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Woodstock Times - Featured Arts | 11/19/2009 |
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Made in Woodstock
The young and old want to bring local back |
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| | Victoria Reiss, Amy Godes and Marion Sturgeon want to help seniors with Staying in Place.
[ Dion Ogust ] | |
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by Tusha Yakovleva
Despite is political differences, Woodstock is a town with a strong communal spirit. Its history is laced with organizing initiatives, from Byrdcliffe, to Maverick, to Woodstock '69 (which was, at least, conceived here). There are the staples of Woodstock life such as Michael Esposito's bike recycling, the weekly drum circle, Mower's Flea Market. Family of Woodstock, originally established to help young out-of-towners stranded in the aftermath of the '69 concert, wouldn't have worked without the involvement of the locals.
Modern Woodstock spirit has manifested itself in subtle, yet important community building initiatives, such as Oriole 9's farming partnership with the Woodstock Day School, the Farm Festival, and the town business discount, to name a few. Now, two new projects are being added to the list: a social network for people over 50, and an agriculturally-minded collective formed by people in their twenties.
Both groups are gearing up for their public unveilings this week. Staying in Place, the seniors network, will hold a meeting at the Rescue Squad on November 22 (2 p.m.-4 p.m.) to introduce the group and to find out how much interest it generates among Ulster county's seniors. The collective is hosting its first workshop 6 p.m.-9 p.m. Thursday November 19 at Oriole 9 to present simple fermentation techniques for making homemade beer and wine.
Staying in Place
Staying in Place came about after Amy Godes, a semi-retired psychoanalyst, saw newspaper clippings about intergenerational communities in Boston and New Jersey. Her first thought, "What a good idea! Forget about it. It's too complicated." But, a year later, last February, she gathered a few friends and decided to try it. The group is now registered as a non-profit corporation, and is 13 board members strong (Sam Magarelli, Elizabeth Rosen, Vivi Hlavsa, Victoria Reiss, Jane Cane, Ellen Shapiro, Marion Sturgeon, Edwina Henderson, Lorri Rosenberg, Antoinette Lind, Anita Yuran, Kari Hastings).
First order of business was a name change. Similar communities are referred to as Aging in Place, but Woodstock's group "dropped the 'aging' because it is ageism, and is now 'Staying In Place,'" explained Godes. They aim to set up a system that will help seniors to stay in their own homes, instead of moving to nursing homes. Through partnerships with already existing organizations such as the Ulster County Office for the Aging, Woodstock Senior Recreation, Family of Woodstock, Ulster County Area Transportation, and the Woodstock Time Bank (a bartering organization), the group hopes to set up a comprehensive senior support network, offering its members access to essential services. An availability of reliable and discounted providers of home repair, cleaning, lawn care, home health care, transportation, as well as social services, would help seniors continue to live in their own homes.
Member Victoria Reiss explained that many simply cannot afford the nursing home option, which averages $6000 per month. "Staying in their own homes is about the only way they can avoid going into some kind of government home care." Avoiding the government's assistance takes that strain out of the economy, while including the older generation in a community stimulates the local economy. It also, Reiss simply adds, makes people happier. "Most people want to live where there is a cross section of the population, not just facing people who are as old as they are every day at dinner." Plus, she adds, "Woodstock's especially nice to grow old in."
The group has also been in touch with Jewish Family Services and United Way, working together to design a package for long term and greater need health care. "So far, on our board of 13 people, we are pretty independent and don't need services like this, but it's sort of an insurance because who knows what could happen. One of our members broke a hip and we weren't organized at that point to help her, but she could have used it," tells Godes.
For Staying in Place, social and cultural activities are also a priority. "Woodstock is a natural place for this to happen because we already have Senior Recreation. There is yoga, exercise almost every day. There is a writing group, drama, painting. We play bridge together. So, it's a town that already has things going for older people, but nothing quite like this," said Reiss. They will be organizing dinners; knitting circles; bridge games; trips to museums, theaters, and concerts; and good, plain companionship. If someone is lonely and wants to play scrabble, for example, one of the members will go and play. There is also a bereavement group. Loss is unavoidable: just in the last two years, three members have lost their spouses.
With the help of Michael Berg, Executive Director of Family of Woodstock, and virtuoso grant writer, Staying in Place received a $25,000 planning grant from the New York State Office for the Aging. With this money, they have hired Toby Krawitz as a Planning Consultant. Krawitz is helping the group collect and organize data on how many are interested in being involved, where they are located (the grant covers a large part of Ulster County, including Woodstock, Kingston, Saugerties, Shandaken, Hurley, Olive, Kingston, Marbletown, Denning, and Hardenburgh), and what services they desire. She is also in contact with town boards, service agencies, and church groups, inviting them to join in if it's convenient, or if not, helping them start their own mixed age communities. The membership fee for Staying in Place is $250 annually. This includes access to the directory of verified service providers, member only trips, recreation, and monthly dinners at Violette, a Woodstock restaurant that will offer discounts to the group. Much of this money will be used to provide scholarships to seniors who want to participate but cannot afford to.
The Woodstock Collective
The project on the other side of the age spectrum is Chrisso Babcock's idea. Babcock is originally from Woodstock, a Skidmore dropout who has spent the last two years hitchhiking around the country, learning about diverse farming techniques, and undergoing two formal apprenticeships in biodynamic gardening. Upon his recent return home, Babcock has decided to organize a collective. At its most ambitious, it will be a "self-sufficient, communal group agricultural lifestyle, including the building of our own buildings in a sustainable way, the construction of gardens and land for animals, and the creation of infrastructure such as wells and water catchment systems, seed saving initiatives, canning, preserving, communal composting initiatives, community blacksmith, and free bike collective," explained Babcock.
The project is very young - three weeks at most. Already, many people have shown interest, and a few, such as aspiring gardener Emily Woerthman, have become seriously involved. A free public workshop, hopefully the first of many, is scheduled at Oriole 9. An educational public access TV show is in the works, drawing inspiration from Paper Tiger Broadcasting, a radical, low budget community media production from the 60s and 70s. And, "Yardening," the first large-scale project that the group plans to undertake in the coming year is underway.
The Yardening initiative is Babcock's name for the creation of "household-scale gardens in people's yards for a fair wage, or for a share of the produce being grown, bartered time or skills, etc." In other words, someone with property would choose to reserve a piece of land for gardening space, and a person from the collective would share the responsibility of tending to it. Such a set-up would "form connections with the community, make a visible impact on the town, and help make Woodstock as a town more self-sufficient."
Hand in hand with this idea is the community composting project, also scheduled for this year. The goal is to make compost accessible to people who don't have space, time, or energy to do it. Babcock hopes that some of the compost will come from local restaurants. He is building bicycle carts that fit five-gallon buckets for the purpose of compost pick-up, and has been offered an in-town compost location.
Both Staying in Place and the collective are still mostly in the planning stages and the direction of the groups is, for the moment, fluid, dictated primarily by the desires of the participants. This is only appropriate because both will rely on a volunteer force. They are ambitious projects, but they are not standing alone, rather following national trends. Intergenerational villages are growing around the country, and many young people today are driven towards a communal existence, and a return to agricultural life.++
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© 2010 Ulster Publishing, Inc.
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