55 Plus of Rochester #79: January - February 2023

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re you looking for a healthier alternative to strengthen your bones?

In her own search to reverse her osteopenia, Liz Lehmann found this really interesting device, called a bioDensity machine.

It's similar to a gym workout machine for muscles, but it's optimized to build bone instead. The reason the bioDensity machine is so good at building bones is because...

Science of Osteogenic Loading

(osteo bone; → genic producing) → Since the 1880's, it's been known that bones remodel themselves after a load is placed on them, known as Wolff's Law.

As it turns out, bones and muscles are similar and different – both have the use-it-or-lose-it process. To build muscles you have to do long workouts a couple times a week and your muscles need a day or two to recover.

Bones, on the other hand, only require five seconds of stress and the recovery time is a week. But the stress needed to start the bone building process is multiple times a person's body weight. For a 130 lb woman, it would take about 550 lbs of force on the leg bones to make them denser, which is not really possible at a gym.

“What is unique about the bioDensity machine is that it isn’t doing anything to their bones,” Liz

explained. “They’re pressing or pulling on the machine, and it’s measuring their muscle efforts and therefore how much stress is applied to their bones. People have complete control over their sessions and they get a chart of their progress.”

Build Bones from the Inside Out

During each session, a client tries to produce maximal force for five seconds in four different exercises: chest press, leg press, core pull, and vertical lift. The force would be similar to pushing or lifting a heavy object, but in a controlled manner.

As a result, these exercises build denser bones from the inside out by remodeling and strengthening the interior bone matrix – the way bones naturally get stronger.

Schedule your free session on BoneGym.com

Bone Gym is not intended to diagnose or treat any disease. It is an exercise plan designed to allow users to benefit from the healthy effects of osteogenic loading of the bones as supported by the U.S. Surgeon General and numerous studies.

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Begin the process from home by viewing our online informational video. Then consult with our bariatric team via telemedicine visits to start your journey. It’s time — and now easier than ever.

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savvy senior

By Jim Miller

How to Buy Over-theCounter Hearing Aids

The new FDA approved overthe-counter (OTC) hearing aids that started rolling out this fall are a real game changer for the roughly 48 million Americans with hearing loss.

Adults with impaired hearing can now walk in and buy hearing aids at a pharmacy, big box chain, consumer electronics store or online, without a prescription and without consulting an audiologist.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved this new class of hearing aids to lower prices and improve their availability.

About a third of people aged 65 to 74 and half of those over age 75 have hearing loss severe enough to affect their daily life. Yet about 80% of people who would benefit from hearing aids don’t wear them, according to the National Institutes of Health, primarily because of the hefty price tag.

Traditional hearing aids ordered through an audiologist cost anywhere from $1,000 to $7,000 a pair and are not covered by most private insurers and traditional Medicare. The new OTC hearing aids range from $200 up to $3,000.

Who Should Get Them?

OTC hearing aids are specifically designed for adults (18 and older) who have mild to moderate hearing loss. You don’t need a hearing exam or prescription to buy them, and they are designed so you can fit and tune them yourself.

Do you have mild to moderate hearing loss? The specific signs are having trouble hearing or understanding conversations, especially in noisier environments, over the phone, or if you can’t see who’s talking. Or, if you need a higher volume of TV, radio or music than other people, or have to ask others to speak more slowly, louder or repeat

what they said.

If, however, your hearing problem is more severe than that, for example, if you also have trouble hearing loud sounds such as power tools or motor vehicles, then your hearing loss is considered more significant than over-the-counter aids are intended to address.

To help you get a basic sense of your hearing problem, you can take an app-based test like Mimi (mimi.health) or SonicCloud (soniccloud.com).

What to Look For

To help you choose a good OTC hearing aid, here are some important points to keep in mind.

• Return policy: It can take weeks for your brain to adjust to hearing louder sounds through a hearing aid, so be sure to choose a brand that offers at least a 30-day free trial period, or money back return policy. .

• Set up: Many OTC hearing aids require a smartphone or computer to adjust and operate the devices to your specific needs, while others have the controls on the device. This will also be labeled on the box. Choose one that fits your preference and comfort level.

• Battery: The package also should tell you what kind of battery the device uses. Some of the older versions of hearing aids have replaceable batteries, but many of the newer ones have rechargeable batteries that come in a charging case, where you charge them up every night.

• Customer support: Some companies offer unlimited customer support to help you adjust or fine-tune your hearing aids, while others might limit support or charge extra. Be sure you check.

For more information and product reviews, see the National Council on Aging’s OTC hearing aids buyer’s guide at NCOA.org/adviser/hearingaids/over-the-counter-hearing-aids.

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55 PLUS – A Magazine for Active Adults in Rochester is published six times a year by Local News, Inc. at PO Box 525, Victor, NY 14564, which also publishes In Good Health — Rochester's Healthcare Newspaper.

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financial health

By Laurie Haelen

New Year, New Financial You

When it comes to New Year’s resolutions, there seems to be two types of people: those who look forward to making (and sometimes breaking) them and those who think the whole thing is probably a waste of time.

Everyone knows that many popular resolutions are broken by the time Valentine’s Day comes around. Just look at the gym in January versus February or March!

However, I would argue that financial resolutions should be seriously considered for everyone.

I fully recognize that my long-time habit of tracking a balance sheet and cheering (or lamenting) its progress monthly is not for everyone. But this has given me the sense of financial security that I have today — even in the face of market volatility.

Getting started on financial resolutions at any time —New Year’s or not — can help bring peace of mind to both working and retired people if you tackle it in a few easy steps.

STEP 1: Know where you stand by calculating your net worth.

For many, this may not be a challenge as you may already be a spreadsheet wizard or use an aggregator (i.e., MINT or Personal Capital) to regularly look at your balance sheet. For those who are new to the process, I would start by listing your assets including: home, investment accounts, bank accounts, loans, credit card balances, cash value of life insurance policies, 401k/403b, automobiles, home furnishings, vacation home or rentals. By subtracting debt from your assets, you end up with your total net worth.

The resolutions you should make may become clearer by regularly completing this exercise. As you look closely at your assets and liabilities,

patterns may emerge. If you have lowinterest savings accounts and highinterest debt, for example, a payoff strategy could be a top priority. Or, if your savings are not where they need to be, is there a way to save more? In the current environment, with both stocks and bonds “on sale” is there a way to put more money to work in the market?

STEP 2: Rebalance your portfolio.

Volatility always creates opportunities, as the winners of last year are often the losers of today. Rebalancing your portfolio to your target allocation (such as 60% stocks, 40% bonds) will enable you to buy low and sell high —a proven longterm strategy for success. An annual rebalancing is preferable to a more frequent one, as studies show that rebalancing too often can increase taxes or fees and inhibit performance.

STEP 3: Review your credit report.

Identity theft is running rampant. So checking your credit report is more important than ever. You are entitled to three free credit reports per year. In addition, many banks offer credit reporting that is free and daily.

There also are paid services that can help reduce the risk of someone opening accounts in your name or getting hold of passwords or other personal data.

If your credit score looks good and you can verify all the accounts as yours, then there is not much more to do than continue to monitor the data. If there are issues, however, take steps to improve your credit rating as it would adversely impact your ability to borrow by forcing you to get credit at a higher interest rate or not be able to get it when you need it.

STEP 4: Review insurance coverage.

Insurance is a critical part of risk management and yet is an oftenoverlooked area of personal financial planning. At least annually, you should review all your coverage, including your property and casualty (homeowners, auto and umbrella), as well as your life insurance coverage.

It is possible that your coverage in any of these areas could be less or more than what you need, due to changing life circumstances. The cost, too, can rise so gradually that you may not realize how much more you are paying. If you have an agent or financial planner to assist with this, it can ameliorate the process. I have seen many circumstances with P&C insurance where clients could pay a lot less for even better coverage. Just don’t make a change based on cost alone, as you may end up with increased cost when you need the coverage due to an accident or catastrophic event.

STEP 5 : Set your budget for the year.

When setting the budget for the year, a good method is to first establish the minimum required for living expenses. With inflation as high as it has been recently, this amount could be higher for 2023. Therefore, you may need to cut back on some of the more enjoyable things, such as vacation, concerts, sporting events, etc.

Be sure to budget not just for spending but also for saving to ensure you have a comfortable emergency fund — as well as longer term investments for retirement or legacy needs and wants. If you are close to retirement, you may consider having a larger emergency fund accumulated for the first year of retirement, in case the market declines in that first year. By doing so, you can spend cash and leave the funds to recover in the market versus drawing them when it is down.

The new year is an excellent time to take a close look at your overall financial picture and take the necessary steps to re-chart your course if there are improvements to be made. If not, the peace of mind from knowing you are fiscally sound can put you in a positive frame of mind as you enter another year. Taking the time will always be a worthwhile resolution. So if there is one you will make, I recommend this one.

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Q.: When a person who has worked and paid Social Security taxes dies, are benefits payable on that person’s record?

A.: Social Security survivors benefits can be paid to:

• A widow or widower—unreduced benefits at full retirement age, or reduced benefits as early as age 60.

• A disabled widow or widower—as early as age 50.

• A widow or widower at any age if he or she takes care of the deceased’s child who is under age 16 or disabled, and receiving Social Security benefits.

• Unmarried children under 18 or up to age 19 if they are attending high school full time. Under certain circumstances, benefits can be paid to stepchildren, grandchildren, or adopted children.

• Children at any age who were disabled before age 22 and remain

• Dependent parents age 62 or older. Even if you are divorced, you still may qualify for survivors benefits. For more information, go to www.ssa.gov.

Q.: I plan to retire soon. When are Social Security benefits paid?

A.: Social Security benefits are paid each month. Generally, new retirees receive their benefits on either the second, third or fourth Wednesday of each month, depending on the day in the month the retiree was born. If you receive benefits as a spouse, your benefit payment date will be determined by your spouse’s

Here’s a chart showing how your monthly payment date is deter-

New Year’s Financial Resolutions

By Deborah Jeanne Sergeant

Many people make New Year’s resolutions to lose weight, get in shape, quit smoking or walk 10,000 steps every day. While these may improve your physical fitness — what about your fiscal fitness?

Though the new year has already begun, it is not too late to make some changes that can improve what you do with your money.

Two area financial experts offered a few ideas for 55-plussers’ finances.

Tips from Phillip Provenzano, insurance agent and financial adviser with The Financial Guys Insurance Agency in Rochester:

• “Review your investment strategy. With the market as volatile as it is today, are the assets that you have invested allocated correctly?

• “Have cash for emergencies. If possible, it is good to have a few months’ cash stacked away in a money market just in case you need it for emergencies.

• “Shop out your insurance. By shopping out your Medicare and drug coverage, home, auto and other insurance, you may be able to save

money on a monthly basis that will help your overall budget and living expenses. Rising prices don't just affect bread and milk; these insurance companies are raising rates at an astronomical rate in some cases.

• “Update or create a will. Most families created a will when their kids were young. However, they have not updated that same will in decades. Also, some individuals think they don't need a will. Contact a professional that can help you determine that need.

• “Cut out any unnecessary expenses. As most seniors are in the phase of life where they are living off a fixed income, the need to create or update their budget and living expenses becomes very vital due to no longer being in the active workforce.”

• “Keep money invested longterm. 2022 is the perfect year for panic amongst investors. Over the last 10 years, the market was mostly booming and in 2022 a lot of people got completely unprepared to make wise investment decisions. Selling in a panic is never a good thing.

• “Ensure your money is invested properly. The fact that someone has an investment account is not a guarantee for a proper investment strategy. Ensure your assets are invested for varying market conditions because the market goes up, but it also goes down.

• “Keep an eye on taxes, from investments and from all sources. Many people only think about taxes at tax time. Taxes are managed yearround and not just before April 15. Your investments and taxes go hand in hand. Your tax preparer can’t change what already happened last year. Plan wisely and plan accordingly.

• “Save regularly. This goes without saying. However, a lot more people will keep on saying, ‘I’ll start next month, or next year’ and they wake up one day and are significantly unprepared for retirement.

• “Balance your investments with your other assets. Many people fail to balance their total assets and only focus on certain types. This may lead to lost opportunities in terms of higher growth or higher income.”

Tips from Diana Apostolova, investment consultant with Rochester Investments in Rochester:

Diana Apostolova

Phil Provenzano

The hickory smoked wings ($16). The char-broiled singed, smoky chicken fell off the bone easily with each bite and the meat was far from dry.

Dining Out

Dining Out

RESTAURANT GUIDE

By Christopher Malone

SMOKIN’ EAGLE SOARS HIGH

Le Roy barbecue joint dishes out grub, comfort

Taking a bird’s eye view of Smokin’ Eagle BBQ & Brew, the simplicity of the joint is deceiving.

Aside from the pronounced sign hanging outside on the brick-walled building, the guts take a more modest approach.

The Le Roy establishment’s appeal is that of a neighborhood bar, which some may take as my dancing around calling it a dive.

What it boils down to: It’s a comfortable and clean place. The brick interior, the dark furnishings and the aroma of barbecue can cool down your mind on a hot day and warm you up

on the colder days.

Aside from the name of the place giving away its specialties — or if it was named anything else — the commoner wouldn’t know it was a barbecue joint or microbrewery, Rogers Beer Company.

They place posts sparingly on social media, too. After my visit, I’m confident to call it a hidden gem.

The former hotel — the Eagle Hotel — in a building with a 200-plus year history got a new look on life about a decade ago and it’s cooking literally and figuratively.

I kicked off the meal with trying

a sample of Roger’s Labrador double chocolate porter, but got a pint of their Hound Scotch ale (only $5.75) because it was less high-test compared to the porter, the Mutt double IPA, and because the (Pug) blueberry fruit beer isn’t at the top of my list. The Scotch ale had a great malty and caramel flavor to it. Typically the variety has a slight boozy character, but this one was on the subtle side.

Aside from a variety of their options, Smokin’ Eagle has a stocked bar with various craft and domestic beer, plus liquor and wine.

Instead of an appetizer, the hickory smoked wings ($16) sounded absolutely delicious. To go along with the handhelds, the dipping sauce of my choosing was the hot garlic sauce. The garlic-forward concoction with a slight kick was a wise choice. Along with the smoked wings, the flavors didn’t clash.

The smoked wings themselves without sauce were wonderful. The char-broiled singed, smoky chicken fell off the bone easily with each bite

of the “Q for Two” plate ($42) features a half-rack of ribs, a half chicken, a half-pound beef brisket, a half-pound of pulled pork;

and the meat was far from dry. The wings aren’t small either. Although 10 come in an order, I didn’t feel duped or shorted.

