purpose

Wellness is in Full Swing at The Highlands at Pittsford

Happiness / giving back, purpose, senior wellness, seven dimensions of wellness

by Patricia Klimchuck

The Seven Dimensions of Wellness is more than just a catchy slogan for the residents and staff at the Highlands at Pittsford. We offer opportunities to continuously LEARN and CONNECT with neighbors and the greater community. We’ve created a Green Initiative to further align with NATURE. Finding true HAPPINESS in the large and small moments of every aspect of life is celebrated. We actively search out and join in opportunities that allow us to fulfill our innate human PURPOSE to help others. We’ve designed a serene environment to enhance inner PEACE and a quiet setting to refuel one’s soul center. Last but not least, we offer two FITNESS centers, a pool, and an underwater treadmill and nature trails to keep our bodies as WELL as our minds and spirits!

2017 has been jam packed with all SEVEN DIMENSIONS. Here’s but a small sampling…

A resident and her daughter enjoying themselves at the "Breakfast at Tiffany's" event — Anne Scalea and her daughter, Carole DeMoulin, at “Breakfast at Tiffany’s”

June 27th – “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” Luncheon

We kicked off the summer with our “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” Luncheon to benefit the Pittsford Food Cupboard. Our Highlands residents who are longtime PFC volunteers joined forces with newbies and guests to enjoy a scrumptious lunch followed by an enthralling lecture on the classic movie, Breakfast at Tiffany’s. Caroline Yeager, Assistant Curator of the Moving Image Department at the George Eastman Museum, captivated guests with her lecture about the movie, the actors, and the era. Between the cuisine, the company, and the entertainment, this was an afternoon to remember. It was a lunch and LEARN with PURPOSE!

October 10th – Annual Charity Luncheon and Fashion Show

Three Highlands at Pittsford residents who modeled in the annual Fashion Show fundraiser — Betty, Ron, and Audrey – Highlands Residents and Fashion Show Models

This year’s benefactors were the Wilmot Cancer Institute and the Pluta Canter Center. Our residents and staff had the opportunity to CONNECT with our community with PURPOSE in a very unique way by modeling in the show! This year’s trends, as well as timeless classic fashions, were provided by the always generous Lord & Taylor. Makeup application was artistically applied by Christina Velez and Juli Antonucci of Skintopia Spa. As always, guests were treated to a scrumptious lunch prepared by The Highlands’ culinary team, headed by Chefs Dan and Mike.

October 21st – Walk to End Alzheimer’s

A summer of fundraising culminated with an event for the Alzheimer’s Association. Highlands residents, staff, and families and friends joined forces to create our team with an incredibly strong PURPOSE – to fund research, education, and services to eradicate this very debilitating disease. The Rochester area Walk to End Alzheimer’s brought together a diverse but unified group of people to CONNECT, promote PEACE, enjoy NATURE, and get our daily FITNESS goals covered on a wonderfully warm and sunny Saturday morning. Throughout the walk, we had the opportunity to LEARN about the innovative and much-needed services that our efforts are funding. Participants were filled with a sense of accomplishment and hope for advancements toward our wish that Alzheimer’s Disease will be a thing of the past for future generations.

Here are a few upcoming SEVEN DIMENSIONS OF WELLNESS events!

Highlands residents pack up baked treats for patrons of the annual bake sale to take home for the Thanksgiving holiday — The annual bake sale benefiting Ronald McDonald House is a great Thanksgiving tradition here at The Highlands

November 21st – Annual Bake Sale

Stop by the Highlands Annual Bake Sale and pick up assorted delectables for your holiday table, to savor with PURPOSE. Proceeds to benefit the Ronald McDonald House.

Now through the end of December

Drop off nonperishable food items for donation to the Pittsford Food Cupboard. Provide HAPPINESS and a greater sense of PEACE for those in need this season.

2016 Candlelight Night - Photo by the Town of Pittsford — 2016 Candlelight Night (Photo by the Town of Pittsford)

December 5th – Candlelight Night

CONNECT with neighbors for the Pittsford Candlelight Night festivities.

Patricia Klimchuck is the Senior Living Coordinator at The Highlands at Pittsford

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Residents Join U of R Students as Members of “The Seward Family Digital Archive Project”

About the feature photo: Letter from William Henry Seward to his wife, Frances Seward; December 29, 1834. // Wax seals and the holes left by them are pictured on letters comprising some of the University of Rochester’s Seward Papers collection, photographed in the Digital Humanities Center in Rush Rhees Library February 10, 2016 // photo by J. Adam Fenster / University of Rochester

Different Generations Bring Equally Valuable Yet Different Skills To “The Seward Family Digital Archive Project”

The William Henry Seward Papers are an extensive collection of handwritten documents that were found in boxes in the attic of the Seward Family home in Auburn, NY. This collection of 375,000 pages includes both personal and professional notes composed from the late 1700’s into the 1800’s.

These notes were given to the University of Rochester in the 1950’s. “Rochester vied with Yale and the Library of Congress for the papers; ultimately, Seward’s grandson chose Rochester as their home…”

The cursive handwriting style in which the notes are written is too foreign for many of today’s college students to decipher, so “… an intergenerational team of ‘citizen archivists’—led by Thomas Slaughter, the Arthur R. Miller Professor of History, and with the wide-ranging support of librarians at the River Campus Libraries—is working to bring to light the extensive holding of family papers in the collection.”

Slaughter’s team consists of undergraduate and graduate students, as well as a group of Highlands at Pittsford residents who are volunteering their time and expertise to the project. Our residents are bringing knowledge “that is not readily found in people in their late teens and 20s: an intimate familiarity with both letter writing and reading cursive handwriting”.

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In addition to the quotes above, the following are excerpts from a feature about this project on the University of Rochester website entitled “Lives in Letters”:

– The William Henry Seward Papers is one of the largest manuscript collections that the library holds and among the most often cited. Seward, who lived from 1801 to 1872, was a trial attorney, a New York state senator (1831–1838), governor of New York (1838–1842), U.S. senator (1849–1860), and secretary of state (1860–1869). He was the frontrunner for the Republican nomination for president in 1860, only to be sidelined in favor of someone more moderate in his support of abolition: Abraham Lincoln. Today he is best remembered for his decision to purchase Alaska—at the time, called “Seward’s Folly.” He was also attacked in the assassination plot that killed Lincoln. The collection of Seward’s papers, both professional and personal, includes 230 linear feet of materials, 150,000 items, and 375,000 pages.

First year University of Rochester history PhD student Lauren Davis [bluish shirt] works with sophomore history and political science major Sarabeth Aranbold [grey sweater] and residents Lynn Nelson [red] and Allan Anderson [plaid] to transcribe letters for the Seward Family Papers Project at the Highlands in Pittsford, NY January 28, 2016. // photo by J. Adam Fenster / University of Rochester

– While the volunteers are adept at reading handwriting, the students bring computer savvy. “It’s a balance,” says Davis.

– As a little girl, volunteer Lyn Nelson remembers, she’d go to the library in the summertime and fill her bag with biographies. Now she finds a direct connection to history in the Sewards’ correspondence.

– She transcribed a letter in which Seward describes seeing the Washington Monument, already standing 15 feet above the ground.

– “I adore that!” says Nelson. “It just tickled me. It gave me shivers all over.”

– She says that “the whole project gives me energy, delight, interest. I find it—how should I phrase this? I’m eager to get to it, and eager to learn from it, and it adds something, a new dimension, to my life.”