TRAVEL: MOWER COUNTY SENIORS VISIT NORTHEASTERN MINNESOTA
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Senior Center thrives through volunteers New event, program ideas welcome, director says By Christopher Baldus chris.baldus@austindailyherald.com
she joked, when talking about her erstwhile clawed companion. Lurch was not alone in her affections, however; she regularly took in strays. She recalled being bitten by a lemur once; another time, she made friends with a tree sloth. She regularly rescued animals.
In any given year, more than 100 volunteers help operate the Mower County Senior Center. They answer phones, serve coffee, tend garden, dance and pretty much whatever they can think up. “And if we didn’t have those volunteers we would never be able to function,” said Sarah Schafer, executive director of the nonprofit in Austin. “We use volunteers for everything from our front desk (and answering) phone calls that come into the senior center, to the coffee shop, to bingo, to meals, to everything that goes on in the building. We have volunteer drivers that take seniors to medical appointments and everything in between. Volunteers are extremely important for us.” To become a volunteer means choosing from many different paths. There is also an application process, training and, in some cases, background checks. “It depends on what you are volunteering for,” Schafer said. “Any one-on-ones with seniors, we do a background check.” All volunteer drivers have their backgrounds checked. “They are going to go to a client’s house and pick them up, so it’s a one-on-one situation where they are alone with a senior,” Schafer said. “We want to make sure that a senior knows that our agency has checked out that volunteer first before we allow them to be alone with them, and that there is no criminal background, and they’re safe with that person.” There are variety of existing volunteer jobs available. “We first look at what the time commitment is that you’re interested in,” Schafer said. “So if you are interested in just a couple of hours a month, that’s one type of volunteer.” On the other side of the spectrum is a couple hours a day. “Your time commitment would be the difference in how much training you would receive to do your volunteer position,” Schafer said. “So if you’re interested in volunteering four hours a week, that would be closer to a receptionist/front desk. Usually they are there one time a week for four hours so.” A new volunteer would train at the desk with an experienced volunteer to get an idea of what the job duties are and how things work. So before you commit to your volunteer position, you have an idea what you are committing to.
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Virginia Larsen looks back on 80 years of a rich, energetic life. She has recently has her first book published, which draws on her experience with a hobbleh cockatiel named Lurch. Photos by Eric Johnson/photodesk@austindailyherald.com
Taking flight Virginia Larsen: At 80, still energized, still writing, and now getting published By Deb Nicklay
deb.nicklay@austindailyherald.com
Austin author Virginia Larsen thought for years that she was something of an introvert. “Quiet, always thinking deep, existential thoughts,” deadpanned Larsen, 80. But she realized in later years, “that when I’m with people, I’m energized.” That vitality, we would guess, has made her a sort of conductor for friends, attracting both people and animals into her energy field. Those relationships also proved to be fertile ground for her writing, although for much of her life, her writing was found in letters and unpublished poetry, not books. Until this year, that is. Larsen published her first book, “The Book of Lurch,” recounting the unusual life of her “hunch-backed, club-footed cockatiel,” named for his lurching gait. “Lurch did not enjoy flying on his own,” she writes. “A bird’s tail is the rudder, but the unusual angle of his meant that he could not steer in a straight line. Instead, he flew left, described a circle, then more or less crash-landed behind the starting point, making contact with the wall and fluttering to the floor — or, if no wall was present, hurtling earthward like a plane
without engine power in a windstorm and then skidding on the runway in a flurry of wing feathers and shrieks.” Her book signing at Sweet Reads Books in Austin this summer was wonderful, she said. “Three cockatiels came; two of them were in pants,” she said. Larsen’s command of language —or rather, languages — took up much of her working life, but it was almost always used in front of a classroom, not at a writing desk. Her ability to speak French and German proved a spring-
“The Book of Lurch,” is Virginia Larsen’s first originally-written book. board to wonderful journeys on vacations and teaching assignments, she said. Her last teaching stint took her to Riverland Community College, where she taught for 27 years. Before that, she taught at the University of North Dakota in Grand Forks. Through it all, she said, she was particularly sympathetic “to the underdog; well, I guess ‘under-critter’ in this case”