As an entrée sitting with other chef favorites, the Memphis mac and cheese ($18) grabbed my attention. This adult version of the kid staple adds pulled pork and panko crumbs into the mix, which is topped off in a four-cheese sauce. Hoping to skirt around getting the entire entrée, there were no smaller versions.

The huge, easily shareable (highly recommended) entrée is completely unhealthy, but totally worth it. The flavor from the cheese (and butter) sauce, garlic, the pork and overall smokiness did not disappoint. Each bite was addicting. Saying “just one more bite” only led to more.

The “Q for Two” plate ($42) featured a half-rack of ribs, a half chicken, a half-pound beef brisket, a half-pound of pulled pork, two pieces of cornbread, a double order of baked apples — insert breath — and two sides. I opted for home fries and coleslaw.

The coleslaw was your standard cabbage-based concoction and the incredible mound of crispy home fries could satisfy an entire family.

The warm baked apples boasted a slight sweetness and the cornbread were standard-sized cakey versions of the barbecue compliment.

Let’s get to the meat. Although it was flavorful, I enjoyed the brisket the least. Unfortunately, it was slightly dry despite the sauce. The pulled pork, on the other hand, was not as dry. The cup of barbecue sauce that came with the platter made the pork even better.

Similar to the wings, it fell off the bone. The rub had great flavor with a very subtle kick. The ribs also fell off the bone. It didn’t take much effort the pull the ribs bones off one by one, with various amounts of meat coming with each.

Before tip, the meal came to $76. For the amount of food, there were certainly leftovers, which I shared with my lovely wife.

There’s no doubt I’d return to Le Roy for more barbecue at Smokin’ Eagle. The staff and other patrons are

friendly and are wonderful to chat with.

This attests to the comfortable atmosphere, feeling right at home in a new place.

And Roger’s beer is available for takeaway. You have to bring your own growler or reuseable bottle. Prices will vary depending on the style of beer and size of container you have.

Smokin’ Eagle

9 Main St., Le Roy 585-768-4770

smokineagle.com facebook.com/smokineaglebbq instagram.com/smokineaglebbq

Sunday: Noon – 9 p.m.

Monday – Tuesday: 11 a.m. – 9 p.m. Wednesday – Saturday: 11 a.m. – 10 p.m.

CLOCKWISE LEFT TO RIGHT: Mac and cheese ($18): This adult version of the kid staple adds pulled pork and panko crumbs. Saying “just one more bite” only led to more; part

baked apples.

‘Grandma, I Need Help’ and Other Top Scams

By Deborah Jeanne Sergeant

Areport by the FBI shows that between 2020 and 2021 senior fraud jumped by 74%, affecting 92,371 victims who reported a loss of $1.7 billion.

The average loss per victim was $18,246, including more than 3,000 victims who lost more than $100,000 each.

“New York state was one of four states in the US that had a total loss of more than $100 million in 2021,” said Phillip Provenzano, insurance agent and financial adviser with The Financial Guys Insurance Agency in Rochester.

The “grandma scams” have gained notoriety as they exploit older adults who think their grandkids are in trouble and end up wiring money to thieves.

But scammers have other tricks up their sleeves, such as pretending to collect for a charity, the IRS or FBI. Whether preying on a soft heart or fear, scammers typically use the same basic tactics: claim to be someone else, create a sense of urgency and obtain money or gift cards in a way that’s not traceable.

“Unfortunately, I see so much of this stuff in regard to scams,” Provenzano said. “It’s actually very sad because it happens way more than you think.”

He believes that the statistics on how many older adults fall victim to financial scams are far too low because of underreporting.

“If you’re 65 and fairly coherent, are you really going to report this out of embarrassment?” he said.

Social media has made scamming even easier for thieves because they can use it to case potential victims and garner convincing details so their email, text or phone call sounds legitimate. Many scammers also gain personal information by creating pop-ups and sending texts claiming to be “tech support” and then hacking into the device. Technology has also enabled thieves to make a known, trusted phone number appear on the recipient’s caller ID or a familiarlooking email address and website appear on the screen.

Provenzano said that unfortunately, many older adults remain far too trusting when they receive these messages and phone calls. He reminds older adults that the IRS will never call anyone about owing money.

“Be very skeptical,” he said. “Never ever give your Social Security number or pertinent information over the phone. If you owe money in taxes, you’ll get a letter in the mail.”

In any case of disturbing phone call, the older adult can always directly

call the organization from a known phone number, not using a callback number offered by the caller.

Skepticism should also extend to callers who try to sound like a familiar person such as a grandchild. Typically, scammers call late at night to increase the chances of a drowsy, disoriented recipient. Many grandparents do not often see their grandchildren who live in other states, so it’s tough to recognize their voices. Scammers may also add background noises to help muffle their voices. They often stage an “emergency” that they don’t want their parents to know about and that requires money wired to them immediately. After gleaning details from social media, it’s easy for scammers to include plenty of convincing details.

“It’s a perfect storm,” Provenzano said. “The only way to combat this is with common sense. Would Johnny call me at 11 at night and ask me for my bank account number?”

Instead, older adults should immediately hang up the phone and, if they feel concerned, call the grandchild’s parents. They should also tell their adult children and grandchildren to switch their social media settings so that their details are not public but only shared within their trusted contacts and ensure the same for themselves.

Some scammers claim the person has won a sweepstakes. People cannot win a sweepstakes they have never entered.

Other scammers post ads promising deep discounts on highly desirable merchandise supposedly from well-known brands.

Diana Apostolova, investment consultant with Rochester Investments, warns consumers to be careful.

“Know your seller,” she said. “Make certain the URL is legitimate and not a knockoff of a real company.”

Instead of clicking a link in an ad, going to the website by typing it in ensures it’s the real deal. Apostolova is a fan of using a credit card with alert settings so that consumers can block purchases and, if scammed, get their money back.

gone,” she said.

Most credit cards offer good fraud protection.

Scammers never want victims to take their time and consider an offer. That’s why sleeping on a decision is a good idea.

“Don’t rush into a decision and remember that something too good to be true probably isn’t,” Apostolova said. “Scarce products and popular items are also great for scammers, because they know people are willing to overpay or take a chance to buy the item. If you can’t buy in person, or from an established seller, you could be the victim of a scam.”

The same holds true for charitable organizations. Many scammers make appeals in the name of a real charity, especially after a well-known calamity. Some will create social media pages using a real person’s photo and story but ask for money for an emergency with the intent to keep it all for themselves.

“Check before you decide to contribute money to an online appeal, even if the cause sounds legitimate,” Apostolova said.

Any scam or fraud attempt should be reported to the FBI at https://www. ic3.gov.

Poll: Most Americans

Over 50 Suffer Some Type

of Joint Pain

Aching joints are common for people over 50, but it’s still important to talk to a doctor about it rather than endlessly self-medicating, experts say.

Now, a new poll from the University of Michigan breaks down joint pain, its impact on those who responded to the survey and how they’ve chosen to react to this painful condition.

Findings from the University of Michigan National Poll on Healthy Aging include that 70% of people over 50 experience joint pain at least occasionally. About 60% have been told they have some form of arthritis.

Among those who have arthritis symptoms, about 45% said they have pain every day and 49% said it somewhat limits their usual activities.

“If you are feeling joint pain frequently, or it interferes with your normal activities, you don’t have to go it alone,” said Indira Venkat, senior vice president of AARP Research. The organization was one of the supporters for the poll. “Talk with your health provider about how you are treating your joint pain and additional strategies that may help.”

About 80% of those with joint pain said they had at least some confidence they could manage it on their own.

About 66% do so with overthe-counter pain relievers such as aspirin, acetaminophen (Tylenol), ibuprofen (Motrin, Advil) or naproxen (Aleve). About 26% reported taking supplements, such as glucosamine or chondroitin.

There are sizable risks associated with many of these treatment options, especially when taken long-term or in combination with other drugs, said Beth Wallace. “This suggests a pressing need for providers to talk with their patients about how to manage their joint pain, and what interactions and long-term risks might arise if they use medications to do so,” Wallace said.

13 Gestures and Habits That'll Make Him Fall in Love—All Over Again

By Kimberly Blaker

It likely comes as no surprise that keeping the romance alive in a relationship requires effort. But when women feel their romantic relationships are becoming stagnant, they often blame the man in their life for not being romantic enough.

Yet 44% of men say it bothers them "a lot" that their wife or girlfriend isn't more romantic, according to a study of 80,000 participants by author Chrisanna Northrup.

So why not take the first step, and give your man the romance he's craving?

Try the following to reap the reward of your man falling in love with

you all over again.

• BE SPONTANEOUS . Routine and spontaneity are opposites. Routine, which typically sets in once a relationship is established, often leads to monotony. But what keeps relationships alive early on is the excitement of spontaneity, which lends itself to discovery about each other and new things. When couples lose their spontaneity, life becomes routine and dull. So practice spontaneity. Do things on a whim with your partner to awaken the feelings you both felt when your relationship first blossomed.

• WRITE HIM A LOVE NOTE. It doesn't have to be lengthy, although it could

be. Just a simple "I love you" or "I can't wait to spend time with you this weekend" placed in his lunch box is sure to make his day. If you're good with words, write him a poem. If not, borrow one, and leave it on his pillow.

• LAUGH AT HIS JOKES AND WITH HIM Men love to be funny. So no matter how corny his jokes, genuinely laugh when he's trying to be funny, even if you have to laugh because he's so corny. Not only will your laughter boost his ego, but it's good for your relationship, too.

But there's more. Numerous studies, including a 2015 study by Laura E. Kurtz appearing in the “Personal Relationships” journal, have found shared laughter brings couples closer together. So look for opportunities to share laughter with your partner. Watch sitcoms, go to the comedy club, hang out with other fun couples, or be silly together.

• PHYSICAL AFFECTION . This is so simple and can be done anytime, any place. Hold hands when you're watching TV or out and about. Kiss him on the cheek. When he's sitting at the table, walk over and give him a

shoulder massage. Pat him on the butt, or walk up from behind and wrap your arms around him. There are so many ways and opportunities to show your affection.

• MAKE HIS FAVORITE DINNER . The adage goes, a way to a man's heart is through his stomach. So go all out, and prepare his favorite dinner and dessert. Don't forget the candles, wine and soft music for a romantic ambiance.

• TAKE HIM ON A DATE. Make a plan for something the two of you both enjoy but haven't done in a while. Better yet, plan something special he particularly enjoys that you haven't been keen to do with him in the past. Then, make the most of it, even if it isn't your favorite activity, and let him know how much you enjoy seeing him happy and spending time with him. Do you need some ideas? Go to a sporting event, concert, or play; visit a museum; or go golfing or bowling.

• PAY HIM A COMPLIMENT. Everyone loves a compliment, especially from a significant other. Tell him how his blue shirt brings out his dreamy, blue eyes. Compliment his new haircut. Or let him know how much you appreciate his handyman skills. Look for genuine reasons to compliment him, often.

• INITIATE SEX. If your partner is the primary initiator of sex, you initiating it can go a long way toward making him fall in love all over again. Men need to feel desired as much as women do, according to a survey conducted by Sarah Hunter Murray, Ph.D., in “Men Need to Feel Desired by Their Partners, Too.” So practice coming on to your

man more often.

• GIVE HIM A GIFT. Men don't place as much importance on receiving gifts as women. Still, it can be a very romantic and meaningful gesture when done out of the blue. Look for something he'll love such as tickets to a game, a favorite movie on DVD, or something useful for his favorite hobby or sporting activity.

• SHOW HIM YOUR UNCONDITIONAL LOVE Women often fall for and marry men with the idea they can “fix him.” Over time, this results in constant badgering for a man to change, wreaking havoc on his romantic feelings. So learn to accept your partner's shortcomings, and love him unconditionally. You'll likely see your man's romantic side shine through again.

• SPOON WITH HIM . Cuddle with your guy before falling asleep and when you wake up. It'll make you both happier and improve your relationship because of the endorphins it releases, particularly oxytocin, the love hormone.

• TELL HIM YOU LOVE HIM IN A DEEP AND MEANINGFUL WAY. During a romantic moment, tell him, "You're my soul mate," "I want to be with you forever," "You make my life whole," or whatever you honestly feel for him.

• GIVE HIM A MASSAGE. Even men enjoy getting pampered. So give him a foot or back massage, or have him strip down for a full body treatment. Massage also increases oxytocin. So it can improve the romance in your relationship.

Books on Keeping the Romance Alive

1. “The Normal Bar: Where Does Your Relationship Fall?” Chrisanna Northrup, Pepper Schwartz, James Witte

2. “Rekindling the Romance: Loving the Love of Your Life,” by Dennis Rainey, Barbara Rainey

3. “Mars and Venus in the Bedroom: A Guide to Lasting Romance and Passion,” by John Gray

4. “Courtship After Marriage: Romance Can Last a Lifetime,” by Zig Ziglar

5. “Rekindling Romance for Dummies,” by Sabine Walter, Pierre A. Lehu

6. “Hold Me Tight: Seven Conversations for a Lifetime of Love,” by Sue Johnson

7. “The Mask of Masculinity: How Men Can Embrace Vulnerability, Create Strong Relationships, and Live Their Fullest Lives,” by Lewis Howes

8. “Getting the Love You Want: A Guide for Couples,” by Harville Hendrix

Waiting to Wed

First-time marriages are on the rise for people in their 40s and 50s

By Deborah Jeanne Sergeant

Afew generations ago, most people married right out of high school or at least by their early 20s.

According to data gathered by Pew Research Center, only 67% of baby boomers married by age 37. Some choose to never marry. For others, waiting makes more sense.

Marrying later in life occurs for quite a few reasons.

Meena Lall, licensed clinical social worker with Tree of Hope Counseling in Rochester, said that many who marry after age 55 is likely “a highly successful person and your priority is moving forward in your education and career. If you’re getting all your ducks in a row, marriage waits.”

Holding off on matrimony until finishing school and buying a house has become much more socially acceptable in light of economic struggle.

In recent generations, more people seem to be aware of the need to “find themselves,” Lall said.

Despite the stigma of divorce fading, nobody wants to enter a doomed marriage. Many people have observed their parents’ miserable marriage and often, subsequent gray divorce and want to wait on choosing the right spouse. They may not know what they want out of life and who they are as a person until they’ve passed their 30s and even 40s.

“There’s a newfound pattern of people being encouraged to grow, change and meet their life goals without being labeled as selfish or

something is wrong with them if they don’t marry right out of high school,” Lall said. “We’re allowing ourselves time and honoring ourselves to say, ‘I want to be my best self before I commit to this.’ It’s possible there could be some real honor and respect for the relationship itself. ‘I want to bring that best part of myself to that relationship.’”

