AROUND THE MEADOWS
A Semi Annual Publication

Summer 2006

Artists Discover their Muse
   Whenever the muse calls, the art studio will be open. With lockable drawers and cabinets for artists to store their materials, there is no need for a lock on the door, said Betty Kent, who has taken the lead in outfitting the studio. Kent, who won’t call herself an artist, though she paints and has created sculpture of wood and stone, has turned an artist’s eye for detail to the practical aspects of a place where creativity can flourish.

   “The room was finished in shades of white and cream, so as not to interfere with the artist’s eye,” Kent said. “The artist will supply the color.”

   The new art studio occupies a spacious corner room on the second floor of the Activities Center next door to a 100-seat auditorium and down the hall from a large game room and small conference rooms. The room had 10-foot ceilings and tall windows on two sides that let sunshine wash through to the innermost wall. Artists set their sights on the space, and Kent took charge of furnishing it as a studio.

   As you walk into the room there is a row of hooks for smocks – or berets? – affixed near the door. The tables can be moved into different configurations that work well for art classes. The room will also have a small stage suitable for an artist’s model. A 3-inch-wide strip of cork edges the room just above eye level so that artists may tack up their paintings and sketches to view them from a distance.

   The cabinetry is a mix of vertical cupboards and horizontal drawers, including a set of long, narrow drawers for flat storage of large sheets of paper, sketchpads and matting board. Just outside the studio is a small storage room for easels. The light table, far from the window, can be used for slides or tracings.

   Art is an important part of the wellness concept. When a survey went out to the members of the Carolina Meadows community, more than 100 people expressed an interest in pursuing art, either by creating artwork themselves, viewing the work of others or attending lectures on art.

   “Out of 600 individuals, that shows the importance of art in our lives,” Kent said.

   Two years after moving to Carolina Meadows in 1994, Kent pushed for gallery space to display artwork done by residents. The idea came as she walked to and from the pool down a hallway hung with pictures that Kent called “motel art.”

   “I’d seen examples in homes of the quality of art that people here could do,” she said. “I asked to use the hallway to exhibit residents’ art work.”

   Kent changes the exhibits frequently so that there is always something new to see. At any given time, the gallery may show photos, sketches, watercolors, pastels, acrylics, embroidery, collages, ceramics and even the intricate seashell designs called sailors’ valentines.

   “I accept any medium I can hang on a wall,” she said. With the sunny, new studio, more folks may be enticed to try their hand at some form of art.

   “It’s a surprise to see the name of someone you didn’t realize had that kind of talent,” Kent said. “It brings us closer together to see what people can do.”

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Good Taste Abounds at Carolina Meadows Café
   The café at Carolina Meadows is a popular destination for folks to stop by for breakfast after a morning walk or sipping mid-afternoon milkshakes with friends or enjoying a glass of wine as they watch the last of the tennis players leave the courts.

   Mark Maxwell, director of dining services, may be the idea guy who comes up with the menu and keeps things running smoothly, but the members of the Carolina Meadows community were the driving force that put the café on the blueprints.

   “They wanted a place to have sandwiches and soups and breakfast through the main part of the day and the flexibility of having a restaurant open whenever they wanted,” Maxwell said. “This way when they finished a round of golf late in the morning or pick up the grandkids after school, there is a place to go to grab a bite or just sit and enjoy some refreshments. With the space we had available in the Activities Center, this was a good time to put that in place. So we did.”

   Since it opened, the café has become a gathering spot from the time it pours that first cup of coffee at 8 a.m. until it collects the cappuccino cups just before closing at 4:30 p.m. Dot Reilly, who moved to Carolina Meadows a dozen years ago, enjoys the European sidewalk café atmosphere. Sun filters in through the windows, stacked to the double-height ceiling, overlooking the new tennis courts. She settles into the cushions on one of the wrought-iron chairs that slide across the black-and-white tile floor up to the mosaic surface of the café table.

   “It’s a bright, cheery place to sit and talk after golf, a good way to end the game,” Reilly said. “It’s open when other things aren’t. It’s a place to have lunch that fits into my schedule.”

   While the main dining room is similar to a restaurant, with leisurely meals served on china, the café offers the option of eating in, or if they wish, it can be wrapped up so that patrons can take food to go. Most of the menu items are prepared in the same kitchen that serves the main dining room and has given Carolina Meadows its reputation for delectable cuisine.

   Breakfast selections range from a yogurt, fruit and granola parfait to eggs, bacon and cheese on a croissant. There are muffins and fresh fruit to have with coffee that can be jazzed up by shots of flavored syrups. The lunch menu includes entrée salads, deli sandwiches, soup and grilled panninis, as well as daily specials such as chili and barbecued pork sandwiches. Between 11 a.m. and 3 p.m., the café delivers orders phoned in.

