Monthly Archives: December 2016

GOOD Experiences, at Four Regional Hospitals

Leave a reply

Been to the hospital lately? Hope not!

*But for various reasons over the past four years, we HAVE – four hospitals in three counties, NOT counting the old Corning Hospital. And apart from the obvious, the experience wasn’t really all that bad.

*It wasn’t like the bad old days when visiting hours might be two hours long, three days a week. When even parents couldn’t get in to see their children. When a patient enquiring about his own condition might be met with belligerence, because that wasn’t any of his business, and he wasn’t equipped to understand anyway. When surgeons found that their patients had terminal cancer, but told them that all the cancer had been removed, so that they wouldn’t worry.

*Ira Davenport Memorial Hospital, between Bath and Hammondsport, was the smallest hospital we went to, and so has a different atmosphere from the others. It’s quiet, open, and friendly. Things operate on a personal basis. It’s easy to talk to the nurses, the doctors, and the other professionals. Immediate family can come and go pretty freely. If you’re there, check out the small sculptures in niches on the second floor. They used to be at the Davenport Girls’ Home (1864-1959), a remarkable orphanage in Bath.

*We also spent several spells at Arnot Ogden Medical Center in Elmira. Like many hospitals, Arnot Ogden has grown and been renovated over the years, in the process losing the original logic of its layout. When that happens, the bemused visitor/patient needs to rely on maps, signage, color coding, and the kindness of strangers… specifically, the hospital staff and volunteers.

*Arnot Ogden delivers, making it much easier to get around and find what you need. Most patients have 12-hour visiting windows, and some have 24. Both beforehand and when you arrive, the intake is very helpful. Patients and family each learn what to expect, and you even get discount coupons for the cafeteria.

*Unity Hospital in Greece is actually a cool place… something you don’t normally say about hospitals. It’s easy to get around in. We were there for three visits that each required at least one overnight, and I never had to leave the ground floor. With recent renovations, the place seems sparkling new. Everybody gets free parking! And everybody has a private room that was designed and built as a private room.

*Unity is home to the August Family Birth Place, which was NOT of any practical interest for us. But every time a baby is born, “Rock-a-by Baby” plays throughout the hospital. How cool is that? The first time we visited was by emergency and without insurance. I can’t say enough for how helpful staff were in supporting our stressful time in the hospital, and guiding us through followup.

*We are so lucky to have Strong Memorial Hospital/University of Rochester Medical Center in our region. Five U.R. alumni or staff have won Nobel Prizes, either in Physiology/Medicine or in Biochemistry.

*Our family were in Strong back in 1994 for open-heart surgery. In those days you milled around in the parking lot until you found a space, then hiked to the entrance, then puzzled your way from one location to another. Phones were provided all in one large room, in rows along a counter with two-foot dogears at you shoulders – no privacy whatsoever.

*When we returned for more surgery in 2015 and in 2016, we observed that everybody seemed to have taken a customer-service course, and taken it to heart. Pause in the corridor, and a passing staff member will immediately stop to ask what you’re looking for, then give you clear unambiguous directions, or even take you there.

*Family waiting rooms are staffed by volunteers who state explicitly that they are there to serve you, so that you will be free to serve your family member patient. Waiting rooms are pleasant, and arrangements for reports from the surgeon and /or O.R. staff work superbly. There’s even a floating nurse who circulates through the operating rooms to keep tabs, since the surgical team is naturally a little busy.

*If you’re overnighting, hospital folks will make arrangements for you to stay (at group rates) in the R.I.T. Conference Center on West Henrietta Road. You get cafeteria coupons. There’s a parking garage. You can walk a block to Barnes & Noble. The chapel is nice, and so is the chaplain.

*So, overall, I recommend you avoid the hospital if you can manage it. But if you HAVE to go, I think you’ll find it a much more human and humane experience than it used to be. Gold stars for the good folks at Ira Davenport, Arnot Ogden, Unity, and Strong. Thank you ALL very much!

Our Heritage Village

Leave a reply

A week or so back we went to the holiday open house at Heritage Village of the Southern Finger Lakes. If that puzzles you, think of Patterson Inn, Benjamin Patterson Inn, Ben Patterson Inn, Patterson Museum, or Corning-Painted Post Historical Society.

*This is not evidence of an identity crisis. Instead, it represents growth and development. It also suggests that if you haven’t been lately, you may owe yourself another visit.