She tells couples to treat their relationship as something they will continually work on, not a life goal they check off a to-do list.

When someone weds midlife or later, building a good relationship relies upon a few key areas. Flexibility came to mind first for Lall.

“Just like we treat our bodies as we age to be flexible, it’s the same with our beliefs, values and thoughts,” she said. “It doesn’t mean to sell yourself out, but it means that you’re willing to stretch, listen and not get stuck on that’s the way it always was.”

As with the physical body, this can become harder with age. But it can also become easier with practice. Flexibility helps with making accommodations for the spouse’s thoughts, emotions and — to get practical — their stuff

when melding two lives together.

Flexibility also helps couples realize that they should allow the other person room to do their own thing.

“We all come into relationships with unmet needs and mistakenly expect the other person to meet that need instead of having that person as a person who can support us in meeting our own needs,” Lall said.

In addition to realistic expectations,

Sandra Hope, licensed mental health counselor and owner of Sandra Hope Counseling in Spencerport.

Lall said that communication is also important. Oftentimes, couples speak over each other or rehearse what they plan to say next instead of listening. She thinks that people do this because they are afraid. Instead of responding defensively, she encourages people to ask, “’What is this about? What are you afraid of? What’s happening?’” she said. “It gives them a chance to take a minute and clarify.”

Despite the best intentions, conflict inevitably arises and thus the need for forgiveness and acceptance. But forgiving and accepting oneself is just as important as forgiving the spouse, according to Sandra Hope, licensed mental health counselor and owner of Sandra Hope Counseling in Spencerport.

“If you do these over and over, you’ll be successful,” Hope said.

Before marriage she tells couples to discuss finances, sexuality, spirituality, and family of origin. This helps them understand each other’s expectations and past experiences before they can become more emotionally charged issues.

“Any trauma in your childhood you’ll see in your partner even if it’s not there,” she said.

Understanding these triggers and watching for them can help spouses avoid misdirecting their negative emotions. Often this happens when a spouse unknowingly says or does something that to the other resembles a past experience.

Hope also counsels couples to “give up the idea that we have to be right” as in many areas, both spouses can be right to certain degree.

“Growing up with the all-ornothing idea has been damaging when there’s so much gray in the world,” she said. “We’re scared to death to not know. We create these ways of thinking and paradigms that make us feel secure and safe when as we found with the pandemic, we’re totally out of control. We create things to make us feel safe.”

It’s all right to disagree on something and let it drop. Hope urges embracing the areas in which the couple agrees instead.

In some areas that matter, “it’s brainstorming and coming up with a mutual idea. Put down every possible solution and choose what will meet both of your needs,” she said.

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It’s never too late to LEARN

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Snack area at the Coca-Cola Museum built by Dave Phillips near Letchworth State Park. He opened the museum in May 2022. More than 150 people showed up.

MUSEUM IN TOWN A NEW

By John Addyman

How one Coca-Cola pitcher grew into a cute museum in the middle of nowhere

“My son told me, ‘You’ve gone over the edge.’”

Dave Phillips, 72, was sitting in his garage on a beautiful and unusually warm autumn afternoon.

Well, it was his garage. Now, it’s a Coca-Cola Museum, in Silver Springs, nine miles from Letchworth State Park.

Here you can join Phillips for a hot dog or snack and. of course, a coke.

You can spend hours looking through all his Coca-Cola treasures — bottles from different cities all over the world, historic bottles, trays, pins, clothing, cookie jars, car models, throws, signs, a lot of signs, train sets, Christmas decorations and a lot more.

For most folks, the museum smothers you lovingly with all the red color and the warmth it provides. The Coke advertising signs and trays and mugs and glasses are instant memory-igniters.

Having Phillips around as the docent and guide and barbecue chef means you can ask a question and get a story with your hot dog. Had this

little museum existed 40 years ago, you could have imagined Phillips lighting a pipe like Santa Claus to spin a tale about an artifact while the smoke hazed around you.

The museum became a labor of love and product of determination and has melded into an homage to a very special relationship.

For 10 years, Phillips and his wife, Janet, were partners in the quest for the next interesting Coke thing they could find, and they looked in a lot of places.

She died in November of 2021. For a long while, she was unable to come out and help him in the museum, which he finished in 2019. But she’d often try to accompany him when he was going to look for new pieces at antique shops or flea markets somewhere, even though she was sometimes unable to get out of the car. He’d bring the item to her or send a photo on her phone and ask for her blessing to buy it.

The path to the museum took a long time to start.

Phillips served as a sergeant in the Marine Corps and left to start his own construction company, which he ran for almost 15 years.

“I fell off a roof and messed up my back,” he said. “The doctor recommended I get into something new. The only other thing I knew was farming. I grew up on this farm. I knew that wasn’t going to work. Janet and I were involved in our church. I taught Sunday School and she said, ‘Why don’t you think about teaching?’”

“Teaching? I don’t know…”

He gave it a go. “I went back to school, to college, at age 36,” he said, “to Roberts Wesleyan. I graduated in 1990 and got a job at Letchworth Elementary School immediately. At that time they were looking for males. The superintendent at that time wanted to get a male at every grade level.”

He taught third grade for the better part of 25 years.

“I retired and got back into construction again until last year,

Dave Phillips started collecting Coca-Cola memorabilia by accident about 10 years ago. Now he is sharing all of that at the Coca-Cola Museum he opened in May.

when I retired from that because it was starting to take a toll on me. Now, I’m into this museum and trying to keep all the farming area up to snuff — 90 acres here, another parcel down the road of 40 acres. I rent the land out to local farmers.”

The first purchase

The museum started with a Coke pitcher.

Phillips pushes the Coke hat he’s wearing off his forehead and the story unwinds.

“I had retired in 2012 and Janet and I started doing some traveling. We went to Florida to visit my son. We stopped for gas in Fancy Gap, West Virginia,” he said. “On the way to the gas station, we passed this old rickety shack that had a sign outside, ‘Antiques.’ I said we ought to stop and take a look in there.

“We were not antiquers. I’d never been in an antique shop in my life. We went in, it was a cold day and an elderly woman was huddled around a propane stove because it was even colder in there. The pitcher was on a round table. I simply said to my wife, ‘Wouldn’t that be neat to get for the grandkids? To fill it up with Coke when they come to visit?’

“’What will you take for it?’ I asked the woman. ’$5,’ she said. We brought it home. For five bucks, we couldn’t go wrong.”

The pitcher was happy by itself for a while.

“I filled it up with coke the first time and my wife said, ‘We need to get some Coke glasses.’ So then we went looking for Coke glasses and boom! The next thing I know we’re looking for anything Coke-related,” he said. “That was 10 years ago, in the spring. All of a sudden, all this other stuff started to happen and we were looking everywhere for things that were interesting.”

The interesting stuff began to take on a life of its own.

”It started in the house with one basic shelf unit. That got full, so I put up another shelf and another shelf and another shelf. The trays I displayed on the wall going up the stairs. My wife’s bedroom was downstairs because she couldn’t go up the stairs anymore and I started to go into that room and she asked, ‘What are you going to do, take over the whole house?’”

In 2020, Phillips moved his mom and dad up from Florida to take care of them.

“The Coke stuff had to go. My sons put it all in totes and my wife wasn’t

too happy about it. We moved it all to the garage I built in 2019. She said, ‘You’ll never get that stuff out again after you put it in the totes.’ ’Yes I will,’ I told her. ‘It just takes time.’ I had the second floor of the garage painted; the ceiling and sidewalls were in.”

Phillips saw a near future for him and Janet to enjoy the museum together. It wasn’t to be.

“I didn’t know she was going to pass,” he said.

A minute passed. “All of a sudden, I had the time,” he said, looking around at all the items in the museum.

Building a Coke memory

When he and Janet started collecting, they would make their yearly visits to Florida Coke-hunting trips, too. They’d return to Silver Springs with boxes full of Coke stuff.

“When I took things into the house, I’d put it all in a log book. I still do — the day I get something, where I got it, how much I paid for it, and if I can find the value, I put that in there, too,” he said.

He bought a book, “Petretti’s Coca-Cola Collectibles” and later added the app for his phone.

“I can pull up something on my phone when I’m in a store and tell if

CLOCKWISE FROM LEFT: The Christmas tree upstairs in the museum; Coke trays and antique bottles.

they’re undercharging or overcharging and if I’m going to make a good deal on it,” he said.

They got to be regulars at antique dealers in a wide area, many who would call him if they took something in stock they knew he’d be interested in.

“As time passed, I don’t want to say it became an obsession, but it kinda did,” he said.

“It got to the point where we couldn’t wait to get out for the next trip. Janet was at the point where she was housebound, but if I could get her in the car, she’d go,” he said. “Sometimes she would go with her pushcart. Sometimes she’d stay in the car. I’d send her pictures if she was in the car and she’d say, ‘Yeah, I think so. It’s a good buy.’ Or we’d bandy back and forth determining whether it was a good buy. Yes, it definitely became an obsession”

The range the couple would shop for Coke items: Ohio to the west, Florida to the south, Maine and New Hampshire to the north and on a weekend — the back roads of Pennsylvania.

“During the winter I go out a lot because nobody’s going to come here in the dead of winter,” he said, quickly noting that he will open the museum by appointment during the winter months if someone asks.

What’s the allure of acquiring all

this Coke stuff?

“A lot, of course, is the value, but the color, the uniqueness of some of the items, the signs especially — the colors are so vibrant. I like to find the history behind the item if I can, where they came from. People keep asking me, ‘Are you selling any of this?’ I say, ‘No. It’s a collection. At some point someone might sell it, but it won’t be me.’”

His son told him, “Dad, you’ve gone over the edge.”

“But now that I have the museum up and running, my kids are looking at it differently. I think they’re worried about what to do with it all when I’m gone,” he said. “I told them, ‘Get somebody in here to take the whole shootin’ match; don’t piecemeal it.’”

The dominant color of the museum is, of course, that Coca-Cola vibrant red.

Phillips gets a little smile on his face when he thinks about it.

“My grandkids have a little trick they like to play on my periodically. They’ll slip a Pepsi can in here to see how long it takes me to find it. It doesn’t take me too long. There’s a sea of red in here and a blue can just doesn’t belong.”

Not having Janet around will take a toll on him this winter.

“The hard part is the loneliness,” he said. “There are days when it doesn’t bother me when I’m really,

really busy. But when I sit down in the house at night the house is just plain quiet. Yes, my dad is there with me, but he goes to bed at 7:30. A lot of times I’ll come back out here to the museum and organize, remember stuff, look at something and know exactly where we got it, and when, and what the situation was.”

The museum had an open house on May 14, 2022 and drew 150 people. He cooked a lot of hot dogs that day. And he found out something about himself and the museum and Janet.

“It’s the sharing,” he explained. “When I got it all set up and had my open house, I really hadn’t thought about it. Then all these people came. My oldest son asked, after everybody left, ‘Now what are you going to do?’ I’m going to share, I told him. ‘This is something your mom and I spent 10 years doing and I’m going to share it. This is a dedication to her, like a memorial. There’s a lot of her in here, things that she bought that I may not have bought. Things she encouraged me to buy.’”

He talked about a fine summer’s day when he put a table outside and people stopped by the museum and sat at that table, enjoying one of Dave’s hot dogs and the museum sharing the afternoon with him.

“That was pretty neat,” he said.

Coca-Cola magazine ads, trays and books

By Bruce Frassinelli Email: bfrassinelli@ptd.net

my turn Is Biden Too Old to Be

Re-elected President?

He is the first octogenarian to hold the highest office in the land — but should he run for re-election in 2024?

Every time President Joe Biden appears in public, I cringe, not because of his politics necessarily, but I am concerned about what he might inadvertently say.

Biden observed his 80th birthday on Nov. 20, making him the first octogenarian to hold the highest office in the land, and he has said right along that he plans to run for re-election in 2024.

Shortly after that election, he would be 82, and, if reelected, four years later when he would leave office, he would be 86.

The question I have been asking, along with many others, is whether this is too old to be handling the affairs of state as president, arguably one of the toughest jobs in the world.

When I have discussed this with friends and others, they facetiously (at least I think it’s facetiously) noted that I am no spring chicken at 83, and I am still writing columns without making incredibly stupid blunders.

Of course, aside from my own perceived competence, I have two sets of eyes which edit and proofread my columns before they are printed or posted online. A thank you to them, because they have from time to time saved me from one of the aforementioned blunders.

But it’s a quantum leap from writing columns for a regional magazine and functioning as president of the United States, just in case you didn’t know this.

This begs the question:

Should there be an age limit for all public offices?

For example, even though U.S. Supreme Court justices serve “for life,’’ unless they do something really stupid, judges and justices at the state and local levels here in New York must

D-Michigan, for example, was the longest serving member of Congress at 59 years, leaving in 2015 at the age of 89. Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-California, will be 90 on June 22 and plans to run for re-election when her six-year term is up in 2024 when she will be 91. If she wins and completes her term, she would be 97.

Polling results show that many Americans see Biden’s age as a factor if he runs again. Questions such as his physical and mental fitness have swirled around him since he began his presidential campaign in 2019 and have dogged him ever since, and now with an 80-year-old in office for the first time, those questions are sure to grow louder, especially when Biden commits speaking miscues as he often does or is spotted with cheat sheets telling him what to do and say as was the case during a trip abroad in November.

retire at age 70. There is an exception for state Supreme Court justices who can be “certificated’’ to serve for three additional two-year terms until the year in which they reach 76.

Even with this retirement age, though, some of these “retired’’ justices serve as “senior judges’’ and preside over trials and court cases until they are finally put out to pasture.

Most other offices have no age limits, so the late Rep. John Dingell,

The previously oldest president, Ronald Reagan, left office when he was 77, but in his later years Reagan was viewed as pushing the boundaries of competent job performance, and it was later discovered that he was in the early stages of dementia.

Former president Donald Trump, who was 70 when he took office, also faced frequent questions about his age and mental fitness, particularly because he was and is prone to erratic statements. Trump, 76, announced shortly after the mid-term elections in November that he is a candidate for president in 2024. He would be 78 at the time of the 2024 General Election

If Biden run for re-election in 2024 and if he wins, he would leave office at age 86.

and, if elected, would be 82 when he would leave office on Jan. 20, 2029.

When I met a friend in Dunmore, Pennsylvania, a Scranton suburb, for lunch recently, I decided to hang out at the Boulevard Diner in Scranton, Biden’s hometown, to find out what registered voters in this part of the state thought of the age factor.

In my very unscientific survey, I included the first 25 registered voters I encountered — 13 Democrats, eight Republicans and four independents. Sixteen or 64% said they believe that Biden’s age and their perception of his stamina and mental abilities would be a factor in considering him for reelection in 2024.