   “If someone misses lunch in the main restaurant because of an appointment,” Maxwell said, “this gives them an additional option for lunch.”

   Walking by the café on a Saturday one may find groups gathered to watch games on TV and order the lunch special, sometimes with a beer. In warm weather, folks can take their food out to the courtyard and sit near the fountain.

   Throughout the week, the café invites individuals to linger on their way to or from the fitness facilities. Whenever Reilly drops in for a bite, friends inevitably stop to join her.

   “Impromptu committee meetings rendezvous here,” she said. “It’s private enough to sit and have coffee and solve all the problems of the world.”

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The Wellness Factor: Improve your Physical, Emotional and Social Well Being
   When it comes to wellness, Michelle Davis follows Nike’s philosophy: Just do it.

Davis, the wellness coordinator at Carolina Meadows, emphasized that wellness comes through a balance of physical, emotional, social, intellectual, occupational and spiritual dimensions.

“We take into account the whole person, not just the physical part,” Davis said. The benefits of staying physically fit are numerous. “For every reason you can give me why you don’t exercise, I have ten to combat it. The bottom line is you just have to do it and you’ll feel better. There are so many benefits that can be achieved through exercising that I can’t think of a good enough reason not to do it.”

The new Activities Center provides a convincing reason to try or continue the benefits of staying fit. The newest addition to the Carolina Meadows campus includes a café, an art studio, a 100-seat auditorium, a game room and conference rooms, along with a fitness room with cardio and strength-training machines and an exercise studio. The light and airy fitness center with its expansive windows is a big draw to residents who have been ambivalent about exercise. The large, open room with high ceilings overlooks campus buildings and villas on one side and the fountain in the landscaped courtyard on the other. The sign-in sheet shows more than 1,100 visits a month.

For cardio workouts, the fitness room has three step machines and four treadmills, two Schwinn Airdyne cycling machines, three Keiser recumbent bikes and two new high-tech stationary bikes.

For strength training, the Keiser weight system stations work on air pressure, eliminating the need to add or remove five-pound metal weights. The resistance can go up by half-pound increments. The center also has a Keiser stretch station that has instructions on using the equipment in both pictures and words. Plus, Davis leads an orientation session each month to teach people how to use the machines.

At the request of residents, Davis pushed for tangential health classes such as the Alexander technique that teaches effective ways to get in and out of a chair and perform other everyday activities without adding stress to muscles and joints; she also persuaded the staff massage therapist, Donna Duff, to offer “energy medicine” treatments, often practiced by nurses, that channel energy through the body to be used in a positive way.

“I’m willing to try anything once,” Davis said.

Bob Newton, who lives at Carolina Meadows, agrees with that philosophy. Over the course of any given week, he plays six-wicket croquet and tennis, joins weight-training classes, swims laps, and uses the Keiser machines and treadmills. And he bikes everywhere on campus, rather than drive.

“I’m a world-class eater,” Newton said. “Exercise keeps me trim.”

He volunteers regularly with Habitat for Humanity as part of a team that wires houses.

“That’s up and down a ladder all day, crawling in the attic or underneath houses,” he said. “Staying fit sure helps to do all that.”

Being a part of so many different activities has the added benefit of introducing him to some interesting new friends.

“If you are active in these things,” he said, “you get all the socializing you can fit in and build some friendships.”

All sorts of classes take place in the exercise studio – yoga, tai chi, Jazzercise, and various stretching and toning sessions. Some use the studio as a place to work out with free weights and resistance bands. The studio has a barre along mirrored walls so participants can check their form. The instructor can lead from a low platform. The fitness room, exercise studio and outdoor courtyard are wired for satellite radio.

The pool is open for lap swimming and different aquatic strength-training classes, including a class that specifically targets the discomforts of arthritis. Most of the instructors for the classes in the exercise studio and pool are specialists and keep coming back by popular demand.

Davis, assisted by wellness therapist Beth Goode, is willing to meet with residents one-on-one to design a fitness program to meet their specific goals. A physical therapist on staff also confers when needed. Davis came up with a weight-machine regimen for Carolina Meadows resident Barbara Walburn, who described Davis as a “fitness coach.”

“She recommended the right weights to start with, when to increase and how many reps to do,” Walburn said, “so I can just sign in and work out whenever I feel like it.” The fitness center is open from 6 a.m. to 10 p.m.

In addition to the Keiser machines, Walburn swims and does yoga and has tried tai chi. A member of the well-being task force, Walburn is committed to staying active.

“Doing the activities makes you feel better, number one, and it speeds recovery if you are injured or sick,” she said. “Being active helps physically, mentally and, of course, socially. Part of being well is having a social life.”

