The Trumpeter

The Colors of Devotion March 1 and 2 bring India’s most famous Hindu holiday, Holi, which is known as the “festival of love” or the “festival of color,” but it is really a festival that celebrates the victory of good over evil. Hindu scriptures tell of the arrogant

Demon King Hiranyakashyap, whose own son, Prahlad, refused to worship him in favor of Vishnu. The Demon King called on his sister Holika to sit with Prahlad atop a burning pyre. Thanks to Prahlad’s prayers to Vishnu, he survived, but Holika, who thought herself immune to the fire, was consumed. It is through this story we learn how the virtues of goodness, faith, and devotion are used to conquer forces of evil. This story is so important that before this holiday was called Holi, it was called Holika after the Demon King’s sister.

The first day of Holi sees the ritual burning of pyres, with celebrants daring to race through the flames, hoping to emerge as unscathed as Prahlad. The fire purifies the spirit, proving one’s devotion and reaffirmig the triumph of good over evil. But the story of Holi does not end here. The second day of the holiday is perhaps the most well-known. On this day, celebrants gather in massive crowds and throw colored powder at each other. This practice, too, has its roots in Hindu mythology.

The supreme deity Krishna fell in love with the goddess Radha but was concerned that they would be a poor match because his skin was blue. Krishna’s mother advised him to paint her face in order to erase their differences. Like Krishna, celebrants joyfully paint each other in a rainbow of colors, erasing any and all notions of caste or ethnicity. During this celebration, it becomes nearly impossible to recognize others, so all are loved equally. Furthermore, colored powders are often made of crushed medicinal herbs such as bilva, haldi, kumkum, and neem. Throwing these healing herbs is reminiscent of the healing nature of the holiday—the power of spring and the vigor, purity, youth, and playfulness of the spirit.

March Birthdays In astrology, those born between March 1–20 are Pisces. Friendly and selfless, Fish are always willing to help others with their hearts on their sleeves. Thanks to an intuitive understanding of life, Pisces make deep connections with other living beings. Aries’ Rams are born between March 21–31. As the first sign of the zodiac, Aries are energetic and assertive initiators. With bravery, zeal, and speed, they jump headfirst into life, confident that they can navigate any challenges. Desi Arnaz (actor) – March 2, 1917 Knute Rockne (coach) – March 4, 1888 Lou Costello (comedian) – March 6, 1906 Yuri Gagarin (astronaut) – March 9, 1934 Liza Minnelli (entertainer) – March 12, 1946 Hank Ketcham (cartoonist) – March 14, 1920 Wyatt Earp (cowboy) – March 19, 1848 Fred Rogers (actor) – March 20, 1928 Marcel Marceau (mime) – March 22, 1923 Gutzon Borglum (sculptor) – March 25, 1867 Reba McEntire (musician) – March 28, 1955 Warren Beatty (actor) – March 30, 1937

Don’t Fear the Ides

It was William Shakespeare, via his play Julius Caesar, who warned that the Ides of March, on March 15, were cursed. Indeed, while Caesar was murdered by a group of political

conspirators on March 15, the Ides of any month are not particularly evil or ignominious. The words Ides, Kalends, and Nones are terms used to describe any month’s phases of the moon. Ides simply means the first full moon of the month, so in reality the Ides of March technically takes place this year on March 31. Likewise, the Kalends marks the month’s first new moon, which is on March 17, and the Nones is the moon’s first quarter, on March 24. Far from cursed, March’s Ides were particularly joyful because they also heralded the new year.

Asbury Towers Retirement Community

MARCH 2018

March 2018

Celebrating March

Birthdays

Residents 2 Freda Paris

8 Emma Arnold 9 Walter Wilson 12 Barbara Fuson

19 Joanne Kissinger 23 Dorothy Masten

31 Marilyn Clearwaters

Staff 1 Darby King

3 Carla Wilson 8 Davia Pabey-Simpson

10 Ruth Cox 10 James Wilson

11 Malaressa Patton 14 Sarah Wade

16 Michelle Linton 23 Diane Pittman 24 Kathy Morlan 28 Beverly Layne

Thoughts from Tony: We  are  pleased  to  announce  an  addition  to  the  medical  services  provided  by  our  Medical  Director,  Dr.  John  Savage.  Monica  Porter,  Nurse  Practitioner,  has  joined  Dr.  Savage  in  seeing  residents  at  Asbury  Towers.  This  service  enhancement  was  orchestrated  though  the  Putnam  County  Hospital  (PCH).  Monica  now  visits  Asbury  on  Tuesdays  and  Thursdays.  If  you  have  a  need  to  be  seen  by  Monica,  or  by  Dr.  Savage,  please  let  the  charge  nurse  know.  