Note that I did not ask any of them about any other issue such as the economy, abortion, etc.

Biden’s doctors have given him a clean bill of health as of now. The question of age irks the president. Although he has said that it’s appropriate for people to be concerned about his age and, on occasion, jokes about it, he insists that he is in good health, exercises daily and eats properly, even though he shows more limited mobility and stiffness after suffering a fractured foot a little more than two years ago while playing with his German shepherd, Major.

While age alone is not an automatic disqualifier, medical gerontologists I spoke to said that if he were re-elected president, someone of his age would need constant monitoring to confirm his continuing well-being.

It also does not help that some officials from his own party are calling for a younger candidate to carry the Democrats forward in 2024.

One of the most salient discussions on Biden’s age took place on the NPR program "Greater Boston" and featured Jeffrey Sonnenfeld, founder and CEO of the Yale Chief Executive Leadership Institute, and Mark Leibovich, staff writer at The Atlantic.

Leibovich said Biden should not run because of his age, but thought this was up to voters to decide. Leibovich noted that there are age limits for many important jobs where decision-making can be a matter of life and death. He prefers someone younger and feels the Democrats would be better served by choosing a younger option, although he did not name names.

Sonnenfeld ticked off the names of politicians and historical figures

who have performed extremely well in their 70s and 80s, including Benjamin Franklin and Nancy Pelosi, who at 82 recently ended her run as leader of the U.S. House of Representatives. She was re-elected in November by her California constituents to another term and will serve until at least early 2025.

“We shouldn't fall into this ageism trap,’’ Sonnenfeld said. “There's really no justification for it — if anything we should retire the bias around age.’’

Some presidents bring humor into the age discussion. Who can forget one of the most memorable moments when in October 1984 President Ronald Reagan was asked the question on a lot of minds because of his haggard appearance following a previous debate — whether age should be a factor in a person running for office.

Reagan, who was 73 at the time and running for re-election, flashed an impish smile, then said, “I am not going to exploit for political purposes my opponent’s youth and inexperience.’’ The remark brought a roar from the audience and even a belly laugh from Reagan’s opponent, Democrat and former Vice President, Walter Mondale.

Obviously, the voters had no problem with Reagan’s age as he captured 525 electoral votes to Mondale’s 13 and with it nearly 59% of the popular vote.

When Biden was asked recently about the age factor on the venerable CBS news magazine program "60 Minutes," and whether he was up to the tasks involved in the rigors of the office, he said, “Watch me,’’ as he ticked off positives involving his energy level and scheduling.

Biden is expected to announce his plans soon. "I'm a great respecter of fate, and this is, ultimately, a family decision,’’ Biden told reporters in November. “I think everybody wants me to run, but we're going to have discussions about it."

“We shouldn't fall into this ageism trap.There's really no justification for it — if anything we should retire the bias around age.’’

MICHAEL SPERANZA: LIVING THE DREAM(S)

Chef by day, musician by night savors the flavors of two creative worlds

By Melody Burri

Great food and beautiful music have a lot in common: the best of both are made with passion, artistry, creativity and good taste.

Maybe that’s why Chef Mike Speranza dives headlong into each — culinary arts by day and music performance by night.

The 60-year-old Victor resident teaches industry experts across the nation how to prepare, plate and serve food that’s a perfect fit for their venue. During off hours he appears in restaurants, pubs and in concert venues throughout the Finger Lakes, either solo or with Shades of Grey, his five-piece classic and new rock band.

Which is his greater passion? He’d be hard pressed to choose.

“Music and cooking are exactly the same thing,” Speranza said. “They are instant gratification. I can sing you a

song and you know immediately if you like it or don’t like it. I can cook you a meal and you’ll know immediately if you like it or you don’t like it.”

A tasteful journey

Speranza’s culinary journey began at his grandmother’s knee every Sunday when the whole family gathered to make gnocchi.

“There was flour everywhere and pasta everywhere and it was just a great family bonding, cooking day,” he said.

At age 16, a job at a small family restaurant in Webster bumped Speranza’s culinary passion to the next level.

“It was just by chance that I got the job, but I happened to be good at it and I really liked it,” he said. “Every person in this restaurant was a little bit

crazy, and I liked that, too.”

As time went on, Speranza realized that kind of “crazy” was in the DNA of many in the restaurant business. It was the same quality he recognized in himself.

“We all share a common bond,” he said. “We all know what a great — and terrible —place it can be.”

Speranza’s career eventually led him to The Strathallan Hotel & Spa in Rochester, where Chef Greg Broman taught him “absolutely everything about food and life,” he said.

“I adored him and some 40 years later, not a day goes by that I don’t think about Greg and what he taught me,” said Speranza. “He was a mentor and an inspiration who showed me what I wanted to be and what I didn’t want to be.”

Another pivotal influence was Jean-Georges Vongerichten, the

master chef, author, restaurateur and philanthropist who’s launched 60 successful restaurants worldwide. Many say his use of intense flavors and textures from vegetable juices, fruit essences, light broths, and herbal vinaigrettes have redefined industry standards.

“I knew I had to work in his restaurant and turned down a lot of money as an executive banquet chef in Boston in order to work side by side with him as a line cook,” said Speranza. “It was such a learning experience. And that’s one of my favorite parts of culinary arts — you’re constantly learning.”

Speranza’s take on fine dining was front and center at The Lodge at Woodcliff in Victor where he served as executive chef for six years.

And in 2010, Speranza was invited to serve in Michelle Obama’s Chefs Move to Schools presidential program and worked closely with school principals, staff, parents and students in Victor to inspire them to learn more about and experiment with

food. He called his visit to the White House “truly the most exciting day of my career.”

In his current role as corporate executive chef at Custom Culinary, workdays are dynamic. Speranza travels extensively, consulting with chefs and food service operators in restaurants, hotels, casinos, sporting venues, hospitals, health care facilities and nursing homes.

He’s cooking, demonstrating, recipe and menu writing, showing ways to prepare, plate and serve the food and how it fits in the profile and style of the restaurant, he said. All with an eye toward food waste, sustainability, staffing and table service.

“I’ve been in this job for 18 years and it’s different every single day,” said Speranza. “I can do the same training with the same products yet it’s never the same. I love the creativity and constant learning. I hate traveling and dealing with airlines and hotels, but I love being a chef. I’ve always loved being a chef.”

Cue the music

Much like his passion for food, Speranza’s love for music was launched early on, at age 5.

“My mom and aunt went to take guitar lessons and brought me with them,” he said. “Someone must have given me a guitar just to keep me busy and I sat in the back of the room playing what the instructor told my mom and aunt to play. That was the start.”

Of course there were music lessons later on, but Speranza hated every minute of practicing.

“When you’re not good, you don’t want to practice,” he said. “But you have to practice to get good.”

The young guitarist learned enough to play in a band in high school, all the while daydreaming about becoming a rock star.

Fast forward to 2014 and for the first time in his career, Speranza’s job did not require him to work late nights and weekends. That’s when he started

playing more regularly, got back into shape and upped his musical game.

Eventually he joined forces with a few local musician friends and started his own group, Shades of Grey.

“It’s a five-piece band,” said Speranza, who also gigs solo and as a duo or trio. “I play guitar and vocals with Charlie Trahan on guitar, Karen Flack on fiddle, Dan Eberth on bass and Dave Williams on drums.

“We’re all very fortunate that we have day jobs and can play for the love of music,” he said. “It’s not about the money. That’s never a deciding factor.”

What’s Shades of Grey’s go-to style of music?

“Everything we want to play,” said Speranza. “Classic and newer rock, country (but only the cool stuff) and some originals.”

The band covers classics from REO Speedwagon, Journey and The Rolling Stones; contemporary hits from artists like Ed Sheeran and Jason Mraz; and Americana greats like Roger Cline, Johnny Cash, Neil Young, and even the Partridge Family.

Over the years, Speranza has amassed a collection of 14 guitars created by Gretsch, Ibanez, Schecter and Takamine. But his go-to instruments are 6- and 12-string Takamines strung with 11 gauge elixirs, which never fail to deliver that signature rich, vibrant tone and full range. A TC Helicon vocal harmonizer pedal rounds out his kit.

It’s true — Speranza can’t begin to imagine his life without music and calls it “a total stress relief.”

“Music is my basket weaving,” he said. “If I’ve had a terrible week at work, if I’m stressed out, if I have the worst headache, I start playing and it all goes away. Sometimes I even forget there are people in the room, forget where I am and get lost in the music. It's so much fun.”

Last summer’s highlight was playing in a community concert fundraiser at Constellation Brands Performing Arts Center in Canandaigua.

“The whole band was on the stage at CMAC, playing through real sound equipment, with professional sound technicians and stage crew,” said Speranza. “We were standing on the same stage that Kenny Chesney and Ken Cronin had stood on.”

Common chords

Food and music have so many similarities, Speranza said. The instant gratification, the immediate response, the creativity and individual risk are all the same.

“I cook very personally,” he said. “I cook the food the way I like, make it taste the way I like, and present it the way I like.

“I also play the songs I like to play, the way I like to play them and you will hear them the way I want you to hear them.”

Music keeps Speranza sane, he said.

“It gives me something to look forward to. It takes me away from the real world,” he said. “And it’s personal — it’s only me. I’m putting myself out there. If I cook you a meal, it’s only me. If you don’t like it, there’s no one else to blame.”

Just do it

As a highly productive, constantly on the run chef, Speranza’s got three words for those whose lifelong passion may have been sidelined for a time: “make it happen.”

“We all have responsibilities to pay the bills and care for our families,” he said. “But if you have a desire or interest in music or cooking or gardening or restoring an old car, you need to make that happen.”

It’s essential to take some time for yourself, even if it seems like business won’t allow for it.

“If it’s one night a month — you just have to do it,” he said. “Take guitar lessons, paint or draw in your garage or basement, do something for your own wellbeing. You can’t forget about the people around you, but they’ll understand and you’ll be a better person for it. You’ll be better able to take care of your loved ones, your friends, your kids if you’re mentally able to do so.”

Speranza lives in Victor with his wife, Shannon, who’s a high school culinary arts instructor. They have three grown children — Max, Chloe and Meredith.

Find Mike Speranza Music on Facebook and YouTube. Find Shades of Grey on Facebook and Instagram.

Hear ‘Shades of Grey’ Live at These Venues

• Buntsy's Neighborhood Food and Drink (Webster)

• East Rochester Concert Series

• Fairport Brewing Company (University)

• Hunt Hollow Ski Club (Naples)

• Iron Smoke Distillery (Fairport)

• Knucklehead Craft Brewing (Webster)

• Lemoncello – Italian Restaurant and Bar (East Rochester)

• Peacemaker Brewing Company (Canandaigua)

• Rochester Beer and Park (Rochester)

• Sampson State Park (Romulus)

• Sid Partington Memorial Concert Series (Victor)

• Smokin’ Hot Chicks BBQ (Fairport)

• The Beachcomber (Conesus)

• TJ Ryan's Pub (Fairport)

• Twin Elder Brewery (Victor)

Cracking the Longevity Code

New book: Thanks to medical advancements and scientific breakthroughs, living healthfully into our 100s is in our grasp

By Norah Machia

There are several exciting scientific developments on the horizon that could help you live longer, but at the same time, feel decades younger than the number of candles on your birthday cake.

This latest medical research into the field of longevity is explained a new book, “The Great Age Reboot: Cracking the Longevity Code for a Younger Tomorrow,” written by Michael F. Roizen, emeritus chief wellness officer at the Cleveland Clinic in Ohio.

Prior to joining the Cleveland Clinic, Roizen had served as dean of the College of Medicine and vice president for Biomedical Sciences at Upstate Medical University in Syracuse, starting in 2001. He later served as CEO of the Biotechnology Research Corporation of Central New York.

Roizen left Syracuse after accepting a position as chairman of the Anesthesiology Institute at the Cleveland Clinic and was later appointed to the newly created

position of chief wellness officer, serving as the founding chairman of the Wellness Institute at Cleveland Clinic from 2007-17.

Roizen, the author of several New York Times best-selling books, helped to develop the “RealAge” health measurement test, which calculates a “RealAge” based on your physical and mental health well-being, a number that typically differs from your biological age. (Although he is 76, Roizen said his “RealAge” is 55.7).

He published those findings in the book “RealAge: Are You as Young as You Can Be?" (Harper Collins Publishers) which landed on the New York Times bestseller list. He also co-wrote several general-audience best-selling books with Mehmet Oz, a television presenter, author, politician and retired cardiothoracic surgeon known as Dr. Oz.

Michael F. Roizen, emeritus chief wellness officer at the Cleveland Clinic in Ohio.

In his latest book, published by the National Geographic Society, Roizen expands on the concepts of health, wellness and longevity, explaining the most current medical research and advancements that are predicated to allow people to live much longer lives — to 100, 120 or even more than 130 — while at the same time, feeling decades younger.

Longevity research is being carried out in several areas, including senolytics (harvesting old cells that are damaging others in the body), gene editing and the development of bionic body parts. It’s expected the general population will see the results of this research in the near future, the physician said.

Lifesaving changes to the human body “could be done organ by organ” in the next 10 years, and eventually, the entire body “from head to toe” in the next 20 years, he said. These are realistic predictions based on the promising medical research aimed at helping people live longer and healthier lives, Roizen said. For example, future medical advancements would allow a person who is 90 years to feel like a 40-year-old, he said.

The longevity research will not only help individuals lead healthier lives, but also more productive ones, which will benefit society as a whole in the future, Roizen added.

Declining birth rates over past decades have been creating a situation where not enough young people will be working to support the older population in the future, he explained. If people can work longer, they will not only save more for their personal retirement, but will help to increase the tax base for important governmental programs such as Social Security, Roizen noted.

“If we don’t get longevity, society and the government could implode,” he said. “We won’t have enough young people to support those who are getting older and retiring.”

For anyone concerned with the potential for overpopulation, “longevity will not be the problem, it will be the solution,” Roizen said.

But the success of any future

medical advancements in the field of longevity depends on what people are doing now to improve both their physical and mental well-being, he said.

Living a healthy lifestyle with plenty of regular exercise, sound nutrition and stress management is critical in preventing chronic medical conditions such as heart disease and Type 2 diabetes. Other factors include eliminating smoking, stopping excessive drinking and avoiding a diet high in sugar and processed foods, all factors that contribute to overall inflammation in the body.

“Today so many people are struggling with stress and other mental health issues,” Roizen said. “It is important to address those as well.”

There are a variety of options for people to reduce their stress levels, such as deep breathing or guided relaxation and meditation, he noted.

