2-26-12 Survival Jobs for Writer-Musicians – Starter Job #54 (Part Four, Working Eldercare in Greenwich Village)

What can I take away from the survival job experience of working with Nadya? First of all, I have always liked seniors, and enjoyed their company, even though they can smell funny (my grandma had a strange, unpleasant odor from her person, generally) and look a little scary.

Secondly, because they ARE generally smart and experienced in life, I find it easier to have a conversation and relate to them. Thirdly, their manners are generally better than younger people’s -- and I dig the niceties of life, the little courtesies (thanks, mom).

Given the choice, I’d prefer working with seniors over kids. . . though of course, the individual child or elderly person is an important consideration, especially if working with them one-on-one.

Working with Nadya taught me that using psychology with others is probably as important as taking care of the plain old day-to-day necessities -- which I’m good at. Food shopping, cooking, light cleaning, keeping house (lightly!) is all pretty easy, basic stuff. And everybody needs that, especially people who are hiring you to be a caretaker. The other thing you need is to make quick decisions in panic or emergency situations. I keep a cool head in a crisis; I’ve never screamed and cried until after the critical time is passed and I have time to reflect.

In the end, the hardest part of a caretaker job is the finesse you need to convince your charges that they are in charge and making their own choices. Meanwhile, you’re pointing them to these choices, prodding them in a certain (good) direction. Even if it just comes down to choosing some eggs and toast instead of flavored sugary yogurts day in and day out; even if it’s choosing fruits instead of puddings and cakes; even if it’s taking out pizza or falafels instead of MacDonald’s burgers. . .

As a caretaker, I always tried -- and try! -- to be a good influence, maybe an amateur cognitive therapist. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, either *-)

2-25-12 Survival Jobs for Writer-Musicians – Starter Job #53 (Part Three, Working Eldercare in Greenwich Village)

. . . One day, the scene that greeted my eyes (and nose) was far more than what I’d bargained for in the course of “light caretaking” (and light cleaning -- never my favorite pastime or job). But before I continue, again, I presume you’ve returned to the blogsite for a continuation of this survival job section, #’s 51 - whatever. These are my dedicated blogs to my “Working Eldercare in Greenwich Village” episodes -- or adventures. Crazily enough, those “wild young things” of the flapper era in the roaring twenties were acting just as mischievously as ever, despite their growing old and demented. One might say at times they even behaved badly, on purpose -- another observation that ties the behavior of children and the aged, and makes them similar.

So, one day, I arrived at my charge’s home, this famed graphologist Nadya Olyanova’s, in the West Village and wished I hadn’t gone.

I unlocked her door to a unpleasant smell and even more unpleasant sight. She was mostly naked, spreadeagled on her bed with arms outstretched, smeared in her own feces. Muttering incoherently, shit smeared here and there around the apartment and on the walls, Nadya seemed pretty out of it.

Me, alarmed? I go into shock first, stop everything, assess the situation for a few seconds, then charge right in.

“Nadya! What’s going on? What happened?” After talking to her and covering her, neck down, with a sheet, I called my friend, Jack, who lived in the building. “Please, come down now!”

He looked at the situation and shook his head. “She does this kind of thing from time to time, spreading out her arms like she’s Christ being crucified on the cross. Some kind of persecution complex. She’ll be all right.”

Jack turned to Nadya and started scolding her: “Nadya, come off it. Lauren’s here and you need to get up and take care of yourself.” I believe he helped me clean up (I really hate fecal matter, shit, doo doo, whatever you call it -- one big reason I don’t have dogs). We got Nadya back into compos mentis (a sound mind) and corpore sano (a healthy body) little by little. . .

That was the negative side of caring for a partly demented, totally melodramatic old woman from Greenwich Village, who went from the queen of penmanship to the queen of (her own) shit -- not that there’s anything wrong with that!

2-24-12 Survival Jobs for Writer-Musicians – Starter Job #52 (Elder Care -- Part Two, Working Eldercare in Greenwich Village)

(photo is actually one of my grandma, Ethel, circa 1925. The fashion and hairstyle is typical of women from that time; there are none of Nadya Olyanova that I could find online . . . )

I presume you’ve returned to the blogsite for a continuation of survival job #52 (perhaps -- I’m not great at keeping track of how many actual different jobs, though if each Nervus Rex gig counts, there’d be lots).