A  Nurse  Practitioner  is  a  registered  nurse  with  formal  education  in  the  care  of  the  sick  plus  advanced  education  and  training  in  the  diagnosis,  treatment  and  management  of  common  and  chronic  illnesses.  Physicians  and  NPs  are  similar  in  that  both  diagnose,  treat  and  manage  acute  and  chronic  diseases,  order  and  interpret  labs  and  diagnostic  tests  and  prescribe  medications.  Studies  have  found  that  NPs  do  about  80%  to  90%  of  what  physicians  do.  

I  have  copied  below  the  Bio  sent  to  us  by  PCH.  Please  contact  me  if  you  have  any  questions.    Monica  Porter,  MSN,  RN,  FNP-­‐C,  is  a  dedicated  and  nationally  certified  FNP  with  more  than  thirteen  years  in  Family  Practice  and  Primary  Care.  Her  background  is  in  seeing  patients  of  all  ages  for  acute  illness  &  injury,  chronic  disease  management  and  wellness  &  disease  prevention.  Monica  is  a  flexible  and  quick  learner  who  adapts  to  new  situations  easily.  She  enjoys  sharing  her  professional  skills  and  ideas  and  appreciates  a  challenge.  We  have  enjoyed  having  Monica  as  one  of  our  FNP  for  the  last  three  years.  She  has  been  a  valuable  individual  to  our  clinics  and  has  been  very  eager  to  assist  in  any  areas  that  we  have  need  assistance.  We  believe  she  will  be  a  welcomed  addition  to  Dr.  Savage  and  your  facility.      Monica and her family love being outdoors, their dogs, and you can find them at the baseball fields in the summertime! Tony

 

WELCOME NEW RESIDENTS

Poplar Grove Florence Ford

Fredona Zollman

A Tribute to the Late Fern Travis By Sharon Sheridan

At the age of 81 She turned stone blind

Egg-ceptional Spring Traditions With the arrival of spring on March 20 comes all the holidays and traditions associated with the end of winter: religious traditions like Passover

March Food Committee will meet on March 12th at 10:30 a.m. in the Founder’s Lounge. March Resident Council will meet on March 13th at 1:30 p.m. in the Main Dining Room. 2018 Resident Council Members are: President: John Baughman Vice-President: Joan Talley Secretary: Jeanne Shillings Resident to the Board: Joyce Jones Everyone from the Village and Asbury Towers are always welcome to attend.

WEEKLY EVENTS Church Service every Sunday at 1:00 pm in the Lobby

Movies every Monday at 1:00 pm in the Lobby Chimes every Tuesday at 1:30 pm

in the Main Dining Room Art/Craft every Tuesday at 3:00 pm

Cards every Wednesday at 1:30 pm in the Main Dining Room

Manicures/Music every Wednesday at 3:00 pm in the South Dining Rm

Vespers are on every Thursday at 6:30 pm in the Lobby

Special Events of the Month

1st Lanny Ferguson in the Lobby at 1:00 pm 1st Walmart Shopping Trip leaving Lobby at 2:00 pm 2nd Mystery Joyride leaving Lobby at 1:00 pm 5th Trip to Harvest Red Barn Store at 1:00 pm 8th Dollar Tree Shopping Trip leaving Lobby at 1:00 pm 9th Doug DeBaun singing in the Lobby at 1:00 pm 9th Make Your Easter Bonnet in the Main at 2:00 pm 12th Food Committee in Founders Lounge at 10:30 am 12th Book Club Group in Founders Lounge at 6:15 pm 13th Resident Council in the Main at 1:30 pm 14th Mike VanRensselaer in Lobby at 1:30 pm 14th March Birthday Party in Main at 2:30 pm 15th Walmart Shopping Trip leaving Lobby at 1:00 pm 16th St. Patrick’s Day Party in Main at 2:00 pm 20th Taste of Asbury in Main at 2:30 pm 21st Theme Dinner starting at 5:00 pm 22nd Tom Wright in Lobby at 1:00 pm 22nd Dollar General Shopping leaving Lobby at 2:00 pm 23rd Joyride to Covered Bridge leaving Lobby at 1:00 pm 26th Shopping Trip to Cato’s in Brazil leaving at 1:00 pm 29th Out to Lunch Bunch leaving at 10:30 am 30th Good Friday/Easter Social in Main at 2:00 pm

Look for more activities on your calendar and on TV channel 2 for additional activities throughout the month of March.

We will hold our Theme Dinner on March 21st starting at 5:00 p.m. in the Main Dining Room. This

month’s theme will be a Spring/March Holiday theme.

Also, the Taste of Asbury will be on March 20th

at 2:30 pm in the Main Dining Room

Join us on March 13th at 6:30 in the Main Dining Room for a White Elephant Bingo

Game. Please bring a wrapped gift with you.

