Security at work

Drilling. Pulling. Positioning. Checking placement. Setting in place.

No, we didn’t turn into a dentist’s office this week. We installed security cameras.

Anthony Walter from All Electric LLC with help from Randy Neibauer installed cameras at our facilities. It meant climbing into the attic on a super cold day, but Anthony said it still was better than being outside on a sub-zero day.

To install cameras, you choose your location, check to be sure you can reach it through the attic, drill holes to run the cords, pull the cords from the office to the location, mount and connect the camera. You can adjust the camera to get your desired angle and view. We used cellphones and shouting to give direction. “A little to the left. Now down. Good!”

Installing cameras also became a group activity. Everyone wanted input on location, angle and technique for installing. Anthony was patient with all of us and got the job done.

He did so well, that when he installed at our second location, he put up more cameras in half the time.

The system we purchased is pretty intuitive. What I couldn’t figure out with the electronic manual I was able to find in the online forum. There’s one aspect I have yet to master, but it’s not absolutely necessary. I think I need another cord to get it to work.

This little device is all it takes to run a security system.

We wanted a security system to better track who is in our facilities. It could help if a resident tries to exit. It provides a layer of security.

It also captures one of our employees who joked she’d dance when she was in view of the cameras. So far, I’ve seen a couple of moves. It’s good to have fun when you can. We even used it to figure out the mystery of who took the fire extinguisher off the wall.

Hopefully, we won’t need to use the recorded footage often. We’d like smooth sailing at our facilities. But it’s good to know it’s there if the need arises.

Christmas at Hilltop Part 2

So I got this idea to do a Christmas video. It started when I was taking pictures as Shelly and the residents started to decorate. I was taking photos of ornaments still in boxes, stars yet to be placed, lights not yet strung. I knew how pretty the trees, especially, would be once they were decorated.

Yet, I was strapped for time and couldn’t stick around to photograph every aspect of the tree decorating.

But I still wanted to share our finished work with you.

So, I spent a little time taking videos of some of our trees and entrance. Then I supplemented with photos of ornaments and decorations.

I try to keep most of our videos to 2 minutes or less. In this fast-paced, want-it-now society, no one wants to watch a long video. And yes, 4 minutes is long. But, this video felt like it would be rushed at 2 minutes. Aren’t the holidays meant to be a time to slow down and enjoy?

So, I found a 4-plus minute song and set about editing the video to match it.

The music was a bit of a challenge. I have some royalty-free music I use for a lot of our videos. But I didn’t have Christmas music. I did an online search, but when you search “royalty-free music,” it’s not necessarily no cost. Then I remembered I’d used a song in the past for a video, and it only required attribution in the video in order to use it.

I went back to our video to find the information, went to the website and found a bunch of royalty-free free music, including holiday music. Yes! I found a pretty version of “It Came Upon a Midnight Clear.” Many thanks to Kevin MacLeod at incompetech.com. He and Creative Commons get the credit in the video for the use of the music.

The trouble with a 4-minute video is its size. While not a big deal on a computer, on my iPhone, it’s a pretty big file. Too big to email, apparently. And I didn’t have my cord to connect to my laptop to drag it directly. But, I was able to use the cloud to transfer it. A few minutes later, it was uploaded on YouTube, watch it here. It also will be on our Facebook page, https://www.facebook.com/HilltopAffiliates.

So, take a few minutes and go watch our “long” video. Merry Christmas from all of us at Hilltop!

Christmas at Hilltop

Since the end of November, Shelly Anderson, our activities coordinator, has been decorating for the holidays at Hilltop. She and her helper elves – the residents – have set up multiple trees, strung garland and put up decorations to make our common areas festive.

We have some beautiful decorations on our trees. Each one is themed by color and ornament. We have white trees with gold decorations and blue decorations, green trees decked in red and green and plenty of Santas, snowmen and angels.

We’ve planned parties for residents and their family members. We had our first recently, complete with a visit from Santa, music with the accordion ladies and treats from our cook Becky. Shelly found cute cardboard props to do photos with the residents. They include a snowman nose, reindeer antlers, a Santa beard and more. We got some really cute photos with them. It’s neat how everyone enjoys doing fun photos for the camera!

Shelly and Minnette have fun with holiday props.

Christmas also means cards and presents. Those jobs have fallen to me.

