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A Special Time of Year The holidays! I find myself thinking of holidays past when my family was all here, and the children were young. I think about the stages of life. In the beginning Christmas Eve was reserved for our family only—Raymond, R.L., Todd, Brad, Tyler, and me. Then the boys married and their beautiful wives shared the festivities with us. Soon there were grandbabies, who became teenagers, then adults—and suddenly the Christmas Eve celebration of just our immediate family became 19 people. When our family was young we celebrated Christmas Day at our home with some extended family members, including Ray’s sister Anna Marie, brother-in-law Ves, and their family of five, with the cousins enjoying Christmas together. This was followed by an event the Sunday after Christmas when we got together with my side of the family, the Cases—my parents, sisters Jacque and Barbara, and their families. We alternated between our house and the house of Jacque and her husband, Bill. There was always a lot of activity, fitting in family celebrations, entertainment with friends, and employee parties. What busy and happy times! Next, my sons and their wives hosted beautiful celebrations for our now-large family. How nice to be a guest! I look forward to spending time with my family that can be here and sharing holiday cheer with friends. Christmas will now be different without Tyler and Raymond. And some of the grandchildren are married and have additional families they will spend time with. There are no greatgrandchildren this year, but I anticipate that will be the next experience to look forward to in this journey of life. Enjoy your family and friends, hold them close, and have a wonderful holiday season. Contributing Editor
Wes Shaw NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2019 • 60PLUS
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HEALTH // STORY BY SUSAN MEYERS // DESIGN BY DEREK JOY
The Influenza Virus and the Elderly A Deadly Duo
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ach year as fall rolls around, people start hearing the call to get vaccinated for the flu. But does one need to get the flu vaccine every year? The simple answer is yes.
The influenza shot is the best way to prevent the flu, which can have serious and even fatal consequences, especially in the elderly. The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) estimates there are more than 20,000 deaths from the flu each year and more than 200,000 hospitalizations. Most of these deaths occur in the elderly and the very young. “Older adults have a high risk of complications and even death due to the flu because their immune systems are weaker,” says Dr. Alberto Marcelin, family practitioner at Nebraska Medicine. “It is estimated that 50 to 70% of flu-related hospitalizations occur in patients 65 years or older and approximately 90% of flu-related deaths occur in people over 60 years old.” Getting the flu vaccine not only boosts a person’s immune system in protecting against the influenza virus but also decreases their chances of obtaining other serious infections. “If you don’t get vaccinated and get a severe influenza infection and end up in the hospital, you are more likely to contract other serious infections with organisms like methicillin—resistant staphylococcus aureus (MRSA),” says Dr. Renuga Vivekanandan, infectious disease specialist at CHI Health. “The flu can also make other chronic conditions like heart disease, emphysema, or asthma even worse.” The effectiveness of the vaccine varies each year depending on the strain of flu circulating in the community and how well a person’s body responds to the vaccine. “Even if you acquire influenza after vaccination, the severity of your illness will be lessened if you get the influenza vaccine,” Vivekanandan says. “The flu vaccine primes your body so the body can create antibodies and is ready to fight against the circulating strain.”
It’s also important to note that the flu vaccine does not cause the flu. “It’s impossible to get the flu from the vaccine,” Vivekanandan says. “It is an inactivated vaccine. There is no live virus present to replicate and cause infection.” Someone who has been recently vaccinated may develop redness, mild muscle aches, and even a low-grade fever for a day or two following administration of the shot, but these symptoms are nothing in comparison to influenza, which can cause high fevers and severe debilitating muscle aches, and usually lasts three to five days.
“The flu is predictably unpredictable.” -Dr. Anne O’Keefe Determining how bad the illness will be each year is basically a guessing game. “The flu is predictably unpredictable,” says Dr. Anne O’Keefe, senior epidemiologist at Douglas County Health Department. “Every spring, scientists try to determine what the flu virus is going to be based on what’s circulating in other parts of the world. If it’s a strain that hasn’t changed and has been around for a couple years, you will have better immunity. However, if it is a completely new strain, like the swine flu we experienced in 2009, it can quickly become a pandemic. An early winter can also increase the number of flu cases,” she says.