It’s important for people to stay healthy because that will determine the success of any future medical advances for longevity. Once your cells are permanently damaged (for example, resulting from a heart attack that blocks blood flow to a heart muscle), they may not be able to be rejuvenated in the future, Roizen said.

Key to Longevity

In his book — “The Great Age Reboot: Cracking the Longevity Code for a Younger Tomorrow”— physician Michael F. Roizen recommends people strive to reach six goals, plus take two additional preventive steps, to reach their optimum health and put them in a better position to benefit from future longevity research.

He calls this strategy “6 Normals + 2.”

The goal is to reach normal or healthy levels of six key indicators:

Blood pressure of less than 125 mmHG systolic and less than 85mmHG diastolic

BMI (a measurement of height-toweight ratio) of less than 27, or even better, a waist-to-height ratio of 0.40 to 0.55

Fasting blood sugar (associated with diabetes) of less than 106 mg/dL

LDL cholesterol (a risk factor for heart disease) of less than 70 mg/dL

No cotinine in urine (an indicator of tobacco use)

Completion of a stress management program

The “+2” are seeing a primary care physician on a regular basis and having all immunizations up to date. “Hitting these goals is a key indicator of lifestyle choices that favor longevity and markers for overall health,” he said.

Contributing writers to “The Great Age Reboot” book are sexpert economist Peter Linneman and demographer Albert Ratner. The book also includes information on how to plan for the future of longevity in the areas of work, family life and retirement.

For more information: www.greatagereboot.com

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An Airport’s Story

Rick Iekel, a long time Greece resident and former airport administrator, publishes a book about the history of Rochester's airport

By Todd Etshman

Are you one of the many people fascinated by the aircraft flying over the city? The 100-year-old Rochester airport they land at is pretty fascinating, too.

It’s full of history including Charles Lindbergh landing here in 1927, plane crashes in 1963 and 1978, a Supersonic Concorde landing in 1986 and, more recently, being renamed the Frederick Douglass Greater Rochester International Airport.

Rick Iekel knew the planes flying by overhead meant something special to him growing up on a large farm in Western New York in the mid-20th century.

Eventually, it meant a career in aviation that took him from customer service agent all the way to airport administrator.

His latest book, his fourth, titled “The ROC, Journey Thru the

20th Century, the Story of Rochester’s 100-year-old Airport,” was released in June. The launch party was held, fittingly, at airport facilities on Scottsville Road.

“People don’t realize [the airport] is 100 years old and the hangars on Scottsville Road is where it started,” he said.

The planes never ceased to impress him as they turned on their engines

and lights and headed down the runway. He had the extra thrill of being close-up to the planes and runways inside the confines of a major aviation center.

“There is no more thrilling sight than the nighttime lights that mark the runways and taxiways of a busy airport,” he said.

Even after a 28year career in aviation, the now retired Greece author and former airport administrator is still fascinated with his former airport workplace. It’s not just because of the planes and events that occurred there, but for the people and politics that helped build and maintain it and helped it adapt to ever changing times.

The one aspect of working at the airport he didn’t like as much as the planes, runways and lights

is the politics that often goes along with airport management. It caused him to leave airport management in 1993 when then county administrator Bob King wanted someone from the conservative party to manage the airport.

“It got political and I didn’t want to get politically involved,” he said. But his fascination with the place never left.

The current city administrator, Adam Bellow, attended the book launch and Iekel is glad that he did. He said the current county administration does a great job of running the airport and its facilities.

Iekel dedicated the book to his old boss, Samuel Cooper, who served as airport administrator from 1973 to 1989. Iekel served as assistant airport administrator under Cooper and became airport administrator when Cooper retired. If it was up to him, he would have named the airport after Cooper.

He’s glad the airport ended up being named after civil rights leader Frederick Douglass, in 2021. In the ongoing effort to stem racism and oppression there is no better figure to lead the way forward, Iekel said.

Iekel said it can be difficult to write about history and keep it interesting. A friend advised him to make it more of a story and less like a textbook. Travelers can pick up the book in the food court at the Taste of Rochester. Iekel is working with smaller area bookstores and businesses in the area in a mutually beneficial relationship in which they can sell a local book like his and he can help promote their business.

He helped promote the book by building the display case it sits in to draw the eye of customers. The cover he designed helps sell the book, too.

“I’m very excited about the cover,” he said. To do it he took pictures of planes from the airport parking lot. “Then I did an old-fashioned cut and paste with the airplane appearing to take off. I wanted to have the entire airfield in the picture including both the original airport and the latest terminal,” he explained.

plane heard him thumping and alerted the captain before the plane took off. You can hear about his experience at the airport, the history of the airport and his historical based writing at libraries and historical societies all over town. He’ll be speaking at the Irondequoit Public Library on Jan. 17 and the Webster Public Library on Jan. 26.

With a career in aviation and engineering behind him, Iekel, a selfdescribed type A personality, now focuses on writing. He credits his mother and grandmother for their writing and for inspiring him to write.

One of his first books, “The Candles of My Life,” is about his mother, Helen, her life and her poetry.

And, if you’re like him and can’t get enough of watching planes take off and land, he recommends watching them from the seating area on the western end of the terminal. You’ll have to pay to park, but won’t have to go through security.

“Unless you’re traveling, people don’t go inside the terminal much,” the former airport administrator said; but you should since it’s worth a trip to the airport even without a ticket.

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A long career in aviation management almost didn’t happen for Iekel, who got locked in the cargo hold of a United Airlines plane early in his career before a flight to Philadelphia. Fortunately for him, a passenger on the

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274 W. Main St. • Victor 585-924-4430

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hobbies

A Man with a Passion for Woodworking

By Teresa Schreiber Werth

Howard Jones of Gates is a man of determination and has been, at all ages and stages of his life.

Perseverance could easily be his middle name.

The youngest of three children, he attended school in Rochester, Chili, Centerfield, Bloomfield and Canandaigua. He graduated from high school in Wolcott. He attended RIT night school for 13 years earning an associate’s degree in engineering and a bachelor’s degree in personnel administration. He served 12 years

in the US Army Reserves, worked at Eastman Kodak for 33 years. Then, with his wife, Estella, (his cheerleader and main idea source) created a successful real estate business for another 13 years. They have been married 66 years.

It's easy to see why there was no time in those early years to pursue a hobby. While they were raising a family, he was working at Kodak, attending Reserve functions and going to night school. Retirement was a fresh start.

It meant that he and Estella could

spend summers in Maine and winters in Florida. Their love of the water was front and center for 20 delightful years. And one day, when all of those things from their younger life were in the rearview mirror, a hobby kind of snuck up on him when a friend gave him some scrap 3/8” oak boards. He was soon inspired to transform those scraps into jewelry boxes and small tables. Ideas began percolating in his head.

In 1999, when they were closing on a new home in Greece, their daughter, Wendy, left a welcome gift in the new house. She placed a 32” boat shelf in the powder room on the wall right behind the toilet. While the sentiment of the gift, honoring their love of the sea, was genuinely appreciated, he said, “Every time I used the bathroom, I was faceto-face with that boat. I immediately began to see shortcomings in its construction and would say to myself,

Howard Jones sits at the table in his Gates home next to some projects he finished.

‘I’ve got to build a better boat!’” Eventually, he did.

In fact, over the next few decades, he built and sold more than 200 boats; all much better built then the one that used to hang over their toilet.

One summer in Booth Bay Harbor, Maine, he saw a craft show in progress and pulled into the show’s parking lot and asked if he could show his boats. He set a few of his boats out for people to see. A woman bought one and gave him just enough encouragement and confidence that he decided to build and sell more boats. Eventually, he became known there as “The Boat Man,” from 2001-17. He built his unique boats to be 18”, 24”, 32” and 48” tall to an impressive 6 foot version. Each boat was meticulously constructed and included five different woods: fir, oak, pine, poplar and mahogany. The finish was smooth to the touch and pleasing to the eye. The pride he took in his

craftsmanship was evident.

And he didn’t stop at making wooden boats. He designed and made lighthouses, beach buckets — anything with a nautical theme, what he would see while looking at the water, what goes on the water, what every lobsterman uses to get to his traps. And of course, he observed and carved sea birds: seagulls, pelicans, loons, terns, puffins and many local birds including bluebirds, goldfinches, chickadees and cardinals.

He carved Maine’s famous harbor seals, made doorstops, buoys, toast tongs, squirrel feeders and clever picnic table salt and pepper holders. He even made his own version of bean spoons. According to Jones, “Every kitchen needs one.”

And he sold hundreds of them over the years. The instructions were simple: Place the spoon in the pot when cooking beans. Do not remove.

The spoon will get all the gas out of the beans. The little farts will climb the ladder and jump over the side.

As his skills and creativity grew, he was always up for the challenge of special requests and commissions. His largest commission is a 7-foot gong gate that sits along the bank of the Erie Canal in Fairport. His son-in-law asked him to make the first rendition (with a smaller gong) to replace a doorbell. The second version holds an impressive 4-foot gong. The gong gate itself weighs more than 300 pounds. A stunning photo on glass of the entire piece hangs in their home.

His most unusual commission was also designed and built for their family’s Fairport home where a basement egress window was continually trapping frogs. He designed and built his now-famous and still-functioning, frog ladder so that the little critters can safely escape.

Working at his home studio. INSET: Some of the objects Howard Jones has made.

Then along came the pandemic and his outlets for sales and inspiration vanished. No more trips to Florida or Maine. No more craft shows. No more meeting and greeting an appreciative public that purchased his creative work.

And so, he came to the difficult decision to sell his trusty and muchloved woodworking tools: a table saw, a drill, scroll saw, band saw and router. He was becoming less and less comfortable with the gong drives to Maine and Florida and he began to be concerned about his aging reflexes as he worked with power tools. By his own admission, he is a perfectionist and if he couldn’t continue to produce a perfect product, he decided it was better to quit while he was at the top of his game.

Anything he does now is with hand tools.

He listed his tools for sale on the local Next Door app and in a relatively short time, his workshop was a fraction of what it had been for decades. He advertised the sale of the inventory he still had wrapped in boxes (everything was always carefully wrapped) and, rather than focusing on how much money he could make, he took mostly whatever money people offered and found great joy in how happy his pieces made people. In his view, it was “a win-win situation.” He even made some new friends in the process. Maria Delgado Sutton saw his posts about the pieces he was selling, went to his home and made purchases. She went back several times, bringing curious friends who also admired and purchased some of his work.

Today, they are officially friends.

“Howard’s story is one I will always treasure,” said Delgado Sutton. “I love hearing him talk about the pieces he creates. His smile is contagious and the twinkle in his eyes speaks volumes about his love of life. More importantly, I want other people to know his story.”

Teresa Schreiber Werth is a freelance writer, author and certified funeral and wedding celebrant. You can learn about her recently published anthology, “Navigating the Pandemic: Stories of Hope and Resilience,” at www.dandelionbook. com. You can reach her at terry.werth@ gmail.com

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Maybe Man’s Best Friend Is a Bird…

Owner of Birds Unlimited in Webster shares his passion for birds

By John Addyman

“Birds are as smart and as affectionate as a dog or cat,” Paul Lewis said. He isn’t kidding. “Sounds like a sales pitch, doesn’t it? But if you know somebody who has a bird and the bird comes over to you, puts his head down to get scratched, won’t leave you alone, sits on your shoulder; it’s like a dog or cat. They’re that sharp. It’s tough for me to convey that to people. A lot of birds are just two or three generations from the wild. Look at all the behavior problems we have in dogs and cats and how long have they been domesticated?” he added.

Lewis, 65, is sitting in his office at the back of his Birds Unlimited store on Empire Boulevard in Webster.

He opened his first store in 1990 at the corner of routes 250 and 441 in Penfield. He’s been on a quiet mission:

to get the right people connected with the right bird.

“A nice bird really makes an impact on people,” he said. “There’s nothing like a bird. It flies. It has feathers. One is so different from another. If you get two of the same species they act differently and they’re really good for people. They make good pets for a few people.”

Then he quickly added, “There are a lot of people who don’t do well with them.”

He has learned a lesson over the years. It’s part of the unusual tone of his store: “We don’t push birds here,” he said firmly. “They’ll sell, but we don’t push them.”

In a store full of big, beautiful and blazingly colorful birds with vocal personalities who all seem to know something you don’t, Lewis and

his carefully chosen staff leave the decision-making entirely up to the customer. Then gently press in with all kinds of support and training to do their best to make sure the match between human and bird is a solid one.

“A cockatiel will live 20-30 years,” he said. “Parakeets [budgies] are fun to have for seven, 10 years. My big thing is education. I love it when I get a customer who asks good questions.”

His office is small and crowded with large cages for birds who are being boarded while their humans are away, and with some breeding pairs of conures, a South American bird that’s a smaller member of the parrot family. They’re all noisy in different degrees. And they’re all watching him as he talks or walks past them.

“As long as I can remember as a little kid, I was always out playing in dirt trying to keep anything that crawled, slithered or flew. I’d catch them and let them go again. I was always a catch-and-release kind of kid. My life was laid out for me since I was 5, 6 years old. I just loved animals; I still do,” he said. “When I see bird babies hatch here in the store it’s just the greatest thing going. I suppose when that’s not great to me anymore, it’s time for me to call it a day in the pet business, but it’s still great.”

When he was a teen, he raised and

Paul Lewis, owner of Birds Unlimited in Webster, with Operations Manager April Danielle (left) and Store Manager Taylor Ioriatti. Lewis is holding Zippy, a hyacinth macaw.

sold tropical fish and worked his way into a job at a pet store at age 14.

“Looking back, I was probably a nuisance in that store because I was in there two, three, four five times a week,” he said. “They hired me at minimum wage of $1.65 an hour. It was OK. I was in high school. I didn’t drink. I saved my money and bought a new car when I was 18. Beautiful. Things were good.”

By the time he was 17, Lewis was raising birds on his own after a scarlet macaw in the pet store riveted his attention.

“I was just enamored with this bird and it was not a friendly bird. We got along pretty good. I remember people saying, ‘How much is this bird worth?’ I’d say, ‘Man, probably $300, but it’s not for sale.’”

“$300 dollars!” the shocked customer would ask. Lewis smiles at that memory. “Now the same bird is $6,000.”

Useful skill

“In those days it was pretty much unheard of to raise parrots in captivity,” he explained. “I knew a couple of people who had, and I figured if they had, I should be able to. So, from the time I was 17 I was raising some birds. I started with cockatiels. I sold them out of the house, running ads in the newspaper. Then I started raising more birds and it became easier to sell to pet stores.”

At 21, he bought his own house and started working for his brother Mike, who is a dentist, as a lab technician and doing some prosthetic work.

