Prairie Pointe is happy to announce we have relaxed visitor restrictions. Friends and family members are welcome to come visit residents under the following guidelines:
1. Visitors will be screened by Prairie Pointe staff at the front entrance. The screening process includes a few questions and your temperature will be taken. If temperature is above 99.9, you will be asked to leave immediately.
2. All visits will be outdoors.
3. Both resident and his/her guests will wear a mask and keep six feet apart. We understand this seems like a real hassle but we have not spent the last three months being super careful and cautious to run a big risk right away.
Hopefully, we can continue to loosen up and life return to normal soon; however, for the time being, we are taking it slow.
Mattie Waldon, Prairie Pointe Medication Administration Aide, had shoulder surgery last week.
She is doing well but recovery will take 6-8 weeks. Sherry Bales is filling her spot on the night shift but this is just one more thing we are all ready to get back to normal. Get well soon, Mattie, because we miss you!
Resident Rae Bland shared a devotion on faith—a much needed factor in our world today—during church services last Sunday.
Hymns were sung and Phil Johnson dismissed the group in prayer and was joined in reciting the Lord’s Prayer.
This week we are reading about Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig from an article in the New Yorker magazine.
They were the best hitters in baseball during the 20’s and 30’s, but they were polar opposites.
Ruth was all flamboyance and swagger. He bought expensive cars and wrecked them.
He wore raccoon coats and smoked big cigars. He gambled and caroused. The president of the American League once said “Ruth has the mind of a 15-yearold.”
During the off season, Ruth acted in vaudeville shows and movies. He endorsed over 100 products—everything from Quaker Oats to All-American underwear.
The Baby Ruth candy bar was marketed without his consent. Ruth sued, but the courts backed the candy-maker.
In 1934, he was ranked the most photographed person in the world, ahead of F.D.R. the Prince of Wales, and Adolf Hitler.
Everyone respected Lou Gehrig but he did not want attention and liked being boring. Until 1933, when he turned 30, he lived with his parents and brought his mother to spring training.
The year he was the Yankees American League M.V.P., his salary was $8,000. Ruth was making $70,000.
Ruth didn’t look like an athlete. Some said he looked like a pot-bellied, spindlylegged, good-natured buffoon.
Others said he looked like toothpicks attached to a piano. Gehrig was built like a power hitter—all muscle from top to bottom and he was extremely goodlooking.
Much to his mother’s dismay, Gehrig finally married in 1932 and Eleanor Gehrig changed her husband’s life. She freed him from his mother’s house and took him to the ballet and the opera.
She encouraged him to do promotional work and he did ads for Camel cigarettes and Aqua Velva.
Gehrig was the first athlete to have his face on a Wheaties box. The marriage was happy but short.
In 1939, Gehrig was diagnosed with A.L.S. –soon known as Lou Gehrig’s disease. It seems the doctors never told him it was incurable. He died at the age of 37.
At his farewell to baseball event in Yankee Stadium, he said “Today I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of the earth.”
For our next book reading, we have selected an autobiographical book by Lewis Meyer—Off The Sauce—the tough, funny account of one man’s hard-won fight with booze.
We very much enjoyed Preposterous Papa and Mostly Mama. Meyer’s writing is always funny and we love a good laugh at Prairie Pointe.
Note: Prairie Pointe is a 24-unit assisted living center owned and operated by the City of Stroud and the Stroud Hospital and Development Authority.