Those who are 65 years and older should get the flu vaccine in early September, or as soon as it becomes available, O’Keefe says. It takes about two weeks for the body to respond to the vaccine and develop protective antibodies—so people want to get the vaccine a couple of weeks before fall hits. People in this age group should also ask for the high dose vaccine, which has been shown to be more effective and offer greater protection to those over age 65, Marcelin says. Other preventive measures include practicing good hygiene and using a hand sanitizer when soap and water are not available. Avoid environments where other people are ill. Children should also be vaccinated early as they are often incubators of the flu and may hasten the spread of the virus. Those who think they have been exposed or begin to develop common flu symptoms such as fever, chills, cough, sore throat, body aches, or rapid heart rate should talk to their doctor about getting the antiviral medication called Tamiflu. This medication can reduce the severity and duration of the influenza infection. Those who are exposed to someone with influenza can also request Tamiflu as a prophylaxis to prevent the infection from developing, Vivekanandan says. While the flu vaccination is especially important for the elderly and the very young, everyone should get the vaccine. “When you get your yearly influenza vaccination, you are not only protecting yourself but also protecting the people you love, and people in your community who are at higher risk for serious complications like the elderly and the young,” Vivekanandan says.
This year, the vaccine has been prepared to protect against the A and B strains and it was recently updated to be more effective against these strains, notes O’Keefe.
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ACTIVE LIVING // STORY BY KARA SCHWEISS // PHOTOGRAPHY BY BILL SITZMANN // DESIGN BY MADY BESCH
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four or five times a week in the beautiful and still-new Fremont YMCA pool. At 79, the exercise keeps him fit, flexible, and strong, and he also touts the natural endorphins that help make aches and pains go away and keep him in a good mood. “He has a strong presence at the facility and is a friend to all,” aquatic director Dian Christensen says. “He is one of the kindest people I know. He has been a mentor to me in my present position for the past year and a half. He has solid advice and vast experience, and is a great listener and fabulous storyteller.” Christensen says Blick is “still a phenomenal swimmer,” too. “He knows how important it is to stay active, and it shows.” she adds. Blick would probably make quite a splash in a master’s competition, but he isn’t interested in competing. “I did that,” Blick says. Blick started a long way from Fremont, Nebraska, where he and his wife, Shirley, now live much of the year. The son of German immigrants, Blick grew up in Bakersfield, California, and discovered a talent for swimming as a schoolboy when he’d be awarded admission to a local pool by winning races. At his large high school (his graduating class had 900 people), swimming wasn’t a major sport, but it did have a swim team. “I could remember as a freshman that I beat the seniors,” Blick says. Blick also competed in meets throughout the region through club swimming, but as with his high school team, the season was limited by unheated outdoor pools. In his senior year, he and two teammates decided to get an edge on the competition by starting their training in the wintertime. “We went to a motel pool,” Blick says, with a chuckle. “That was the only heated pool in the area.” The conditioning worked, and Blick became known in competitive swimming circles in the area. Then came his chance at world-renown. A college swimming coach from Illinois once stayed at the Blick family’s motel (not the motel where Blick and his teammates swam) and happened to notice a specific photo of Blick.
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“My dad has the picture up on the wall of me winning the section meet, and he’s saying, ‘he’s the best’ in his broken English,” Blick says. Blick’s father talked to the coach, and it ended with an invite to a Midwestern college and the promise to facilitate a scholarship offer.
That’s no exaggeration. Of the 1,022 gold medals the United States has won at the Olympic Games since 1896, almost 25% (246) of those have been for swimming.
“I come walking back in at the end of summer thinking maybe I’ll go to community college and my dad said, ‘Got it all fi xed. You’re going to go to North Central College near Chicago. You’re going to love it,” Blick says. “I had never been any further east than Nevada.”
