Community Update for week of 10/31/2022

December 5, 2023

Update to residents on 11/1/2022

Next Tuesday, Nov. 8 is Election Day

Just a friendly reminder that voting will be taking place in the Auditorium throughout the day. Signs will be posted advising visitors that they are not permitted elsewhere in the building/campus.

Coffee Hour, Nov. 9

We will still have our Coffee Hour on Wednesday, even though it is the last day of our CARF Survey. The surveyors will be plenty busy getting their report in order, leaving us to go about our usual business. We’ll still be able to respond as needed to information requests allowing them to complete our survey.

Save the date! KORA’s Annual Meeting

Thursday, November 10, 2022, at 4:00 pm. In the Auditorium and via Zoom. The Zoom meeting link is https://kendal-org.zoom.us/j/84257430126. Residents can review the minutes from the previous Annual Meeting (Nov 2021) in the library and on the shelf by the KORA bulletin board.

A quorum is needed to conduct official business, including the approval of the 2023 Council, officers, and budget. Therefore, there will be no KOTV broadcast of this important meeting. Come to Heiser early for refreshments starting at 3:30! – Anne Palmer, KORA Secretary

Friday, Nov. 11 Veteran’s Day

Oberlin Schools are inviting the community to a special Veteran’s Day event at the new Elementary School at 10:00 am. Our Kendal Vets are contributing photos for a slide show and mementos from their service days. Kendal will provide transportation and encourage your attendance. We’ll have a bus leave from Kendal at 9:30 giving time to look over the displays. Vets, please bring any items down you are willing to have displayed by Thursday at noon. We will secure them and bring them back the same day.

Save the Date: Year-End Tax Planning webinar

Vance DeBouter, CPA will be Friday, November 11 at 3:00 PM via Zoom. More details will be announced next week. Sponsored by Kendal at Oberlin Philanthropy Committee. For more information, please contact Grace Tompos, Chair, or Tom Konkoly.

Pandemic Heroes

Thanks to Joe Colucci and Laurie Dupee who helped us recognize our October pandemic heroes, Bill Doan, retired-pharmacist, Discount Drug Mart and Dar McDonough, Director, Oberlin Library. We’ll continue this spotlight each month.

ArbNet Approves Kendal for Level II Arboretum

I’m happy to announce that Kendal at Oberlin’s The John Bartram Arboretum has accomplished an upgrade and is now considered a Level II, internationally accredited arboretum! Our arboretum was initiated in 2015 by a small group of passionate residents and its continued growth and development has been a joint effort among members of KORA’s Arboretum Committee, Grounds Department staff and added support KORA and Administration. This achievement has been a work in progress for over two years and was accomplished through an increase in our collections’ biodiversity, the creation of a Collections Policy to guide our growth, official management by staff, and a very robust increase in educational programming. I’m very proud to be a part of the team that helped make this possible and thankful to all those that helped along the way! This exciting upgrade was shared as “hot off the press” news at last week’s Afternoon Exchange. 

(Shared by Rachel Duncan, Horticulturist, Arboretum Curator, ISA certified Arborist.)

New Single-session Program: Has Your Brain Sprung a Leak? 

In response to the interest shown after the presentation from the Dementia Action Alliance Conference, we will be showing a video about normal versus abnormal memory issues. It’s a 22-minute video presented by Lisa Genova as a TED talk on YouTube. She is a well-known neuroscientist who has many publications dealing with memory. We will be showing the video to small groups with time for discussion afterwards. The dates and times for the groups are Thursday, November 17 at 10:30 AM OR Friday, November 18 at 1:30 PM. Both sessions are the same and will be held in the Education Center Training Room. Sign-up sheets are by the open mailboxes. (Shared by Carol Conti-Entin, Member, Dementia Friendly Discussion Group)

Power Outage Report

The planned power outage repairs, both citywide and at Kendal, went well last weekend. The power went out at exactly 12:00 midnight.  The power was restored at 3:05am and the official alert notice through the City of Oberlin was issued at 3:16am.  

At Kendal, the outside meter was removed from the main switchgear cabinet system.  The cable connecting the removed meter and the internal switch gear was also removed. This is where the mink entered the system previously. The meter is now mounted on the OMLPS pole on the property adjacent to our campus. Special thanks to Jon Hall, Ken Menefee, Rey Carrion, and everyone else who worked all night to assure that everything went as planned.  

COVID NEWS / STATISTICS

Side Effects From COVID Vaccine Show Its Effectiveness

Here’s a reassuring study that confirms that side effects from the COVID RNA vaccines show a good immune response, although everyone, regardless of the degree of side effects, had a robust boost in immunity. (Shared by Don Parker)

Editor’s note: Find the latest COVID-19 news and guidance in Medscape’s Coronavirus Resource Center.

If you had fever, chills, nausea, or other common side effects to the Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna COVID-19 vaccines, that’s good news.  It means your body had a greater antibody response than people who had just a little pain or rash at the injection site, or no reaction at all.

That’s according to new research published in the journal JAMA Network Open .  “These findings support reframing postvaccination symptoms as signals of vaccine effectiveness and reinforce guidelines for vaccine boosters in older adults,” researchers from Columbia University in New York, the University of Vermont, and Boston University wrote.

The vaccines provided strong protection regardless of the level of reaction, researchers said. Almost all the study’s 928 adult participants had a positive antibody response after receiving two doses of vaccine.  “I don’t want a patient to tell me that, ‘Golly, I didn’t get any reaction, my arm wasn’t sore, I didn’t have fever. The vaccine didn’t work.’ I don’t want that conclusion to be out there,” William Schaffner, MD, a professor in the Division of Infectious Diseases at Vanderbilt University Medical Center told CNN.  “This is more to reassure people who have had a reaction that that’s their immune system responding, actually in a rather good way, to the vaccine, even though it has caused them some discomfort,” said Schaffner, who was not involved in the study.

Sources

JAMA Network Open: “Association of Symptoms After COVID-19 Vaccination With Anti–SARS-CoV-2 Antibody Response in the Framingham Heart Study”

CNN: “Covid-19 vaccine study links side effects with greater antibody response”

Supporting those at Risk

Medscape article highlights how a sizable minority of people are still taking COVID seriously with the tried-and-true precautions –and the consequent isolation they feel. It might help the majority gain some empathy for those who choose to be extra safe and to gauge the inconvenience of the extra care against the real possibility of the long-term consequences of COVID.

As a CPAP recall drags on, sleep apnea sufferers are getting angry

From NPR and the Associate Press, shared by Robin Lauren. Here is thhttps://www.npr.org/2022/10/25/1131380992/phillips-cpap-recall-sleep-apnea-foam-particlese article.