“Old age is not a disease nor is it a diagnosis.” — AgeWiseInstitute.com On a rainy November night, a gray-haired woman leaned over her walker to study the assortment of teas before her. She was part of a crowd of residents, guests and supporters of Cedar Sinai Park in Portland who gathered at the Rose…
Nobody driving from Raleigh Hills to Hillsdale on the Beaverton-Hillsdale Highway can doubt that there is a whole lot going on at Cedar Sinai Park. The site is no stranger to new construction. Our community created The Jewish Old People’s Home in 1920, we broke ground at the current site in 1954 and members of…
Parents, confess: when you encourage your kids to take up an instrument, you are hoping – praying! – they don’t choose the trumpet (OK, drums neither.) The flute is good: it takes a long time to even get any sound out. A violin does sound horrible in the hands of an amateur, but if he…
When Emanuel and Connie Ben-David retired, they wanted to move to an affordable place with good climate and a strong Jewish community. They researched the best places to retire in the United States and when Ashland popped up over and over, they decided to fly out here and check it out. It was a long…
When Ida (Green) Gurule graduated from the University of Oregon with a degree in anthropology and a master’s in public health, she never imagined that she’d end up becoming the Cupcake Queen of Central Oregon. Yet today, she and her team go through 500 pounds of powdered sugar in a week to supply the three…
Intergenerational links benefit PSU students and their “somewhat older” friends Wikia, a site that claims to be “the home of fandom,” lists hundreds of variations of the game Monopoly. Among my favorites: Ice Cream-opoly, Game of Thrones Collector’s Edition and Queue (Communist Monopoly.) Communist Monopoly? Inexplicably, the site doesn’t mention “You’ve Been Hired,” the personal…
The yoga teacher on the top floor of the house-turned-office building on East Burnside takes his Buddhist practices very seriously. He meditates one hour a day. He is “mostly” vegetarian, uses no drugs (although he enjoys an occasional glass of wine) and is committed to what he calls “a good moral life.” He is 75…
Dan Ross was in the trucking business in New York City in the early 1950s and, while it paid the bills, he didn’t enjoy it at all. Married, with a 3-year-old daughter, he was contemplating his options one day while riding the subway. What should he do? What did his future hold? Then he looked…
There is a Portland Jewish Family and Child Service program called Lifeline. According to the JFCS website, Lifeline offers “in-home support for seniors and people with disabilities to age safely and independently in their homes, and direct aid and guidance for individuals and families experiencing financial hardship to avoid crisis and make progress toward self-sufficiency.”…
I met Jill Neuwelt when she and husband Ed were generous hosts for Congregation Beth Israel Sisterhood’s Progressive Dinner event in September. The couple moved to Portland from Texas in 1981, and they are Portlanders through and through, but her accent and her cooking gave her away. She grew up in Vienna, speaks German fluently…