“When I picture me standing on the podium—the national anthem playing, with my teammates—I’ll never forget that,” he says. But there was more ahead for him. Blick was still a college student when he realized his Olympic dreams, and he emphasizes that his six decades since then have been wonderful as well.
Blick attended North Central College on a swimming scholarship, where “I was sort of a big fish in a small pool. I was in the right place at the right time.” He started college in 1959, declaring himself an education major and swimming as part of the team. That year he won National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics championships for the 100-yard freestyle, 220-yard freestyle, and the 440-yard freestyle. The next year he won national championships in the 220-yard freestyle and the 440-yard freestyle. He believes the 220-yard freestyle was his best individual event, and in fact, he was No. 1 in the nation in the 220-yard for two years in college. Being a good swimmer in college opened other opportunities for him. As it happened, there was a swimming competition going on down the road—the 1959 Pan-American Games, a qualifier for the 1960 Olympic Games in Rome, and the first PanAmerican Games to be held in the U.S. Blick was a gold medalist at those Pan-American Games in Chicago as part of the 4x200-meter freestyle relay and advanced to Rome the next year. At the 1960 Olympic Games, Blick was one of four members of the U.S. men’s team who won gold in the 4x200-meter freestyle relay and set a new world record. U.S. athletes took home 15 of the 45 medals (nine of those gold) awarded in swimming that Olympics, more than any other nation. “What we did—not just the relay team but the whole men’s team, and the women’s team—we started the world domination in swimming by Americans,” he says.
The 1960 Olympics were also a turning point for Blick.
After returning from the 1960 Olympics, he continued to swim on his college team. He won championships in the 100-yard freestyle, 220-yard freestyle, and 440-yard freestyle in 1961, beating his own scores in each event in 1962 and again winning the championships. “As the only North Central College athlete to ever win an Olympic gold medal, Dick Blick owns a unique page in the college’s storied history, and particularly that of our athletic program,” the college’s vice president for institutional advancement, Rick Spencer, says. “Dick was the star athlete on two of North Central’s national championship swimming teams (1961 and 1962) and part of an era of Cardinal swimmers who won four national titles in a six-year period…In 2004, Dick was among the first class of inductees into the college’s Athletic Hall of Fame. He is a truly fantastic individual who remains engaged with the college, and is always generous with his time while enthusiastically sharing his historic gold medal with our students.” Blick graduated from North Central in 1962, and prepared to attend graduate school at Indiana University on the way to becoming a teacher and coach. He also got married that same year— and he turned away from competitive swimming. His coaches were confident he could qualify for the 1964 Olympic Games, but he chose not to pursue it. Blick was in peak shape, but he was ready to move on.
“Once I made the decision, I never looked back with regret,” he says. “Once I left swimming, the ability to use my skill and to work hard did pay off. In years of coaching I would always tell the kids, ‘If I could give you a shortcut I would, but there is no shortcut. It’s working hard.’” The Blicks moved to California, where Blick taught math and physical education in public schools, and coached swimming and water polo. His wife taught at the elementary level. The couple welcomed a son and daughter. Time moved forward, the children grew up, and the Blicks retired. Their daughter stayed in California but their son married a woman from Fremont and ended up in Nebraska. Dick and his wife live near their son and his family here, and part of the year they live in California to be near their daughter and her family. “Family is important and we have the slogan ‘if you’re there, you have to be all there.’ So we’re not just visiting,” Blick says. Despite the winter weather, Blick likes Fremont, which he says reminds him of the farming communities where he grew up. The couple have many friends and participate in community events, including dressing up as Lord Richard and Lady Shirley every year to give out awards to students participating in the Fremont Chessfest, a scholastic chess tournament. “I try to go four to five times a week to the new YMCA pool, we’re involved in church here, and there are the grandkids,” he says. “That’s really a big part of our lives, watching our grandkids grow.” These days, Blick gets more questions about his association with the Dick Blick art supplies stores (not his enterprise and he’s no relation to the founder, but he handles the inquiries with good humor) than about his swimming accomplishments, and that’s okay by him. “Dick is very unassuming and a person you would never know was a former Olympic swimmer unless you see him swim,” Christensen says, adding that when people at the Y make the discovery, Blick always shows grace and humility when answering their questions. “Even though the record was broken and even for that time in history I was on top and I’ll never forget it, my life has never been the same,” he says. “I couldn’t have done what I did without telling you that God had given me the talent and I was grateful. He gave me the strength because I knew I couldn’t do it by myself.”