I ordered bright lime green mugs for our residents as gifts. We encourage them to drink a lot of water, and this will help to each have a dedicated, no-spill mug with an easy-to-hold handle that fits every cup holder imaginable. I bought printed cellophane sheets and ribbon and packaged a mug and hot cocoa mix for each resident. Well, technically I’ve wrapped 31 and have another nine to go!

I also thought it would be a good idea to send Christmas cards to residents’ families and some of our business contacts. I should have thought of it in October or November when I could have had some cards printed with a special message. Instead, I had this thought in December, so I was relegated to buying cards and writing them all out by hand. Fifty-some cards later, I think I’m nearly done. Hopefully, it’s the thought that counts, right?

The downside to all this wrapping and card writing is that I really don’t want to go home and do my own. The gifts I have yet to buy won’t need to be wrapped until right before Christmas, so I’ve got time. I do enjoy wrapping.

And maybe I’ll get around to cards next week. Maybe. If you don’t get a Christmas card from me this year, you’ll know why.

Wisconsin Rapids will be a dementia-friendly community

The dementia-friendly community concept is rolling out across Wisconsin, in a grassroots wave. At the heart of many communities is the Aging & Disability Resource Center, an agency serving elderly and adults with disabilities, helping connect people with resources.

The ADRCs, as they are called, were tasked earlier this year with leading the charge toward dementia-friendly communities as part of the Dementia-Capable Wisconsin initiative. I learned more about what’s happening in Wisconsin Rapids during the United Way of Inner Wisconsin’s Supportive Community Health Services Roundtable meeting. Erin Johnson of the ADRC of Central Wisconsin updated us on the progress.

The goal of dementia-friendly communities is to make people with dementia feel safe and accepted in their communities. People with dementia report barriers in their daily lives. They worry about getting lost or encountering negative reactions from others. They might be socially isolated, feel shame, have low self-esteem or be depressed.

There are 100,000 people living in Wisconsin with Alzheimer’s disease or other dementia. That number is expected to double by 2030 and double or triple again by 2050. Most of those people will live outside of assisted living facilities like Hilltop. They will live at home or with family members.

In a dementia-friendly community, people who work at local businesses, agencies and organizations we use on a daily basis would be trained on how to identify, approach and interact with people with dementia. This will help people feel more comfortable, knowing that their daily interactions will be with people who understand them. It also will help employees be more comfortable, knowing they’ve been trained to act appropriately and provide an important service to customers.

Stores, restaurants, banks and other businesses and agencies can participate in employee training. The ADRC-CW has set up an initial meeting for anyone interested in being part of the planning group on Dec. 7. If you’d like to participate, let me know, and I’ll get you in touch with the right people. This group will help ensure proper materials are chosen or created, that training is organized and conducted and that businesses are approached and encouraged to take part.

It’s exciting that this concept is coming to Wisconsin Rapids and that we can be a leader in our state.

Dementia-Capable Wisconsin

I listened in on a Wisconsin Department of Health Services, or DHS, webinar recently on Dementia-Capable Wisconsin. Sessions were held around the state, and if you couldn’t attend in person, you could listen online, which is what I chose. (https://www.dhs.wisconsin.gov/dementia/index.htm)

I wasn’t sure what to expect, but it turned out to be an overview of where we are at as a state when it comes to dementia. Some of it I was familiar with, having attended some conferences this year and done some research.

Some key topics addressed were the Music & Memory program (which is fascinating and deserves its own blog post at some point, and which we’d love to do at Hilltop); dementia-friendly communities; dementia training opportunities; and the dementia-friendly employers’ toolkit.

The neat thing about most of these programs is how they are growing organically, from the ground up, not the top down.

Wisconsin was the first state in the country to take on Music & Memory program, and it took off like wildfire. DHS intended to introduce it to nursing homes, and what they found was many more wanting to add it, writing their own grants to get funding and finding creative ways to start the program. Music & Memory creates individual playlists for residents and provides that music on an iPod with headphones. Residents can listen to the music they grew up with and remember, to help put them at ease and to make them feel better. The results can be amazing. (Watch “Alive Inside,” a documentary about how Music & Memory came to be and the lives it has transformed. http://www.aliveinside.us/)

Dementia-friendly communities are springing up across the state. DHS has encouraged communities to take the program and make it their own rather than having it be a government program dictated to communities. There are different takes on it in different places. A toolkit helps provide specific information to specific businesses, for example restaurants or stores.