“I went to a lot of conventions and seminars to learn about birds. By the time I was 23, I was writing for an international publication, “Parrot World,” strictly parrots, everything from breeding to behavior to summarizing the conference I had just gone to,” he said.

After 12 years in his brother’s office, Lewis started to grate with all the changes in medicine.

“You had to double-glove and mask and the whole HIV thing had exploded,” Lewis said. “I was almost getting germaphobic.”

Time for a change.

He was ready to make a regular business out of his success with breeding and raising birds.

“I took a night course at RIT on starting a business and that helped a great deal but left a lot of areas empty for when you actually started a small business,” he said. “I had to learn a lot on my own: town stuff, how to schmooze people, variances and things, things that pop up that somebody should have told you about.”

The Penfield store opened in 1990. After 18 years, he moved to a much larger space on Empire Boulevard. When he opened his first business, he had birds, cages and feed. And how that business has grown.

“It’s kind of interesting,” he said, reflecting on the beginning. “I had this

really nice bird food for $2.98 a pound and I couldn’t sell the stuff for the life of me. Now, $2.98 is cheap food by most standards. Food is more like $10 a pound today.”

He started stocking toys. Today, they’re a big part of the business.

“You have to keep the birds entertained,” he explained. “Parrots are so smart you need to create stimulation for them. You have to create an environment for them. They live a long time — 30 to 40 years, regularly. It’s up to me to educate people about the environment the bird can thrive in.”

That educational component, making sure customers can take care of the birds they buy, got kicked off early in Lewis’s store management.

“I put a little ad in the newspaper, for people who have an interest in

LEFT: A golden conure casts a suspicious eye on someone new to the store.

ABOVE: Zippy is a hyacinth macaw and a magnificent bird, according to Birds Unlimited owner Paul Lewis.

birds, we’re getting a club together and it exploded. We had 250 members in a year and a half. I started the bird club basically because when I was getting birds for breeding, I would answer ads in the newspaper and I would ask what kind of bird they were selling and they couldn’t even tell me what kind of bird it was. So, I knew there was a need to educate people and I started the club and it worked great.”

They do programs at schools and used to do the Rochester Museum and Science Center.

“We go in, don’t mention the store, it wasn’t a publicity thing, it’s strictly to educate. This year we did several classes at one school. The kids ask great questions and you can tell they did their homework,” he said.

Lewis got creative in getting things for his own birds. As the bird club grew, he realized he could do some commerce by supplying other bird owners with the same things he was buying. Instead of customers going elsewhere through mail order, they could swoop in and buy off the shelf from him.

The Empire Boulevard store footprint went from 1,200 square feet to 2,400 square feet to today’s 3,600 square feet.

“I try to have everything people need. I’m the place that I want people to walk in here and think they’re found Disneyland for people who like birds. I have stuff here that doesn’t sell terribly well, but if someone comes in

here looking for a stainless-steel cage, I’m the guy who’s supposed to have it. We hear it all the time,” Lewis said. “People will stop in and say, ‘I’ve been driving by here and didn’t know what it was.’ They come in and there’s birds flying in here. Someone who settles on a starter bird like a parakeet will invest about $125 in the bird, the cage, food and toys,”

This is not like collecting stamps or playing music,” he cautioned. “You really have to do your animal stuff every day. You’re not putting stamps in a drawer and coming back to them when you have time. You got to do your animals (dog, cat, bird, whatever) every day. A bird is a little more environmentally sensitive than a dog or cat. When you have a bird, you’re not just putting out fresh food or water in every day. You need to physically look to see if the bird is active, vocalizing like he normally does, that the droppings on the bottom of the cage are the normal amounts and give them toys to play with — see that parts are normally chewed up. Change the paper every day. Cleaning and feeding is everything, but you have to observe the bird to make sure its acting normally.”

“This is a pet that you can come home to at night. It will hear your car in the driveway and start looking for attention; they are that attuned with their owners and know what’s going on. They’re super-observant and can read your emotions better than you

can read their body language and everything,” he added.

Staff

“People enjoy their experience here and come back for another bird,” Lewis said. “That makes my life easier because we’ve already educated that person about what a bird is or how to take care of it. My vet used to say birds are like potato chips, you can’t have just one.”

Staff is so important to a niche business like Birds Unlimited. Over the years, many of his workers have come to him with extensive book and handson learning about taking care of birds. Lewis’s staff will groom flight feathers and toenails on a bird purchased in the store for free three times a year and it’s a busy service.

“Right now, I have the best staff I’ve ever had,” Lewis said. “April Danielle, our operations manager, came on in May. She had been a customer for years and she liked the store a lot and just kept frequenting it. She asked for a job and for some reason I didn’t hire her. Then she just started showing up and helping people and I kinda felt guilty, so I said, ‘Figure out a schedule and I’ll put you on the payroll.’ She’s been top-notch ever since and has probably helped me more than anybody.”

Taylor Ioriatti is the store manager, promoted to the position in the summer after nearly four years working with Lewis.

“She has great people skills, has a good understanding of the bird business and at this point, is the employee who's been with me the longest,” he said. “She has a couple of her own pet birds as well.”

Lewis said he lives at the store, but he also has a second life, as a rhythm guitarist for the rock group Open G.

“It’s four guys. We play every few weeks at Whiskey River in Charlotte and in the War Memorial happy hour before Amerks games and the Tap It bar in Spencerport. I’ve played guitar since I was a kid. The band started 15-17 years ago. It’s still fun. It gets me out of the store, gets my mind on something else. When customers come out to see me play, they want to talk music, not bird, which is fine with me. I talk bird all day long. Music is a nice change.”

Who's contemplating whom? Birds Unlimited owner Paul Lewis thinks about the bird and the bird thinks about him. He says birds are intuitive and very sensitive.

Boomers Caring for Elders

Many in their 60s and 70s have to deal with their own health issues and also have to provide care for their parents

By Deborah Jeanne Sergeant

More than 70 million baby boomers are caring for their parents or grandparents. While the youngest in that cohort may still have older teen and young adult children at home as the “sandwich generation,” the retirementage boomers can’t take it easy.

They’re taking care of their 80- and 90-year-old parents — and doing so while struggling with their own health issues.

Although those in healthy relationships likely enjoy the extra time with their parents, their caregiving role

may affect their ability to engage in the leisure activities they had anticipated for their retirement.

“People are living longer with chronic illnesses,” said Mary Rose McBride, a spokesperson for Lifespan in Rochester. “Situations like these aren’t just a blip. They are here to stay. We interact with 60-, 65- and even 70-year-olds caring for parents in their late 80s and 90s.”

Working with an agency such as Lifespan can help retiree caregivers manage the stressors of helping their elderly parents. Lifespan

offers resources such as information workshops including “Powerful Tools for Caregivers.”

“It helps people learn how to care for themselves while caring for others,” McBride said. “The issues we see most often are confusion during a transition of care — hospital to rehab, rehab to home, how to pay for care and what each level of care provides.”

The organization also provides case management services, information and guidance through geriatric assessment, home visits and caregiver consultations.

One of its care management units specializes in dementia and another handles referrals directly from physician practices. Lifespan can also aid elders with bill paying and financial management by becoming their directed power of attorney in financial issues.

Outside help can make caregiving for senior parents a little easier.

“It’s hard for people who have health issues and are trying to help their parents,” said Debra Kostiw, nationally certified dementia practitioner who operates No Place Like Home Senior

“It’s hard for people who have health issues and are trying to help their parents,”

Care in Henrietta and authored “Forget Me Not,” a book about caregiver strategies. “It’s important to reach out to other resources. It can be a struggle to figure out where to go.”

She encourages caregivers to ask everyone they can about the resources they need, from the checker at the grocery store to their librarian to their county’s department of aging. Oftentimes, leads come from the least expected resources.

Kostiw said that an oftenoverlooked need of frail seniors is nutritious meals. Setting up delivery through Instacart can make it easier to remain stocked up on fresh foods. For those struggling to prepare foods, Meals on Wheels and companies such as Real Eats in Geneva and Sweet Pea Plant-Based Kitchen in Rochester deliver balanced, heat-andeat meals. Adult children can also help by prepping a few foods such as a pot of homemade soup, a tossed salad and a fruit salad that will last a few days. Or cook a few meals ahead and portion them as frozen meals for the senior to heat up later.

Kostiw recommended seeking housekeeping help for aiding the elder in bigger tasks such as making up the bed or a deep spring cleaning.

“It’s important for people to be honest with themselves and say, ‘What are the most difficult tasks that I’m willing to give up and let someone help me so I can concentrate on other things?’” she said. “We have to be smart and proactive about aging.”

She asks the elders where they want help and their answers often surprise their families. Reaching out for help from an agency or friends and family can be difficult. However, it is vital to realize that getting help can often improve the quality of care. This strategy can also help caregivers engage in self-care.

“Self-care is huge whenever we’re caring for anyone,” said Lisa D. Maynard, licensed master social worker at Tree of Hope Counseling in Rochester and yoga and meditation teacher. “That piece of self-care often takes a back seat. You can’t pour from an empty vessel.”

Maynard encourages caregivers to take time to stay physically fit, such engaging in yoga and walking. Extreme sports or running marathons isn’t required.

Maynard also sees value in finding time to socialize. That may require asking for assistance.

“I have friends who take care of elderly parents and it’s hard to find people to sit with their parents while they go out to lunch with friends,” she said. “A lot of friends and family members are willing to help.”

Caring for an elderly parent can test an adult child’s patience, particularly since they share history together. But Maynard encourages caregivers to try to remember the elders’ own frustration with pain and loss.

“Don’t just rush in and take over everything,” Maynard said. “Sometimes, the kids rush in and say ‘Mom can’t do that anymore’ when she can. Maybe parents can’t drive anymore but think about how limiting and isolating that can feel.”

Maintaining as much independence as possible can lighten the caregiving load and help elders keep their dignity. For example, elders who are unable to safely drive could opt for rideshare apps if someone helped them find the apps and practice

using them. Or they could use www. gogograndparent, a site that after registration allows members to call a phone number to have an intermediary use apps such as Lyft, Uber, GrubHub, Instacart and others to arrange rides and deliveries.

Maynard encourages both caregivers and elders to consider mental health counseling about their life transitions if they find they’re struggling with the changing dynamic of their relationship or the circumstances that made caregiving necessary.

“At this point in their lives, caregivers are saying, ‘I wasn’t thinking of doing all of this work in retirement, but doing what I want, like travel,’” Maynard said. “Putting that on hold becomes difficult. It was not in the plan.”

Some caregivers experience guilt about feeling negatively about their role. But Maynard said those feelings — frustration, anger and even resentment — are normal. Caregivers can still offer good care if these feelings surface sometimes.

“It’s OK to feel like you don’t want to do this,” she said. “It doesn’t mean you’re not going to. Those are all really normal feelings, but it doesn’t mean you don’t care and are a bad person. The truth of the matter is that this is hard work and it’s tiring.”

Seeking help from agencies, community groups, friends and family members can make caregiving easier.

Debra Kostiw, nationally-certified dementia practitioner who operates No Place Like Home Senior Care in Henrietta and authored “Forget Me Not.”

she says.

Lisa D. Maynard, licensed master social worker at Tree of Hope Counseling in Rochester.

The Tai Chi Trainer

Tai chi and this personal trainer can help you succeed inside and out

By John Addyman

Jean Sica is no shrinking violet. And you don’t have to be, either.

“Don’t put limitations on yourself,” she firmly tells women who doubt their capabilities.

Looking for an example?

“I was always afraid of swimming or drowning,” she said. “I never learned how to swim until recently. I grew up in Brooklyn. My mother didn’t swim. She sent me to swimming lessons when I was 12 at the YMCA in Brooklyn. I was standing there next to the pool with a whole bunch of kids smaller than me. Someone tells me to jump into the water, one of the

instructors. I can’t swim.

’Jump in the water!’ the instructor tells me.

“A trusting Catholic girl, I jump in the water, I go down, and I don’t come up.”

There, at the bottom of the pool, 12-year-old Sica did not enjoy the panic and fear that froze her.

“I remember people jumping in the water to get me out,” she said. “I was so deadly afraid of water after that.”

We get to an age — Sica happens to be 69 — where a lot of things that never really concerned us suddenly do.

“I tried to face my fear of water over the years,” she said. “I’ve always been the kind of person who will do something just to prove I’m not afraid of it, to prove something to myself.”

She finished college at night. She married. She had two kids. She lived in Syracuse before coming to Rochester. She started a career in advertising and ended up in law publishing as an editor and proofreader. She divorced.

And that feeling of being at the bottom of the pool looking up never left her.

But then, “After my divorce, I met a man who had a sailboat. He taught me to sail, I was a member of his crew and in races. I never would have thought that I’d be able to do the things I did on that boat,” she said.

“Wow. Talk about limitations —having a view of what you can be limited to — I took up downhill skiing and I had always been afraid of heights. It was just like a beginning. One thing led to another in my life when I came to realize how often we

Jean Sica, a certified personal trainer, leads one of her tai chi classes at Schottland Family YMCA in Pittsford on Nov. 14.

talk ourselves into what we cannot do,” she continued.

Today, Sica is a certified personal trainer. Many people know her as a tai chi and qigong instructor. The services she offers through her business, Kokoro Fitness, are what she terms “concierge personal training.”

She comes to you at your home or business. She gets you in touch with your qi (or chi) — the vital force that runs through your body.

“I feel like I was meant to do this,” she said with the earnestness of a convert. “The first time I taught a large tai chi class was at the Irondequoit library. I had a class of 35 people. Some of the women came up to me afterwards and told me how good they felt and they were all smiling. I came out of there feeling wow!

“Since then, I’ve had people come up to me who had Parkinson’s to tell me how great they feel. There was a woman in my class recently who told me she found her balance was

better right away and she felt so much better.”

Tai chi isn’t just a graceful exercise; it’s a liberating feeling waiting to visit you. Sica tells her students and clients there’s a particular way to stand when doing tai chi, “to leave space between your legs, between your arms and your body…and in your heart. Open yourself up to this possibility — don’t put limitations on yourself.”

“One of the things that inspired me to do this was my wanting women in their 50s and up to realize what they’re capable of. It makes me so sad to hear a woman say, ‘I can’t go there because I can’t walk that far anymore, or I can’t do this…or I can’t do that.’ But they can do more,” she said. “Maybe they can’t do what they did in their 20s, but they could do so much more. I know that.

I know from my own life experience.”

She teaches tai chi and a little qigong for warm-up movements at the Pittsford Schottland Family YMCA and the Pittsford Community Center

and in Penfield. With her growing list of individual concierge clients, she contracts for 10 one-hour lessons which are normally once a week but can spread out.