Hot Take on a Cool Practice » Mary Pat Paul’s Hot Yoga Journey« PROFILE // STORY BY SARA LOCKE // PHOTOGRAPHY BY BILL SITZMANN // DESIGN BY DEREK JOY
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M
ARY PAT PAUL is a polite
woman, soft-spoken and mild mannered. Get her on a yoga mat, however, and she goes from mild to hot in seconds.
In a practice often avoided by those half her age, Paul has become a leader and a voice of authority in hot yoga, no matter how soothing that voice happens to be. Hot yoga has given her the tools to handle whatever life throws at her, and life has thrown a pretty solid curve ball. “Hot yoga isn’t like other practices, but it was the first yoga that I found, and I feel really connected to it,” Paul says. She practiced hot yoga long before she realized how many different styles of yoga there are. Still, yoga practiced in a heated room is her favorite. “There are reasons I do a vinyasa [flow] or a yin [relaxing] class, but I’ll always come back to hot yoga as my main practice. It’s the practice I feel is most healing.”
A Quiet Place Those who walk into yoga classes at most studios will find a regular cast of characters. A few fit moms taking one hour of respite from their jobs and families. A gaggle of giggling women snapping pre-class selfies and checking in on social media. A hard-core yogi is already balancing on one leg while stretching the other leg straight up to the ceiling. One man stands on his head while the only other man in the room nervously wonders if it’s too late for him to change his mind about being there. Those walking into Paul’s hot yoga class notice the silence. The lights are low, the practitioners are still and quiet on their mats, and the room is a humid 105 degrees. Pracitioners come mentally prepared and ready to sweat. “Most yoga classes are very communityfocused,” Paul says. “I love that people can find these families in their class, and feel good about reaching out to other students to talk and connect.” But Paul's classes are about reaching inward. “That’s not how hot yoga works," Paul says. "You can talk in the hall; you can talk in the parking lot. You don’t talk in class.” “She’s an amazing teacher,” says Gabrielle Hopp, co-owner of One Tree Yoga. “She’s particularly good with brand-new people. She’s done additional training outside of her [required] 200 hours that focuses on therapeutics and modifications for all different body types, so she has that additional skill set of being able to help anyone who is able to walk in that room.”
Hot yoga is a way to take inventory of the body and finding the places that need work. Like all projects people have put off for too long, the first few times can be uncomfortable. “It’s not uncommon for someone to try to push themselves too hard their first few classes,” Paul says. “I’ll suggest that they step out of a pose, try to get them to come down to corpse [laying prone on the mat] or to child’s pose [sitting on one’s feet with the chest between the thighs and forehead on the floor], but once you see their feet turning white as they grip the mat, you kind of know they’re not going to listen to you because they’re not listening to themselves yet. And then they fall. They learn. We’re all still learning to listen to ourselves.”
Make Time for Your Health, or Make Time for Your Illness Paul started yoga in 2001 when traditional medicine was not working for her. “I had gone to the doctor for this intense back pain I was having,” Paul says. “I had already had thyroid cancer and it was enough of a wake-up call that I knew I couldn’t ever ignore signs of distress from my body. The first thing the doctor did was prescribe Celebrex. I argued that the pain was a symptom, and I wasn’t trying to treat my pain, I was trying to treat the cause of my pain. I was told to give the medicine a chance, and I did.” Months later, Paul returned to the doctor, who expected her to be grateful at the insistence on medication. “It was all so much worse. I couldn’t feel my foot. I couldn’t walk without pain. I thought, 'I guess this is it. Everyone you know ends up with a bad back, a bad hip, a bad knee. This is it; this is my life now'.” But it wasn’t. Paul and her body had developed a trusting relationship, and she knew that the communication she was getting from her back was more than her body simply giving up on her. “I asked for a second opinion. The doctor told me that from my X-ray, it was clear that there was nothing truly wrong. That’s when I realized I needed more than a second opinion; I needed a new doctor— they had never taken an X-ray. I left and found a new doctor, who quickly realized I had a herniated disc.” Paul soon took up yoga as a means to strengthen and fortify herself.