The employers’ toolkit was put together because most caregivers are still in the workforce. DHS wanted a way to reach them, and it made sense to get to them through work. The toolkit provides resources and helps business owners understand what their workers might be going through as caregivers and how to help them.

After working in a memory care facility and co-facilitating the Alzheimer’s caregiver support group, it’s good to see so much happening in our state to address dementia. It’s good to know there are more resources out there.

My first ground-breaking ceremony

We had glorious weather for our ceremonial ground-breaking Nov. 3, 2015, for Hilltop Grand Village. It was 70 with sun and a breeze. It aided in our event’s success, I’m sure.

Remember, this is Wisconsin -- November in Wisconsin. Some years, we have snow in October, so 70 and shirt-sleeves is a gift.

This was my first ground-breaking. People think if you work for a newspaper you cover a lot of ground-breaking ceremonies. But most are just that – ceremonial. The work usually has begun (which is true for Hilltop Grand Village), and it’s a chance for company leaders and employees to share the project in a public way with financial folks, architects, builders and local dignitaries. It’s a great way to kick off the project. And it’s just something you do. It’s expected, I guess.

It also was my first time planning one. After kicking around some ideas, I went online to figure out what other people do. Turns out most ground breakings are pretty standard, but we wanted ours to be uniquely ours.

Hilltop Grand Village will offer resort-style living for independent seniors. It will offer amenities people likely don’t have at home and activities you might find at resort hotels. It will look like a resort and function like one, too. So, if you were having a ground-breaking for a resort, what would you have? Something classy, right?

Hilltop Grand Village also will have an indoor streetscape where residents and guests can find our many amenities as well as plenty of places to gather and share in our community. It’s nicknamed Broadway, so opening night on Broadway, you’d have a red-carpet event.

The concept was decided.

It actually was easy to find a red carpet and velvet ropes – a family member used them for an event and had them in storage. We pulled together champagne flutes and wine glasses, gold flatware and red table cloths. We bought sparkling wine and cheesecake, and Altmann Construction provided cheese and sausage trays, crackers, water and soda – and the golden shovels. The final touch was swag bags. While they didn’t rival the ones guests get at premieres, they were pretty and provided some tasty and useful treats to our guests.

We had enough special guests in attendance that we did two rounds of tossing shovels full of sand for the cameras. Smiles and applause all around.

The only thing I didn’t take into account was the noise at a construction site. We weren’t planning long or detailed remarks, and our group would be small enough I didn’t anticipate the need for a microphone and loud speaker. Fortunately, River Cities Community Access attended and videotaped the event. Jesse Austin brought a microphone to be able to capture our speakers on video. You can see (and hear!) that video (and ours) here: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL5VlE-nL4JOZy2Kc6xMQbLP-yXMRL7Wwn

All in all, it was a successful event. And now I can say I’ve not only been to a ground-breaking ceremony, I’ve planned one.

Breaking ground

The third time was the charm when I went to the site of the future Hilltop Grand Village to take pictures. The previous two times it was raining and overcast. But the third time, Oct. 22, was nice. It was warm and the sun was out.

The third time I had to park and walk a bit because a big piece of equipment blocked the “road.” It’s more of a path where vehicles drive, not really a road.

I’ve been taking photos and videos from the front of the property along Highway 54 to chart our progress. Workers began clearing the site Oct. 19, and within a couple of days had progressed quite a bit.

The smell of fresh-cut wood hung in the air. The huge piles of mulch were testament to the work under way. Bulldozer tracks lined the black earth, but it was pretty level. It was easier to see where the new facility will go. It was quite different when it was just a wooded lot, tucked behind Home Depot. Now it’s looking like a construction site, ready for our new resort-style senior living complex.

It’s been in the planning stage for quite some time. So long, in fact, that it doesn’t seem quite real that it’s finally happening.

I’ve spent some time in the past few days making plans for our upcoming ground-breaking ceremony. Having never done this before, it’s a learning experience. We have to make decisions about who to invite and what we should serve and how we should commemorate it. It’s like party planning, but for a short gathering at an outdoor venue. Fortunately, the weather forecast is good for this time of year.

Good weather should help construction as well. We hope to be open by next August for residents to move into our resort-style senior living apartments.

You can follow our progress on our Facebook page for Hilltop Grand Village, https://www.facebook.com/HilltopGrandVillage.