*C-PPHS was founded a good ten years before Corning-Painted Post School District. In fact, I believe it’s the oldest historical society in Steuben, beating out the county society (1949) by a couple of years. I live in Bath, but I’ve been a member for years.

*The Inn by which the C-PP Society is so well known went up in 1796, the same year Steuben County was created. Benjamin Patterson, a founding figure of the region, was innkeeper here for a spell. People knew this place for hundreds of miles around. It provided travelers with a place to rest, and town meetings with a place to meet.

*It’s a large and impressive structure – all the more so for what was the edge of white settlement back in those days. By the mid-20th century it had become an apartment building, and was honored as the oldest home in Corning. In fact, it’s one of the oldest buildings in the region.

*In “the Flood” (1972), the interior was buried deep in mud, but the following year it was listed on the National Register of Historic Places as Jenning’s Tavern. Three years later the Society acquired the place (during the U.S. bicentennial) and began restoration.

*There matters rested for many a year. People took tours of the house, and admired the hearth cooking. But over time, the campus grew.

*A signal event was the relocation of Browntown School from Caton. This late-built school has a fine elegance, but more importantly decades of Corning students have spent a day of fourth grade as one-room school students, experiencing a little of what it was like to be a kid, more than a hundred years ago.

*Another key stage in the life of the campus was almost invisible: taking over the house next door for offices and visitors’ center. This made it possible to concentrate the Inn more as museum space, improving the visitor experience.

*Then there’s the blacksmith shop, which moved down from Beaver Dams. Just as with hearth cooking, here you can talk with the artisans and get a feel for the demanding, hardworking life of the “good old days.” You can do the same at the 19th-century log cabin.

*Besides several other working shops on the grounds, C-PPHS also operates the Town of Erwin Museum (the “Depot Museum”) at the old D.L.&W. station farther down on Pulteney Street. Besides getting to visit a classic depot, here at this museum you can find all three of the “Indian” figures, going back almost 200 years, that preceded the current statue in Painted Post.

*It would make sense to check ahead of time to see which features will be available on given days (some of them are labor-intensive), but if you haven’t been for a spell… I think you’d find another visit quite worthwhile.

After Pearl Harbor: Americans Race Into War

Leave a reply

Americans got the word about Pearl Harbor mighty quick by radio… almost while the attack was under way. On the following day President Roosevelt announced that damage had been “severe,” and that “very many American lives” had been lost.

*But it would be a long time before anxious families heard from their loved ones. A river of telegrams started bringing bad news, and that river kept flowing for four years. If families were lucky, instead of a telegram they finally got a post card, on which servicemen and -women had not been allowed to write a message. All they could do was check off pre-printed information, from “I am fine” to “I am in the hospital,” and various choices in between.

*Steve Carassas, a naval musician from Hammondsport, was blown off his ship in Pearl Harbor while playing the National Anthem. He would later be cast into the sea at the Battle of Kula Gulf, and spend the night in the water as a great sea battle raged around and above him. He survived the war but not by much, and his untimely death was presumably driven by his war experiences.

*He wasn’t the only one. Corporal Reuben Shettler of Pulteney died in a Japanese prison camp in 1942, shortly after the Bataan Death March and the surrender of the Philippines. Army nurse Eunice Young was captured on Corregidor, and remained a P.O.W. for almost three years. China missionary Bessie Hille of Bath spent most of 1943 interned as an enemy civilian until exchanged with the help of neutral Sweden.

*Manufacturing of consumer goods almost evaporated. There were no new cars. Tires, shoes, gas, and sugar were rationed. Rural electrification, just getting under way in Steuben, immediately stalled.

*Manufacturing for war, on the other hand, boomed. Mercury Aircraft jumped from two employees to 850, making components for Curtiss military aircraft. Women, elderly people, African Americans, Latin Americans, and underage kids found new employment opportunities. Sixteen million Americans went into uniform, and the civilian work force still grew. Haverling School raised salaries across the board. At least one man from Bath worked on the “Manhattan Project” to build the atomic bomb.

*Hammondsport graduated 14 students in 1939, but a wartime yearbook listed 90 alumni and faculty in the service (14 of them died). George Haley of Bath went from Syracuse University into the Tuskegee Airmen and the first of three wars he would fight in… opportunities he would have been denied a year or two earlier.

*Rochester Business Institute taught military office management, Civilian Pilot Training, and aviation ground school instructor courses… for men and women. Hammondsport opened a Defense Training School to teach the skills needed in war factories.