“When I told my friend, Bernie Bresnahan, that I was still in so much pain from the herniated disk, she told me to come to her hot yoga class at One Tree,” Paul says. “She said that the warmth combined with deep twists and gentle stretches would help loosen and release it. For those first few classes, I was doing adaptive poses during the back stretches. Everyone else was coming into them so easily and I was on my elbows just breathing through the pain. Then after that fourth class I walked in and I could feel it, but it wasn’t unbearable anymore. Soon I was doing all of the poses and building strength. I was exactly where I needed to be.” As she continued attending yoga classes, she gained more relief from her back pain. “It’s an hour and a half of practice, but the pain relief it provides last three or four days," Paul says. "Medicine has its place, but medicine couldn’t do that. For me, for my problem, only hot yoga could do that. And it did, every time. We need to see our physical practice and medical practice as a team. We need both.” Paul saw the changes yoga provided to her mentally and physically, and made it her mission to provide the same support and healing she had found. She completed the 200-hour teacher training in 2011 through One Tree Yoga. The course, certified through Yoga Alliance, includes 100 hours of training practice, and another 100 hours made up of philosophy, anatomy, and other courses. It’s a lot of work to be done in two years, but Paul found it important. “Yoga had helped me so much,” Paul says. “It gave me my life back. It made my body healthy and strong again. I just wanted to be able to share that with as many people as I could.” That includes helping people outside of the United States as well as in Omaha. “She teaches a donation class called Yoga for Uganda,” Hopp says. “She set up this foundation, and she’s been raising money for them for years. She could not be a more warmhearted person.” Paul calls yoga her “bedrock.” A foundation on which she built her outlook, her strength, and her drive to change lives. And she’s doing it, one breath at a time. Paul teaches at One Tree Yoga East. Visit onetreeyoga.com for more information.
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FEATURE // STORY BY SCOTT STEWART // PHOTOGRAPHY BY BILL SITZMANN // DESIGN BY DEREK JOY
the Together 2%
Wes Shaw NOVEMBER/DECEMBER • 60PLUS
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ome people enjoy taking examinations.
A short quiz, or a longer test, can provide stimulation from boredom and a quick boost of confidence, or motivation to do something better.
For those who enjoy such challenges, Mensa provides the gold standard for puzzles, games, and other tests of intelligence. The international society brings together the world’s most intelligent people, and membership is offered based on test scores. There is no set number to qualify one for Mensa due to the differences in tests, but members must prove an IQ score at or above the 98th percentile. It’s an elite group with a not-so-elitist attitude, but the group overall provides a sanctuary for those looking for somewhere they don’t have to hide their intelligence. “My greatest disappointment in law school was, even there, it wasn’t OK to be really smart,” Diana Vogt, age 66, says. “The reason people join Mensa is because it’s a place where it’s finally OK to be smart.” The Nebraska-Western Iowa Mensa has just over 200 members, says local secretary Wes Shaw. The local secretary serves as a group president. While members are spread across the region, most of the active members live in the Omaha area and tend to be over 60. That is partly because, Vogt says, it’s hard for people who are raising children to find a lot of free time until they’re older, but the commonality of high IQs and generations often is appreciated. “It’s nice to be able to be around people who get your jokes,” says Shaw, age 68. “It’s nice being around people who tell new jokes.” Local members participate in a variety of gatherings through subgroups referred to as “special interest groups,” or SIGs for short. Local SIGs include a monthly trivia night at Buffalo Wild Wings organized by a former Jeopardy contestant, and a monthly trip to a new restaurant for a dining out SIG. A monthly poker night is held in Lincoln. While monthly poker nights and dinners out provide regular entertainment, special events are also a part of the group. There’s an annual summer picnic that draws a large crowd from around the region, and a winter holiday party. Vogt says Mensa recently provided an opportunity for members to take a tour of the Joslyn Art Museum with a member who was a former curator. “I learned a lot of things,” Vogt says. “It’s really interesting to have someone who can just go with you and tell you stuff that you might not otherwise know.”
