Our Lady Of The Pines

Zimmerman: The Other Day

Sometimes, ideas get after me, trailing along like a child who needs attention.

This one popped up about a year ago, when I read a biography of Gertrude Bell, a brilliant figure in British and Middle Eastern history who lost her mother at the age of 4 but flourished under the tutelage of her father.

In the 1870s and ‘80s, Sir Hugh Bell read to his daughter, taught her botany and helped her tend a garden. Against the mores of the time he sent her to Oxford, where she matriculated in the only subject allowed to a woman, history.

She earned a "first" in history and went on to become an archeologist, learning fluent Arabic and bringing the nation of Iraq into being.

Gertrude turned to her father for guidance as long as he was alive. Talking to friends about her, I mentioned how lucky she was to have had a father like that.

Months passed, and an editor here told me that the paper would be launching a new page on parenting, for which we would subscribe to a wire service called "Moms."

I would have had a knee-jerk response, but my knees are not what they used to be.

So many battles ago, I protested that moms are only half of what parenting is about.

The idea came calling again when I saw the movie "The Kids Are All Right."

Annette Bening and Julianne Moore star as lesbian parents struggling through a fallow period while their two teen children hunt up the sperm donor who is technically the father of both.

The script and acting were great, and the movie was unexpectedly funny. But afterwards, what tugged at me were the kids. They responded to this stranger, this guy who had donated two vials of DNA, with a kind of wonder.

Mark Ruffalo plays the free spirit suddenly confronted with two strapping kids. His character manages just the right openness and availability and safety (well, not with the moms).

We watch the daughter, warming in the rays of Ruffalo's interest and respect. And the boy, at first prickly, accepts a valuable lesson about the company he keeps — a message that even two lecturing moms could not get across.

The movie really got the lectures right. I should know.

The point of the story is that Ruffalo's character is an interloper who thinks he can grow a family on the fast track. Families, the movie says, are not sets of china with all the right pieces, but rather organisms grown sturdy through years of love and heavy lifting.

I agree. And I know that single parents and gay parents and stepparents lead such families.

Watchdog Report: Several Area Nursing Homes Receive State's Lowest ...

Findings

Seven area nursing homes received the lowest quality ratings from the federal government last year based partly on state inspections in 2009 and 2010. Three are the lowest rated so far this year.

Inspection reports show that residents in the worst-rated homes live in dirty conditions, endure verbal and physical abuse, and are neglected.

Thirty-nine of the area’s 60 nursing homes are rated in the bottom three of five levels of quality.

Go to www.medicare.gov/NHCompare/home.aspor www.medicare.gov and search for “Nursing Home Compare.”

Call the New Jersey Department of Health and Senior Services complaint hot line, 800-792-9770, or the state ombudsman toll-free hot line, 877-582-6995.

The star rating scale 5 star: Much above average

Posted: Sunday, June 26, 2011 3:00 am | Updated: 7:25 am, Sun Jun 26, 2011.

Watchdog report: Several area nursing homes receive state’s lowest possible rankingBy RICHARD DEGENER, Staff Writer |

A bandage on the left hand of a resident at Our Lady’s Residence Health Care Center drew immediate questions from a state inspector visiting the Pleasantville nursing home in June 2009.

After the bandage was removed, closer inspection revealed that the fingernails of “Resident #19″ were so long that they cut his palm when he clenched his fist, a state inspection report states. One nurse thought the wound needed stitches, but another simply closed it with adhesive strips. No paperwork documented the injury. A nurse said she must have been “interrupted or distracted” that day, the report states.

How could such an injury occur, the inspector wondered in the report, if residents received daily hygienic care?

That incident was one of hundreds of violations of rules that govern quality of care, safety and sanitation found by inspectors during the past two years at the 60 nursing homes in Atlantic, Cape May, Cumberland and Ocean counties, state inspection reports reviewed by The Press of Atlantic City show. The reports are used by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to develop consumer ratings of one to five stars for nursing homes. The majority of area facilities – 65 percent – are rated three stars or lower, federal data show, and half are in the bottom two levels.

At the end of 2010, seven area homes were rated one star, the lowest rating. Six of the seven improved in recent ratings, but five were still in the two bottom levels. The seven one-star nursing homes were Lincoln Specialty Care in Vineland, Eastern Pines Convalescent Center in Atlantic City, Our Lady’s Residence in Pleasantville, The Shores at Wesley Manor in Ocean City, Arcadia Nursing and Rehabilitation Center in Little Egg Harbor Township, South Jersey Extended Care in Bridgeton and Absecon Manor in Absecon.

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