*Hornell High School became an air-raid warden’s post. Aircraft spotters watched the skies over Hammondsport, and over Arkport Dam. An air-raid warden in Corning was issued a large noisy rattle, specifically for signaling gas attacks.

*Over a hundred Nakajima dive bombers took part in the Pearl Harbor attack — Lieutenant Nakajima had come to Hammondsport in 1911, to learn to fly. Glenn Curtiss was long dead, but the very few American airplanes that got into the air were mostly Curtiss P-40 Warhawks and Curtiss P-36 Mohawks. Seaplane tender USS Glenn H. Curtiss was one of the few American vessels to get into motion, shooting down two airplanes and helping sink a midget submarine, while suffering 19 dead. New vessels in the expanded navy included USS Hammondsport (an airplane transport), USS Chemung, USS Cohocton, and USS Canisteo (all oilers).

*Every month the county draft contingent was sworn in at the courthouse in Bath, then marched (no doubt very badly) to the DL&W depot. The Old-Timers Band performed for each contingent, their numbers padded out by a few callow youths waiting for their own turn.

*President Roosevelt developed the G.I. Bill of Rights to reward the men and women in uniform, but also because it was a massive social engineering program designed to give millions of Americans college educations, and turn them into homeowners — dreams out of reach for most Americans until then.

*The end came with explosive rejoicing, but also left many empty spaces behind. Millions lived the rest of their lives with physical or emotional wounds… and so did those who were close to them. And, of course, America was now deeply and permanently engaged with the rest of the world… something nobody would have predicted on December 6, 1941.

Christmas Giving

Leave a reply

At Christmas time, which is also the end of most people’s tax year, many people turn their thoughts to giving… not just gifts to loved ones, but gifts to the community at large.

*If you have a church connection, a Christmas gift to the church might be fitting, or a gift to some church-connected helping agency, such as Catholic Charities, Mennonite Disaster Service, or United Methodist Committee on Relief.

*The Southern Tier Food Bank does outstanding work in helping provide for the hungry right here where we live. I give throughout the year. Milly’s Pantry in Penn Yan also does a tremendous job.

*Kiva Microfunds (or Kiva.org) provides a way to support microloans to emerging entrepreneurs around the world. About 80% of these loans go to women (and about 98% are repaid). Loans to women are one of the most effective ways to change lives and change communities, and we took steps a year or so back to do so through Kiva.

*I gave two gallons of blood before Addison’s Disease disqualified me at the age of 54. But right from the time they were infants we took our sons with us to the blood bank, and they both started giving as soon as they turned 18. BLOOD DONATIONS SAVE LIVES. What could you do that’s better than that? And at this time of year the need is especially great. Donors get over-busy, or catch a cold or flu, while snow and ice and sheer volume of traffic make for more road accidents, pushing demand up just when supply goes down. “At this festive season,” blood is needed even more. Check with the Red Cross. (Did you know that Clara Barton formed the first American Red Cross chapter in Dansville? Giving blood celebrates our local history!)

*When it’s cold, little animals die. The Finger Lakes SPCA in Bath, Chemung County SPCA near Elmira, and sister chapters all around bring them in, make them warm, and let them live. They could use your help.

*With a new administration in Washington, some folks are sharpening their axes for assaults on the environment. I have a long-standing membership with the National Audubon Society. Consider joining Audubon or one of the other big organizations fighting for our earth and our future: Sierra Club, Nature Conservancy, Earthwatch, and more.

*Hate groups are celebrating Christmas by ramping up their activities. Think about supporting the Southern Poverty Law Center, NAACP, American Civil Liberties Union, Anti-Defamation League, or another nationwide group fighting against bigotry.

*Imagine what it would be like being hospitalized over this season, or having hospitalized loved ones. Such services as Fisher House and Ronald McDonald House stay on the job, and always have too much job to do. Gifts help.

*Charles Dickens, who knew grinding childhood poverty first-hand, wrote, “At this festive season of the year, Mr. Scrooge, it is more than usually desirable that we should make some slight provision for the Poor and Destitute, who suffer greatly at the present time.  Many thousands are in want of common necessaries; hundreds of thousands are in want of common comforts, sir.” Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, remembering his life in a concentration camp, wrote, “When you’re cold, don’t expect sympathy from someone who’s warm.” We can all do better than that. Christmas isn’t the only time we give. But we rarely find a better reminder.