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Shaw says local group members participate in national Mensa-organized events such as the CultureQuest trivia competition, where the Nebraska-Western Iowa group finished 20th in the nation in April 2019. Vogt organizes the dining out SIG and serves as an officer for the heartland region, which spans from the Dakotas to Kansas and from Wyoming to central Missouri. “It’s a lot of fun,” Vogt says. “It’s always really nice to have someone new come and to learn about them.” Vogt says the dining out SIG alternates between American and other cuisines, and it moves around the metro area–in September, the group ate at Ollie & Hobbes Craft Kitchen in Papillion. Along with the dining comes conversation. Vogt says the members can discuss any subject. “Sometimes, we talk about interesting things,” Vogt says. “Sometimes, we talk about things of completely no consequence.” That is OK. The word “mensa” means “table” in Latin, and, according to Mensa International, “Mensa is a roundtable society where race, color, creed, national origin, age, politics, educational or social background are irrelevant.” Mensans are typically open-minded and willing to consider new perspectives and cultures. Vogt says that doesn’t mean they aren’t opinionated, though, or that members skew to certain political or social viewpoints. Mensans are almost always willing to engage in intellectual discussions–whether about mathematical concepts, UFOs, or an interesting article someone recently read. “Sometimes it is just nice to have other people understand what you’re talking about, let alone be interested,” Vogt says.
“The biggest draw is the networking with other people who can think,” Shaw says. The group even takes a broad view of intelligence, and Shaw says members usually think differently from one another, which is why there’s no single test that’s used to qualify. Shaw says some people, including his father, join for bragging rights. Vogt has been in Mensa since 1991, and she’s seen the local group ebb and flow in terms of how active its members are in the organization. “Some of the people who have dropped out are because of health issues,” Vogt says. Shaw says Mensa is always looking for new members, and he welcomes anyone interested in seeing if they qualify to reach out. Inactive or lapsed members should also give the group another look, Vogt says, because it has a lot more to offer than they might realize. “They’re missing out on an opportunity,” Vogt says. Most local members are active because they’re having fun, not to maintain their cognitive abilities, Shaw says. However, Mensa International says that SIGs are intended to provide “intriguing ways to flex your mental muscles,” and a variety of publications—from local newsletters to a national magazine— and regional, national, and international conventions provide other opportunities for social interaction and boosting mental acuity. “It is a way to get to know people who might have a completely different background,” Vogt says. “A lot of the people have special interests that bring new things to the group.” Shaw says Mensans tend to be introverted, but they’re friendly and they’re not the cliché nerd stereotype. For the most part, members want to share their hobbies and enjoy like-minded company. However, Vogt admitted that some members might be a little strange.
That commonality–intelligence, understanding, acceptance, interest–is what draws members of the organization together. It also is what advances the society’s overall purpose.
“It just means that [Mensa] has a lot of interesting personalities,” Vogt says.
“Mensans permeate all walks of life,” Shaw says of this group that has active chapters in nearly 50 counties and counts more than 140,000 people among its members.
Even if conflicts occasionally arise, the group overall provides a sanctuary for those looking for somewhere they don’t have to hide their intelligence.
Shaw adds the appeal of Mensa is rooted in the fact that the organization doesn’t discriminate against its members based on their background or who they are.
Visit nwim.us.mensa.org for more information about this local group.