“I’m very client-focused on what they want to accomplish,” Sica explained. “Specifically, when I teach tai chi as a personal trainer, we use elastic resistance bands. Even without using anything extra, tai chi strengthens your muscles, but resistance bands add an extra dimension.

“Part of the sessions depends on what they want to do. If a woman is much more interested in learning tai chi than in strength training, we will work on tai chi. In our first meeting, we talk about the basics of tai chi — stance, breath — the difference between shallow breath and diaphragm breathing — awareness of your feet and how it feels to press the bottom of our feet to the ground.

“Then I teach several simple tai chi moves. That would be part of

Watching a tai chi class.

Sharing some tai chi poses with other student.

the warm-up, perhaps. Then if she’s amendable to elastic bands, we use them. I always like to include — I assume the person is also interested in strength training — light hand weights. We’ll do different kinds of workouts with hand weights. I like to do a lot of work with whatever they have at home, rather than have them wait for me to bring something because then they won’t work out on their own. I’m only meeting with this person once a week and if you’re doing resistance training of any sort, you should do it at least twice a week and the tai chi practice every day.”

Getting started

Sica began her college education in New York, continued it when she moved to Syracuse with her husband, and finished up years later in night classes in Rochester at Empire State College.

A city girl growing up, the move to Syracuse was a monumental shift in her life.

“Being from New York and not knowing anything about Upstate New York — Upstate was the Catskills, right? — I really did believe that any

job I could get would be milking cows by hand,” she said. “I honestly believed that. I was 24, I didn’t know any better. I ended up working in the agricultural and dairy fields anyway, doing public relations for Dairylea Cooperative and Agway. But, I wasn’t milking cows.”

She also found out that Syracuse and Rochester are completely different worlds. When she came here, she had no contacts to help her get a job.

“I decided to be a stay-at-home mom. However, I continued to work by freelancing as a proofreader and editor and also have a little side business as a newsletter editor. I worked for a local advertising firms; mostly proofreading.”

Sica spent time as a Mary Kay consultant.

“I just didn’t want to work for anyone else anymore. I wanted to work for myself. I needed to do it on my own. By my own rules,” she explained. “It’s interesting because when I was young, I was so shy, so shy. I couldn’t speak to anyone. I learned how to go outside myself and see what other people needed and focus on those needs, focus on the other person.”

When her eldest daughter was 16,

Sica decided to go back to work fulltime, at Thomson West, which at the time was known as West Group. Years before that it was Lawyer’s Coop. She spent 18 years there as a legal editor and writer.

In 2019 Sica retired.

“I was so burnt out,” she remembered. “I was at a computer all the time, even if I was standing, I was still in one place. I have a lot of energy. I believe in being physically fit. I wasn’t engaging with people at all. I was just on the computer all the time. It was quite depressing. I didn’t feel like I was contributing in any way, I didn’t feel like I was helping anyone.”

She had started learning tai chi in 2013 as a member of the Rochester Zen Center.

“I immediately felt it was the right place for me. It just felt right. Then I had a positive experience. I had carpal tunnel and it felt so much better after doing tai chi. After I had a carpal tunnel operation, I went back to tai chi — it helped me heal that much more quickly. That’s when I realized that tai chi, for me, was not just good for my health; it was good for my mind and spirit because it’s moving meditation,” she said.

The more she learned, the more she learned to share and six years later she founded Kokoro Fitness (www. KokoroFitness.org).

Most of her private clients “don’t want to go to a gym or a YMCA because they don’t want to be around a lot of people. They want to get deeper with tai chi, not just the movements, but to get a better grasp on what it means to experience their chi. They want to do more with the mind–body connection,” she said. “The individualized structure is important for them; they don’t have to share their time with anybody. Doing it at home is a big deal for some people, as they have my full attention.”

There’s a statement on her website that’s an implicit invitation for her to help someone become more: "Over and over again, I take steps, sometimes it doesn’t work out, but more than often it does. It saddens me when I hear people say they want to do things, but they don’t take the steps to do them. Sure, you might be afraid — but if you really want something — take the steps! Afraid of failure? You automatically fail if you don’t try. Imagine if you succeed!!"

Sica offers services through her business, Kokoro Fitness. She describes her business as “concierge personal training.” She comes to you at your home or business.

Rosita Caridi-Miller: American with Italian Roots

By Lynette M Loomis

Immigration laws forced Angelina Caridi to emigrate from Italy in 1948 before she turned 21 or lose the right to enter the U.S. She reluctantly left her husband and her 1-year-old baby, Rosita, in Italy and boarded a ship bound for New York City. It would more than a year before Caridi would be reunited with her daughter. A tiny traveler; at age 2 and a half, Rosita Caridi was the first child to fly unescorted across the Atlantic Ocean in 1949.

“I don’t remember being scared,” said Rosita Caridi, now 75. After 22 hours in the air, the prop-plane

landed in NYC’s Idlewild Airport (now JFK). A room full of strangers, her grandfather–sponsor, her mother and newspaper photographers and reporters greeted little Rosita.

Rosita Caridi lived in a predominantly Italian neighborhood in Long Island City until she was 11.

“I was bilingual. We spoke the Calabrian dialect with my father and grandmother and English with others. For me, growing up Italian in America presented challenges with identity and culture. What was I? Italian or American? I grew to embrace both cultures. I am an American, an Italian

American with a rich heritage.”

The Caridi family “moved up” to Jackson Heights in Queens. Rosita Caridi attended high school at Holy Cross Academy in Manhattan, followed by Mount St. Mary College in Newburgh, where she earned a BA in mathematics and Rochester Institute of Technology for her MS in computer science.

In 1968, Caridi married and moved to Rochester.

“I worked at Kodak for one year before the birth of my children, Mark and Kristin, and I stayed a ‘workat-home’ mom until the late ‘70s. I knew there was more out there for me to explore. When I returned to the workforce, it was as a teacher of mathematics, data processing and computer science at Monroe Community College.”

After earning her MS, she returned to the corporate world to work as a software engineer at Scientific Calculations followed by positions in technical management and marketing at Kodak and Xerox.

It was an interesting time for a woman in corporate America. Women were just beginning to share their skills in the technologies, science and business.

“While it was not easy (in fact, it was often darn right frustrating) to be the ‘only woman in the department,’ I was proud of the fact that I was ‘making it’ in a male-dominated profession,” she said. “I am happy that my children and grandchildren, female and male, have a more open world in which to use their talents.”

At 55, Caridi decided to end her lucrative corporate career and follow her heart.

“I loved the technologies, but I felt unfulfilled in that arena,” Caridi explained.

In 2005, with no experience in the food industry, Caridi became a selftaught chef, plunged the food business and opened Cibi deliziosi, offering Italian-inspired cuisine, catering, cooking classes and cooking parties.

Caridi sums up her culinary career as: “I never worked so hard for so little money and loved it so much.”

Cibi not only fulfilled Chef Caridi’s dream of owning her own business, but it also introduced her to lifelong friends, strengthened her passion for food and cooking and gave her many

chances to share that passion.

Caridi explained that food is important in Italian culture.

“It brings family and friends together and shares our love. Because of conquering forces (the Arabs, Romans, Greeks, and Spanish among them) and the geography of the land, the 19 regions of Italy each offer distinctive cuisines. But it is all Italian. The food is simple using few ingredients with emphasis on freshness and quality. It is comforting as well as exciting,” she explained. “Cibi customers often wanted to learn to cook homemade pasta, regional sauces and seasonal vegetable dishes in cooking classes and hands-on cooking parties.”

Her early Cibi customer and now dear friend, Elizabeth Osta, brought Caridi into the Sons and Daughters of Italy in America, which celebrates and strengthens Italian American heritage. Chef Caridi leads the Italian Regional Dinners, an annual event focusing on a different region of Italy each year and produced by SDOIA members.

In 2022, Rosita Caridi-Miller earned SDIOA’s Lifetime Achievement award. From that 22-hour trip from Italy to her life in America, Caridi embodies the love of her birthplace and continues its traditions in the U.S.A.

Key Ingredients of Regional Cuisine

The regional climate and terrain comprise the key ingredients of Southern and Northern Italian cuisines. Modern Italy dishes bend the two cuisines. Italian American dishes (think pizza, spaghetti and meatballs, eggplant parm, linguine in clam sauce) are rooted in Southern Italy. Distinctive ingredients for the South and North include:

• Southern Italy

• Warmer climate, rugged terrain

• Pasta (fresh and dried)

• Tomato-based sauces

• Fruity olive oil

• Lamb, chicken, pork, veal dishes

• Pecorino cheeses (sheep’s milk)

• Lemons and oranges

• Tender herbs: oregano, basil, parsley, rosemary

• Northern Italy

• Cooler climate, pastureland, and forests

• Risotto, polenta dishes

• Butter and cream-based sauces

• Robust peppery olive oil

• Beef, game meats dishes (Boar, Hare)

• Parmigiano, cow’s milk cheeses

• Hearty herbs: sage, thyme, rosemary

• Wild truffles

For Fire Companies, Bingo is a Lot More than a Game

By John Addyman

It’s 2:30 on a Thursday afternoon. “Oh, there are people sitting in the parking lot at 2:30, just waiting for us to open the doors,” said Brian Liechti. “It’s crazy. We don’t start selling until 5 p.m. Someone is usually here by 4 p.m. to open our doors for those people who have been waiting.”

As the front door opens, people get out of their cars and approach the large meeting room of the Marbletown Fire Department in Newark, where Liechti is the assistant chief and bingo captain.

Bingo won’t start until 7 p.m., but players want to get in, plop down in their favorite lucky spot and get settled. They bring special bingo cases that contain the necessities — the

colored daubers that put ink spots on the bingo cards, lucky charms, dolls, family photos and decks of cards or knitting or a book.

“There are definitely players who are organized,” said Dawn Wood, who is in charge of the Port Gibson Fire Company bingo on Friday nights, about five miles from Marbletown.

“They like to sit in the same seat; they even like the same chair. I’ve seen them move a chair around, sit in it, get up, find a different chair and sit in it. They have their lucky charms — some are trolls, some are stones or crystals, some are pictures — they have their lucky ‘thing.’ Sometimes they have them lined up. Sometimes

they have them in a pocket,” she said. “They have their ‘luck’ – whatever it is. It’s important to people to have their favorite seat. Many times in the summer I would see a car out in the parking lot at 2:30 in the afternoon waiting to come in so they could be first and get ‘their’ seat. We don’t open our doors until 6 p.m. Bingo for those people who are here that early, they have planned the next eight hours of their day. That’s more than coincidental, more than casual.”

We know there’s such a thing as the Buffalo Bills Mafia. And, after looking at parking lots fill up hours before the games with the letters and numbers begin, there must be a Bingo Brigade, too.

“It’s something exciting to do,” said Jeff Kokinda, 65, of Macedon, sitting next to his wife, Denise, 50, in Port Gibson. “We’ve been doing this for a year now. People ask me now that I’ve retired, what do I do? I tell them I drive my wife to work and play bingo three nights a week. On her birthday, I won a $200 ‘layer cake’ game.”

Denise Kokinda has a bashful,

pleasant smile. She met Jeff in a Yahoo! chat room while living in her native Philippines. The online friendship lasted for three years when Jeff flew to meet her and her parents. They’ve been married five years.

“He was the first — and last — guy I chatted with,” she said.

Kendra Kurtz, from Bristol, is sitting in the far corner of the Port Gibson bingo room, with her daughter, Stacey Fox.

“I’ve been coming here since 1993-ish,” Kurtz said. “I come here to be around people, to win. My mom usually comes with us, along with my aunt and my second cousin. Everybody here is friendly and it’s an inexpensive night out with a chance to win your money back.”

“We do a lot of donating,” added Fox.

The bingo is fun. The “donating” is vital — and that’s no exaggeration.

Liechti and Wood are fire company and emergency responders in charge of hosting bingo games every week

(Marbletown on Thursday nights, Port Gibson on Friday nights) that are, in many ways, the lifeblood of their communities.

“It’s important to support the people who are working this bingo night because this is the fire department,” said Wood, speaking from the fire hall. “We support our town. What if somebody calls for help and we don’t have the right equipment or our equipment is broken and we haven’t replaced it? What if we don’t have enough people to respond? That would break my heart.”

“Oh, we’re going to keep going with bingo — we can’t not,” said Liechti. “There’s no way we can’t do it. All proceeds go to our operating costs and fire equipment.”

“Bingo provides what we need to keep us in emergency service because this is what we buy our stuff with,” explained Wood. “The fuel for our trucks, the insurance we must have — and it’s not cheap. The cost of turnout gear — you can spend $3,000 on that,

plus the air pack.”

On a given night, Marbletown will host 60-70 people. Port Gibson can welcome close to 100. On nights when prize money goes up, so does the attendance.

Inside on bingo night, once patrons have their favorite seats, the evening unfolds. Many players are ready to go hours before the first numbers are called. They bring playing cards or something to read or phone photos to share or find friends to talk to.

Karen Barrow of Palmyra has a deal with her husband. He goes out with his friends; she goes to bingo at Port Gibson, normally by herself.

“It’s a nice outing to enjoy by yourself,” she said. “I’ve been going to bingo since I was 5.”

Bingo has changed

Some of us remember bingo from our youth as a place where the big prize was a turkey or tank of gas. Today, it’s much more.

Port Gibson and Marbletown offer bingo games where the winner gets handed $500 in cash. The more pedestrian games have $25 payouts.

And there are a lot of ways to play. You can buy a sheet that has three cards (“faces”) for $4 and play all night with just that. The more faces you choose, the more of an investment in your night you make.

When the caller starts naming the balls pulled out of the machine, you can mark your cards if you have the number on them with a dauber — a brightly colored, sponge-tipped marker. At Marbletown, you can also choose electronic bingo, where each new ball the caller announces appears automatically on the display screen you rent for the night. You touch your screen and the number is applied to each of the cards you have on it (from 24 to 48 faces) for $24 for the minimum number of faces — 24.

Liechti said Marbletown uses the electronic screens because some of his players have trouble being effective and timely with a dauber (each number called is 10 seconds after the last). Wood said that some of her players prefer the paper cards and her team decided against the electronic devices because they have to pay for them whether they’re used or not.

Both fire companies also use “bell jar” games, which are special extra-

Janet Wheeler of Clifton Springs, her bingo dauber in hand, is ready to pounce on her numbers.

cost items played before and during the regular bingo. Some of these are pull-off cards that players buy in stacks because they’re inexpensive. The bell jar games can have a very high rate of pay in the hundreds of dollars.

Alongside the games, both fire halls have a snack bar or concession stand that’s opened well before games featuring very reasonably priced goodies prepared right in front of you. Port Gibson’s ladies’ auxiliary runs its concession stand; Marbletown has no auxiliary, so Brian’s wife, Stephanie Liechti, and her mom do the cooking.