To that end, Davis teaches line dancing and organizes a Turkey Trot fun run/walk in the fall and a Bunny Hop campus walk in the spring. The Poet’s Walk on the grounds of a historic mansion in Hillsborough, NC was so successful last year that she plans three more off-campus walking excursions this year.

“My goal,” says Davis, “is to offer enough variety that there will be something to interest everyone.”

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Cycling at the Meadows
   At Carolina Meadows there is a small contingent of individuals who like to leave their cars and golf carts at home and get around as much as possible on bicycles. Most of the cyclists have ridden bicycles since childhood, and never saw a reason to abandon their two-wheelers to dust and rust. Carolina Meadows maintains a battery of stationary bikes in the exercise studio, but some members of the community make more use of the bike parking racks maintained for active riders just outside the Club Center.

   Almost surely the highest-mileage rider at Carolina Meadows is Bob Kent, who got a bike for Christmas when he was 12 or 13, and lived in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. When hard use and old age overtook his first bike, he abandoned two-wheeling until the early 1970s, when he and his wife, Betty, were living in East Orange, NJ. A worldwide squeeze on crude oil led to gasoline shortages in the U.S. and to long lines at gas stations.

   “Buying gas was a real pain in the neck,” he recalls, so he and Betty bought a matching pair of green Schwinn bikes to ride around town. Bob found that the exercise helped him keep in good physical condition, and his rides became longer as the months passed.

   Unlike some riders, Bob says, “I spend very little time riding with groups. “ But in High Point, he sometimes rode with a group consisting mostly of firemen, who loaded their bikes on trucks and rode to distant points like the Blue Ridge Parkway. It was while descending a slope on the Parkway that Bob set a personal speed record, 39 miles per hour according to his bike speedometer.

   A meticulous record keeper these days, Bob calculates that from 1989 to September 2005, he logged 53,643 bicycle miles on all surfaces and in all kinds of weather. Stretched end to end, this mileage was more than enough to carry him twice around the world at the equator. These days he sometimes adds to his mileage in big gulps. Often a volunteer subject for medical studies at the Duke Medical Center, Bob sometimes bicycles from Carolina Meadows to Durham and return, a 30-mile round trip.

   Like Bob Kent, Bob Newton, who lives at Carolina Meadows with his wife, started young as a biker, getting his first bicycle at age five or six. His hometown of Maywood, IL was in flat country, well suited to bicycling. As a high school student, he rode a mile or so to school most days, and after graduating from college with a degree in pharmacy, worked in a Veterans Administration hospital in Detroit. “We lived close enough to the hospital where the pharmacy was located that I could bike to work –about seven miles each way. I spent 20 years riding to work.”

   “In the 1970s and 1980s,” Bob recalls,” I got into a bicycle club in Dearborn, MI. They were always getting involved in what they called Century rides in the summer, 100 miles out on Saturday, 100 miles home on Sunday, with a sag wagon to carry baggage and look after stragglers.” With another group, he rode a tour of the Scioto River Valley, from Columbus Ohio, down the Scioto river to the Ohio River, and back, about 105 miles each way.

   These century rides are not a walk in the park even for experienced riders. Says Bob: “Three months before, you would start taking 10-mile, 20-mile rides up to 30 and 40 miles a day. On the century rides, if you didn’t sleep in somebody’s camping area with bunks, the floors of a gymnasium were surprisingly comfortable, especially after a dinner of spaghetti and Gatorade.”

   Newton, who has a sensitive touch with tools, prefers to build the wheels he uses from hubs, spokes and rims purchased separately and carefully assembled and balanced in his garage. He occasionally provides repairs and solves maintenance problems for his bike-riding neighbors. He says he once was able to remove and patch a leaky inner tube, refit it and be on his way in ten minutes. Now, he says, it takes a little longer.

   The biking contingent at Carolina Meadows includes several women. Carolyn Kozelka recalls, “I first borrowed my sister’s bike, which was much too big for me and I wound up with skinned knees and elbows.” In time she got her own Elgin bike, with 28-inch wheels and took to the sport with enthusiasm that lasted into adulthood. She is especially fond of recalling a biking trip designated as an Outdoor Vacation for Women Over Forty. Her party numbered about a dozen women who toured Prince Edward Island, north of Nova Scotia. Aside from biking, the women hiked and went kayaking. She is convinced that for riders of all ages, biking provides good exercise, stimulates the brain, and improves coordination and balance.

   She reminded Dr. Marge Miles of the pleasures of biking, and Dr. Miles visited a Chapel Hill bicycle shop for advice on selecting a bicycle suitable for her skill and life style. All the old skills quickly returned, and now that she has retired from full time teaching at the UNC School of Nursing she cruises around Carolina Meadows and the nearby Governor’s Village, and along the nearby roads, breathing deeply of the clean fresh air.

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