Join us on March 27th at 6:30 p.m. in the Main Dining Room for our monthly bingo

On March 29th we will have a lunch

outing to Olive Garden. We will leave the lobby at 10:30 a.m. Anyone who

would like to go please, sign up on the sheet on the bulletin board.

See Sandy or Julie with any questions

They offer locally grown produce and Red Barn Farms meats,

along with unique, high quality products that are crafted locally.

We will be visiting the Harvest Store located on 614 S. Bloomington Street, Greencastle on

March 5, 2018 at 1:00 p.m. If you would like to go, please sign up on bulletin board. If

you have any questions, please contact Julie at Extension 117.

Wear Green to celebrate

St. Patrick’s Day on March 16th at 2:00 pm

In the Main Dining Room

March Performers

March 1st, we will have a new performer, Lanny Ferguson, He sings gospel, oldies, country music. He will be in the Lobby at 1:00 pm March 9th, we will have Doug DeBaun in the Lobby at 1:00 pm. He plays a guitar and sings classic country songs. March 14th, we will have Mike VanRensselaer in the Lobby at 1:30 pm. He performs with guitar, banjo and sings folk style songs. March 22nd, we will have Tom Wright singing in the Lobby at 1:00 pm. He sings classic oldies songs. Come and enjoy! If you have any questions, please call Julie at Extension 117.

The birthstone for March is the aquamarine. Its color is

pale to medium blue, sometimes with a slight hint of green. Blue aquamarines are the rarest and most

valuable. The green stones are sometimes changed to blue by heating them in an electric furnace to 842°F

(450°C). Most aquamarines are found in Brazil. They are also found in Siberia, 2 Myanmar (also known as Burma), and parts of the U.S. The aquamarine gets its name from

the Latin term aqua marina, meaning “sea water.” The stone was associated with the god of the sea in Roman

mythology. Aquamarines were frequently placed in tombs of ancient Egyptian mummies to bribe the gods and

guarantee safe passage to the afterlife. In addition, King Solomon is said to have worn aquamarine in his

breastplate as one of the 12 holy gemstones.

Who Was St. Patrick Anyway? St. Patrick was a British bishop

who was the first to bring Christianity to Ireland. He lived in

Ireland for nearly 30 years, preaching the religious values of Christianity. It is said he used a

shamrock, the three-leafed clover, to explain the Holy Trinity to the

Irish people. To this day, St. Patrick is highly revered in the

Irish church.

Thank you to all who came to our First Family Night in February. We all had a good time and it was nice to see some of our Resident’s Families. I look forward to our next Family Night. If you have any suggestions for our next Night, please contact Julie with your ideas.

I placed an Activity Survey in everyone’s mailbox during the month of February. If you have filled it out and returned it thank you. This survey helps to ensure I am offering activities that are of interest to the Resident’s in Asbury. If you haven’t filled your form out, please do so and if you have any questions, please contact me. Thank you. Julie Dozier

Awaiting a Return to Capistrano

On March 19, the residents of San Juan, California, look forward to the return of special visitors to the old Spanish mission: cliff swallows. The return of the

cliff swallows to the San Juan Capistrano Mission is legendary. Hundreds of years ago, local shopkeepers drove away the swallows, which built mud nests on shops and homes. The displaced birds built new nests in the eaves of the old stone church, named for the warrior- priest Giovanni de Capistrano. Every year since the 1930s, the community has heralded the return of the swallows to Capistrano with great fanfare.

In recent years, though, the swallows have returned in decreasing numbers. Some people blame urbanization. For a century or more, the mission was the largest building in San Juan, a perfect target for the nesting swallows. As the population increased, more buildings were built, and swallows began to find alternate nesting sites. Things were complicated further in the 1990s when preservations performed a restoration of the church, the oldest continually used structure in California, and removed the mud nests. Cliff swallows are known to be attracted to places with old nests. The restoration, while architecturally important, discouraged the birds. That’s when the mission sought the help of a professional.

Dr. Charles R. Brown, professor of Biological Sciences at the University of Tulsa and cliff swallow expert, was charged with the task of luring the birds back to the mission. He has employed everything from broadcasting cliff swallow song to building an artificial wall of swallow nests out of plaster. The good news is that the birds have again been spotted in the area of the mission, even though they have not been nesting on the church. Yet every year on March 19, St. Joseph’s Day, the swallows are welcomed with the ringing of the mission bell, flamenco dances, food, and fanfare. Even if the cliff swallows aren’t ready to return to Capistrano, the locals are ready for them.

