elders who might participate please refer them to me.

Lastly, please look forward to our updated website, more user friendly, and with a lot more good information for senior citizens and their families.

All best for a beautiful fall season.

Christopher Morren, MD

None of our projects at MGI has given me more pleasure than the Intergenerational Poetry Project. In collaboration with poet and playwright Melanie Greenhouse we completed our second year of creative poetry writing. This year high school students, two from East Lyme and two from Stonington, created poetry based on the lives of elder members of our community.

Among the elders were a nursing home resident who had worked at the velvet mill in Stonington and a retired nurse from Kenya. The Stonington resident recalled the sadness of losing her brother in a fishing boat accident. The nurse recalled her early years as a brown person in Kenya, living in a segregated community. When she arrived in London as a nursing student she realized the streets weren’t paved with gold, and that the white students were no smarter than she was.

Although the number of people involved is small, the impact these connections have on individual lives is large. The elders feel their lives have been validated. Memories that might have been forgotten are remembered, re-lived, and memorialized. For the young poets the impact can be seen in a communication from Lucy Chomowicz, one of our poets: “This project helped me start writing again, and allowed me to fall back in love with poetry. I also benefited in that I became good friends with the incredible woman I interviewed. The project has had a profound and lasting impact on me.”

The importance of the project is that it creates a format for young adults to connect in a meaningful way with older adults. It creates a meaningful memorial to the older person’s life. The experience broadens the vision of the younger poets and enriches their lives forever. For MGI this improves the health and wellbeing of the elder community, and this is our mission.

Christopher Morren, MD

Love this project! 💕

The intergenerational poetry project The Mystic Geriatric Institute hosted its second annual reading of poetry with a reception for the Intergenerational Poetry Project’s two

Happy Mothers Day!

THE INTERGENERATIONAL POETRY PROJECT
BY Cate Steel

The Mystic Geriatric Institute (MGI) hosted its second annual reading of poetry with a reception for the Intergenerational Poetry Project’s two poets from East Lyme High School, Noelle Avena, and Eve Slemp, and two poets from Stonington High School, Sarah Berger, and Molly Neal. At the Mystic Noank Library on Saturday morning April 30, 2022, this event squeezed in on the last day of National Poetry Month. With music provided by Lucas Neil, and flowers decorating the lectern in this historic site, the celebration was poetic in every sense of the word.

Opening remarks by Dr. Chris Morren, a geriatrician and President of the Mystic Geriatric Institute, who specializes in internal medicine and the unique health needs of the elderly explained the intention, purpose, and vision of the Intergenerational Poetry Project (IPP). “The IPP connects the oldest generation to the youngest. In doing so, it validates the life of the elder and enriches the life of the younger.” Students gained an understanding and perspective of the lives of older citizens, their connections, and the contributions they have made to our world.

Melanie Greenhouse, a published playwright, and poet worked closely with Dr. Morren to execute their vision. Greenhouse met the students regularly to coach them on the poetry she envisioned. “Doing this during a pandemic made it more cumbersome. We had extra hurdles to jump but we were determined.”

Diane Brouder, the daughter of Louise Stoetzner, and an Essex Psychotherapist said that the IPP was a real benefit for her mom during the pandemic as poetry is very healing and can be therapeutic. She loved the intergenerational component of this project as well. Brouder believes that every time people connect, there is potential for change and expansion for both. “The connection between the young poets and my mother helped her feel known and appreciated at this time in her life and reduced her sense of isolation during the pandemic. Noelle Avena’s poem captured Ms. Stoetzner’s personality and style in a sensitive and artistic way. “The poems will become family treasures. The event itself was very enriching for both of us! I plan to stay in touch with the Mystic Geriatrics Institute.”


Ms. Greenhouse indicated that much of the communication needed to occur remotely using either email, phone or zoom calls. It was really important that the young poets captured the voice of their subject. “I wanted them to use first person when writing to increase the depth and impact of their words.” All of the students translated narrative and direct quotes into poems.

Special recognition was made for the teachers, advisors, and educational institutions that supported this project. Jeff Beale, an East Lyme English teacher and faculty coach for the school newspaper The Viking Saga said, “These students demonstrate amazing talent and have extremely busy schedules. They are students, athletes, musicians, and community volunteers.”

The selected students were each given an octogenerian or nonagenerian to interview. The students embodied sensitivity, intelligence, and literary talent. With Greenhouse’s suggested prompts, the students interacted with their elder and discovered life experiences and nuances that enlightened their perspectives.

In her opening comments, Sarah Berger, who is a Junior at Stonington High School raced back to the morning event from a regatta. Sara stated that this was her first opportunity to

The Intergenerational Poetry Program was such a success! So much talent honoring lives well lived! More to come. Congratulations to the participants!

Mystic Geriatrics Institute Click on; www.mysticgeriatricsinstitute.com
Stay tuned for our upcoming Caregiver Seminars Starting i

Help for caregivers!

Mystic Geriatrics Institute Click on; www.mysticgeriatricsinstitute.com
Stay tuned for our upcoming Caregiver Seminars Starting i

Caregivers are important too!