Activity Updates
November is gratitude month. Our residents are proud to gaze into the past to see the states, counties, and communities they have helped build. The state of Iowa will celebrate its 175th anniversary of statehood on December 28 of this year. Montrose Health Center activity department is highlighting that past with a kiosk display from the Iowa State Historical Society and the Iowa Department of Cultural Affairs. MHC made a request to the state agencies to receive a kiosk, describing the role Iowa history had during the pandemic lockdown. Nuggets of History and History Moments handouts reminded our residents of how they and their ancestors persevered through other past difficulties and those historic remembrances stiffened their spines for the present realities.
In October, we explored Iowa Territorial Days and ate homemade pumpkin butter. Calling attention to a more recent era, our read-aloud book has been Mildred Armstrong Kalish’s Little Heathens: Hard Times & High Spirts on an Iowa Farm during the Great Depression.
On Election Day, we discussed the past mayors of Keokuk, Fort Madison, and Montrose. November will, also, feature an afternoon tribute to George Washington Carver, educated at Simpson College and Iowa State College. Carver, a brilliant agricultural scientist, also served on the faculty of Iowa State College before moving to Tuskegee Institute. In addition, this month brings a visit from Lee County Conservation’s Naturalist Clay Steele with a presentation on Prairies. This ties in with our history emphasis by showing the prairie-to-farmland transitions over the years and the efforts to preserve some of this habitat.
December will continue the Iowa History features right up to the 175th Iowa Birthday Party on the 28th. Our MHC family is so thankful to be living in the great state of Iowa. “Our liberties we prize and our rights we will maintain.”