Fire Hall Bingo has been around

Wood explained that Port Gibson’s first bingo nights were held in a big tent in a yard in 1947.

“I remember when I was a child in the 1960s, my dad was in the fire department, he worked the Friday night bingos,” Wood said. She’s 66. “It’s been every Friday night since. We had a couple of ice storms where the county closed the roads and we cancelled bingo. We used the building as a warming shelter during those weeks. We’ve had snowstorms where travel was difficult and they closed the roads. But, those were few and far between. COVID shut us down for a year and a half. You need to know that bingo is our income. We tightened our belts and spent frugally or didn’t spend at all.”

Port Gibson bingo makes about $1,000 a night.

“Out of that we still have to pay a New York state tax, about 5%. After that, what’s left is what we use to purchase our emergency services equipment and supplies,” Wood said.

She pointed out that her fire department “is an independent company, which means we are not owned or supported by a municipality. The members actually own the fire department. This is a blessing and a curse. The blessing is that if we choose to do something, it’s the members who get to vote on it. The village or town board can’t say yea or nay to it. On the other hand, when we need to purchase a piece of apparatus, it’s not something that is worked into a village or town budget to supply us with an apparatus. We have to save and negotiate and purchase and make the truck payment.”

Marbletown, explained Liechti, is

owned and supported by the town of Arcadia. Bingo there clears about $500 each Thursday night, even better when the prizes are higher, so there are plans to increase them. The fire company has been around for 51 years, with bingo nights beginning sometime in the 1980s. They stopped when there was no one to run them.

Now that bingo has restarted, Liechti, 46, is committed to keeping it going, despite the difficulties.

“It’s hard to find somebody. I have so much stuff on my plate I don’t know how I find time to do bingo. But that’s the one thing I make sure I’m up here for. Our volunteer base is just so far gone that, there’s only about six of us that really run bingo anymore, who really work. Sometimes we barely have enough people to run the concession stand. We can literally run bingo with five people without concessions,” Liechti said. “Sometimes we struggle, especially when I’m on vacation.”

Who plays bingo?

Looking around the bingo floor on a Thursday or Friday night, you’d jump to the idea that this is an event for senior citizens.

Say that to one of the players and be prepared for an argument. They see a changing, younger crowd, as well as a certain crowd.

“Most of the people who come here, this isn’t the only place they go to. It’s something they do, their hobby, their way of life,” said Liechti. “There are a couple of people, this is the only place they go — I know that. They’re looking for more socialization and getting out of the house, I would think.

This is a service we provide.”

In the halls you see some 30-something players and some 70-something players — and a lot more in-between. You see a small number of the same people at each hall.

Wood said she knows for certain that some players have been showing up every bingo night there for more than 20 years.

“The average bingo player is pretty easy to get along with,” she said. “We have had some who were super friendly, very nice, very understanding to some who are demanding, hollering that we’re calling too fast. We use a 10-second timer. When they say we’re going too fast, that tells me they’ve got too many boards.”

For all the social noise and milling about in the bingo room before and between games, once the caller starts to direct the night’s activities, things get quiet. Because of that 10-second timer, things move right along and the evening passes quickly, with one intermission to give folks a chance to hit the bathroom or concession stands.

Oddly enough, Wood said she sees few people from the Port Gibson neighborhood in the bingo hall. Liechti ticks off the fire companies in the area that used to host bingo who don’t do it anymore.

Kurtz, who drove all the way from Bristol to play bingo in Port Gibson, said that after everything people went through with COVID-19, bingo reopening was a blessing.

“People were just looking forward for a way to be social,” Kurtz said.

Jeff Kokinda, 65, of Macedon, sits next to his wife, Denise, 50, in Port Gibson. “We’ve been doing this for a year now,” he says.

Dawn Woods is in charge of the Port Gibson Fire Company bingo on Friday nights. “Bingo provides what we need to keep us in emergency service because this is what we buy our stuff with,” she says.

10 MOVIES WORTH WATCHING AGAIN THIS WINTER

By Ken Sturtz

Even the biggest outdoor lover can find themselves stuck inside on a cold day and looking for some entertainment. Here are 10 movies you should watch on a boring winter day. Five are set in wintry locations and five will thaw you out with decidedly warmer settings.

“SNOW DAY” (2000)

“GROUNDHOG DAY” (1993)

OK campers rise and shine and don’t forget your booties… you know how it goes. “Groundhog Day” celebrates its 30th anniversary in February and even if you’ve seen this classic Billy Murray comedy a million times, it’s always worth another watch. It’s easy to miss some of its funnier moments in the first few viewings.

While it isn’t exactly great cinema, “Snow Day” successfully captures the excitement we all experience when we get a surprise day off from school or work. The movie is set in Syracuse, although it was shot in Wisconsin and Canada. For many Millennials “Snow Day” will serve as a nostalgic flashback to Nickelodeon’s days of making fun movies of questionable quality.

“THE BRIDGES OF MADISON COUNTY” (1995)

If the Iowa summer wasn’t hot enough there’s the steamy onscreen romance between Meryl Streep and Clint Eastwood. She plays a farm wife whose family is

on a trip when Eastwood’s character, a photojournalist with National Geographic who is photographing historic covered bridges, shows up looking for directions. They share a brief but intense love affair while pondering a future together.

“HAPPY FEET” (2006)

Even if animated children’s movies featuring singing, dancing animals aren’t your thing, it’s hard not to fall for these cute penguins. Every emperor penguin in Antarctica attracts a mate by singing a heart song. If the male penguin’s song matches the female’s, they mate. Enter Mumble, a penguin who is unfortunately a terrible singer and unable to attract a mate. But he can tap dance brilliantly.

“EVEREST” (2015)

Jon Krakauer wrote about the 1996

Mount Everest disaster — during which eight climbers died – in his bestseller “Into Thin Air.” The same basic story is told but with a great ensemble cast and hair-raising cinematic scenes that will make it feel like you’re clinging to the side of Everest. Tip: Consider watching with a hot beverage to counteract the scenes where everyone is suffering in the bitter cold.

“DR. NO” (1962)

This is the film that started it all, bringing Ian Fleming’s James Bond to the big screen. A suave Bond is dispatched to sunny, carefree Jamaica to investigate the disappearance of a British agent and uncovers a plot to disrupt a space launch with a secret weapon. Although filmed on a small budget and with a production value lacking compared to later films, “Dr. No” has gained a reputation as one of the best Bond films.

“MIRACLE” (2004)

Kurt Russell stars as Herb Brooks, the inspiring coach who led the American hockey team to a gold medal at the 1980 Winter Olympics held in Lake Placid. The Americans won a game in the medal round against the heavily favored professional Soviet team, which became known as the “Miracle on Ice.”

“VOLCANO” (1997)

Tommy Lee Jones and Anne Heche star as an emergency management director and seismologist fighting to stop and divert the lava flow from a volcano that erupts in Los Angeles and wreaks havoc on the city. The big budget movie makes use of CGI, miniatures and a nearly full-scale replica of Wilshire Boulevard to create some incredible lava-filled scenes.

“THREE KINGS” (1999)

The film features George Clooney, Mark Wahlberg, Ice Cube and Spike Jonze as American soldiers who discover a map at the end of the 1991 Gulf War detailing the location of a fortune in gold bullion that Iraq stole from Kuwait. They set off to steal the gold for themselves. This heist movie is set in the middle of a desert, perfect for wintertime.

“CAST AWAY” (2000)

Just about everyone has probably seen the blockbuster “Cast Away” several times. Tom Hanks plays a FedEx employee whose plane crashes in a storm, stranding him on a small island in the South Pacific. On a cold winter day, however, it is still satisfying to watch as he attempts to survive in and escape from his tropical prison.

addyman’s corner

By John Addyman Email: john.addyman@yahoo.com

I Have What in the Closet?

Socks.

My wife is looking at me, disapprovingly.

“Socks,” she said. “It’s a start.”

In an upstairs closet in our house, hidden in a dark corner, is a laundry basket.

Full of socks.

That closet has become a repository for clothes, mostly pants, I will someday wear.

Someday when I’ve lost 20 pounds. Someday when flamingoes fly out of my nose.

My dear, deserving-of-sainthood wife, is making a point with the socks: they are just one thing we have too many of in our house. Correct that: it’s an example of one thing I have too many of.

“After the socks, the T-shirts,” she said.

“Then the pants. Oh please, God — the pants!” she said, her hands open in a heavenly appeal.

“What is the result of all of this?” I asked her. “The socks and the pants and the T-shirts aren’t hurting anything.”

“You have pants in that closet from 20 years before our teenaged grandchildren were born,” she argued. “I think there’s a possibility you have bell-bottoms in there.”

“Really?”

“You have corduroy pants on the left side of the closet,” she pointed out.

“OK. So?”

“Have you ever worn corduroy pants? No! Are you waiting for a flash fashion trend to suddenly appear, one that you’ve been prepared for since Jimmy Carter was president?”

She had me about the pants.

“What about the socks?” I asked.

My wife asked me to please haul that laundry basket out of the closet, go through all the socks and keep the ones I really need and put the rest in a

bag for the local charity.

I started thinking about those socks. We were standing in the hallway. I peered into the closet at the laundry basket, it was piled way over the brim filled with white socks.

OK, I thought to myself, I do spend a lot of the year NOT wearing socks, but when I need a white sock, I need a white sock…you know?

“You have umpty-jillion more white socks than you need,” my wife said. This is one of the tragedies of being married for so long — your wife knows exactly what you’re thinking too much of the time. There’s no escape.

“How many socks do I need?’ I asked her.

She looks at me with a look I know all too well. If she would voice it, she’d be saying to me, “Did you dive to pick up something on the floor and hit your forehead hard on the table?”

Instead, she just kept staring at me. I got it: she wasn’t the one to answer that question. I had to fess up.

“Surely I don’t need a whole big laundry basket full of socks,” I said, figuring that if I owned the idea of the problem, a solution would not be far behind, or so my wife would think and leave me be.

Busted.

“You’re not going to do anything about those socks, are you?” she said, arms crossed, tapping her foot as only a wife and mother and grandmother can do.

“Some of those socks are useful and important to me,” I offered as defense, “like when I shovel snow and put my boots on.”

“OK, that’s one pair of socks,” she said. “Maybe you need three pair for a big snowfall. Then what? How many pairs of socks do you think you have in there? 40? 50?”

It was clear I was not going to win the discussion.

Although I used different socks for different things, my wife was not going to be swayed.

One hour later, when she had gone downstairs, I pulled the laundry basket out of the closet and brought it into the den where I could go through it and watch a football game at the same time.

I found threadbare socks. I found orphaned socks. I found thermal socks. I found hunting socks I hadn’t had on my feet since I went hunting with my dad 64 years ago. I found socks I wore when my oldest daughter got stuck in a couple of feet of snow on a visit to Van Etten’s Tree Farm in Altamont, in 1985.

Yes, there were a lot of socks I didn’t need and perhaps someone else could use them.

My wife smiled a smile of satisfaction at me when she saw how many socks I’d removed. She beckoned to me with her finger as she backed into the bedroom.

I was about to be rewarded for my good deed, I was sure. This was my lucky day.

Nah.

“Here’s your next project,” she said, pulling hard on a stuck dresser drawer.

That’s where my dress socks were.

By Melody Burris

Dave Wright, 76

Victor Hiking Trails chairman talks about his passion for hiking, classic Corvettes and leaving the world a better place

Q: For more than three decades, you have long been a driving force behind the nonprofit Victor Hiking Trails. What launched your passion?

A: I fell into the role of chairman when our founder, Marcia Bryan, moved to the Adirondacks to spend more time hiking, swimming, biking and cross-country skiing. I have loved hiking, backpacking and camping since I was a Boy Scout and that passion continues today. I enjoy taking the dream of creating a system of shared use trails and seeing it become a reality. Helping to direct a few dedicated volunteers to create and improve the more than 70 miles of trails in Victor is our goal and that’s what keeps me motivated.

Q: During your tenure with VHT, which notable accomplishments or milestones have given you the most joy?

A: Opening our very first trail, Monkey Run, off Victor Egypt Road and County Road 9, was the most gratifying. It took us two years of meetings, talking to residents, planning the route and physically creating the

trail. Second was the completion of the Seneca Trail, which is 13 miles of mostly single track trail with a variety of terrain and views. It extends from Boughton Hill to the area around Eastview Mall.

Now we have 250 families and individuals who are VHT members and about 30 volunteers who help with various projects made possible by an annual budget of $10,000. We’ve been a 501(c)3 nonprofit corporation since 1992 and work in partnership with the town of Victor and the Genesee Region Off-road Cyclists.

Q: You've done some fun things on YouTube recently. In what other ways do you help people get out onto the trails?

A: We have a fantastic website, VictorHikingTrails.org that Jeff Hennick built from scratch and continues to improve. It’s full of information about us and the trails, and helps everyone see in advance what the trails are like and decide which ones are best for them. We publish a quarterly newsletter to share how scouts and other community groups

are making the trails safer and more enjoyable. We host monthly guided hikes and a monthly educational hike. We partner with the Victor Farmington Library for a year-round Wednesday morning walk. We also get the youngsters out on the trails through events with the Victor Parent Teacher Student Association. We have an active Meetup page with hundreds of members. And, of course, we are on several social media platforms.

Q: Can people with physical challenges also enjoy the trails?

A: Absolutely! We always try to design and build the trails for everyone. Sometimes that isn’t physically or economically possible, but it is always our goal to be inclusive. The Victor Parks and Recreation department has an adaptive tricycle that is designed to use the upper body. I encourage everyone to try it out.

Q: What other work, hobbies or passions keep you busy these days?

A: My second passion also began as a young lad and that’s my love of Corvettes. My 2004 Commemorative Edition has taken me to California and back as well as Texas, Illinois and down south. I am a past president of both the Kanandaique Corvette Club and the Rochester Corvette Club. I am a member of the Friends of the Railroad, helping to refurbish a wooden box car that might end up in Manchester at the old roundhouse. And I just recently joined the brand new Western New York State Model Railroad Club, hoping to build a replica of the Lehigh Valley Railroad Manchester yard, complete with a turntable and roundhouse. And of course I enjoy hiking and biking the trails.

Q: What advice would you give to people of all ages, specifically retirees, who are looking to stay healthy and thrive?

A: Walking is a great exercise. We are fortunate that in our area there are many choices of parks and trails. Now that winter is coming you need to dress in layers. Know your limits and don’t over do it. Convince a friend or neighbor to join you. Take the kids or grandkids on an adventure around your neighborhood. The fresh air will do wonders for you.