Making History, I Presume

David Livingstone may have been a Scottish missionary and physician, but he is most famous for his explorations of Africa during the 19th century. Livingstone was one of the first Europeans to see the Zambezi River and Victoria Falls, cross the continent from west to east, as well as witness the harsh realities of the slave trade, which made him a staunch abolitionist. Livingstone’s travels made him an international celebrity, and when he disappeared in 1866 on a search for the source of the Nile River, many feared him dead. American journalist Henry Stanley mounted an expediton to find him and departed the island of Zanzibar off Africa’s eastern coast on March 21, 1871. Eight months later, Stanley arrived in the village of Ujiji on the shore of Lake Tanganyika. It was there that Stanley saw a bearded white man and said, “Dr. Livingstone, I presume?” Stanley’s presumptuous words became as famous as the old explorer himself. A Slice of Pi

When one measures a circular object, it always turns out that its circumference, or the length around, is a little more than three times its width across—3.1415926 to be exact. This number,

known as pi, actually goes on forever. Scientists have calculated its value to more than one trillion digits past its decimal. But for the purposes of celebration, Pi Day is held on March 14, or 3/14, each year. The first Pi Day was organized in 1988 by physicist Larry Shaw, who worked at the San Francisco Exploratorium. The original celebration consisted of Exploratorium staff walking around in a circle and eating pies. Celebrations have evolved since then, including competitions to see who can recite the most digits of pi and Albert Einstein look-alike contests, thanks to that famous scientist’s birthday also falling on March 14. It’s a mathematical holiday Einstein likely would have been pleased to be a part of.

St. Paddy’s Pastimes Debunked

They say that everyone is a little bit Irish on St. Patrick’s Day, and the world will be draped in green on March 17, when St. Patrick’s Day celebrations take place across the globe in honor of the patron saint of Ireland. But if you really want to celebrate the right way, be sure to take a look at these facts behind St. Patrick.

St. Patrick may be one of Ireland’s patron saints (along with St. Brigid and St. Columcille), but he was not Irish. Evidence suggests that he was, in fact, British. By some accounts, he was born with the name Maewyn Succat in either Scotland or Wales. Yet it is important to realize that even though St. Patrick may have been born in Britain in the year 390, at the time of his birth, Britain was occupied by the Romans. Thus, it is very likely that Patrick’s family was from Roman aristocracy. Indeed, Ireland’s precious St. Patrick may well have been Italian.

But don’t trade in Irish green for Italy’s tricolor green, white, and red just yet. The true color of Ireland might be blue. King Henry VIII flew a blue flag over Ireland during the 16th century. Knights of the Most Illustrious Order of Saint Patrick, a society of Irish knights founded by King George III in 1783, wore a light blue color known as St. Patrick’s blue. The Irish president flies a blue flag with a harp. So when did green become the color of Ireland? During the Great Irish Rebellion of 1641, Irishmen flew a green flag against King James. Green became the color of Irish nationalism and independence during the Irish Rebellion of 1798, a notion promulgated in the ballad “The Wearing of the Green.”

So whether you’re marching in Dublin, raising a pint of Guinness in New York, Irish dancing in Sydney, or eating corned beef and cabbage in Montreal, just remember that none of these pastimes come from the original St. Patrick’s Day. The Roman Catholic feast day was traditionally spent in quiet prayer, a far cry from the raucous celebrations of today.

The Boston Massacre

It was a cold, snowy night in Boston on March 5, 1770. Despite the weather, American colonists (calling themselves patriots) gathered outside Boston’s Customs House to taunt the British troops who had been stationed in the city to enforce newly decreed taxation measures. When the redcoats affixed bayonets to their rifles, the Americans responded by throwing snowballs and rocks. Moments later, shots were fired. Five Americans were the first fatalties of the American Revolutionary War in what would become known as the Boston Massacre. What is often forgotten in this episode of American Independence is how avowed patriot and future president John Adams, a lawyer, defended the British soldiers who were subsequently put on trial. Two of the eight were convicted of manslaughter, but for many Americans, justice was far from done. Paul Revere, famed for his midnight ride, turned the Boston Massacre into a provocative engraving, creating an effective piece of propaganda that helped turn Americans against the British. A Doll’s Life

March 3 is a special day in Japan. Hinamatsuri, known as both Doll’s Day and Girls’ Day, is a day to celebrate girls and pray for their health and happiness. The most interesting part of Hinamatsuri is the

elaborate dolls displayed on red-carpeted, stepped platforms. Families either buy a set of dolls when their first daughter is born or receive a set handed down from generation to generation. Sets include a male and female dressed in Imperial attire, representing the emperor and empress, accompanied by three court ladies, five musicians, and other court attendants. The dolls are arranged in order of importance from the top step down and displays are placed in the home for all to see. This tradition has roots in an ancient belief that dolls could attract and contain bad spirits. It was once common practice for the dolls, and any ill fortune, to be tossed into rivers and streams and washed away for good.

March 2018