Welcome back to “Working Eldercare in Greenwich Village.” Those “wild young things” of the flapper era in the roaring twenties were growing old and demented by the early ‘80’s. One of them, a woman named Nadya Olyanova Carruthers (the latter, her deceased husband’s name), was in need of somebody to look in on her for a few hours a day, take her to the grocery store, on walks, etc. Some light housekeeping and cooking was a part of the deal -- and at the time, I was fine with the “light” side of cleaning house (and a tolerably good cook, actually).

Older generations (those born before the nineteen forties, say) were much enamored of alcohol and tobacco. I can’t say that’s what made their bodies break down or their minds susceptible to more of the geriatric health risks. . . but I somehow think the “bathtub gin” and suspicious blends of spirits from the Prohibition era, along with chainsmoking, might have not been the best thing, long term, for people like Nadya.

Like I mentioned previously, when we met (through my friend, Jack B.), she had me write a page in longhand as a sample for her to analyze before deigning to hire me as a part time helper. She lived in the West Village, off of Hudson Street, maybe on Horatio Street.

When she was napping or otherwise engaged, I’d read through her handwriting analysis books, enjoying the additional pointers she made about specific handwriting traits. Cool stuff. She didn’t tell me that she’d analyzed Hitler’s hand. . . or had a big radio audience for her work back in the heyday of radio. She never mentioned studying with Alfred Adler, either -- but perhaps she didn’t think that’d be interesting to me!

Anyhow, in the day-to-day of working with her, I’d arrive in the morning with my own set of keys at, say, nine o’clock. Usually, Nadya would be up, and would act kind of cranky. I’d have to make sure she’d eaten something for breakfast, then clean up a little. I’d ask where we’d be walking today -- to which she’d usually balk and say she’d rather stay in. Having been given instructions to take a daily walk with my charge, I’d cajole and try to reason, I’d joke and play the toughie. I reckon she liked the attention, and that she also liked to argue. Almost every day, we did wind up going out after a session of major cajoling etc.. The usual destination was to the neighborhood grocery store or to the supermarket, the D’Agostino’s, probably. “D’Ag’s” was a pricier place to buy food than my local Grand Union on Bleecker and LaGuardia Place, so I felt a slight annoyance that we had to spend more money in the West Village (but it IS a pricier neighborhood, anyway).

More often than not, Nadya would buy flavored yogurts or stuff that wasn’t super nutritious, but tolerable to her digestion and tastebuds. Even though I offered to cook more complex dishes (ones that required actual cooking), Nadya refused anything that required a fuss.

I mentioned that I was seeing Dr. Anna Manska, a village fixture, an aged General Practitioner who was especially sympathetic to women and women’s problems (psychological as well as physical). It was well known downtown that Dr. Manska was an easy touch for valium prescriptions and renewals. I liked her brusque candor and willingness to help get to the heart of the matter when I was sick (not too often!). Dr. Manska also charged very little for office visits, a good thing because so few of us had any kind of health insurance (leading the thrilling bohemian life in Greenwich Village!).

At the mention of Anna Manska, Nadya sniffed, “I knew her,” and said she was also in medical school -- as if there were some sort of competition. In fact, back in the nineteen thirties, so few women went to medical school (and hailed from Mother Russia, like Manska and Olyanova), so probably Nadya did feel a little competitive.

One day, when she seemed pretty lucid and in a good mood, I asked her about the old days in the village, and if people back then ran around and fooled around a lot -- you know, had sexual relationships like they had in modern days.

“Oh yes, but it was on the Q-T.”

Um, huh? What was that? “Nadya, what’s a Q-T?”

She smiled mischievously. “It was on the quiet -- on the Q-T.” I was given to understand that people ran around and acted every bit as wildly as they did in the writings of Dorothy Parker. How cool was that?

But as cool as Nadya Olyanova Carruthers could at times be to hang out with, there were also the days that you wish had never happened. . .

2-23-12 Survival Jobs for Writer-Musicians – Starter Job #51 (Elder Care -- an Introduction to Working with Greenwich Village seniors)

How are Greenwich Village oldsters different from any others? I found that out when my friend, Jack Baittinger (now called Zach), asked if I’d be available to help look after an older woman who lived in the West Village. Part of her story was, she lived in the village during prohibition, and might have even met Dorothy Parker (!).

Or maybe it was Edna St. Vincent Millay. At any rate, my new elder-care charge was about 80 years old, and somewhat in the throes of dementia -- though at the time, we figured she was an ornery old woman who liked to get attention by doing outrageous things. This might have been one of the problems with getting a permanent assistant for her.

I was planning my trip to London and needed to do any kind of work to get by. . . the Nervus Rex income was drying up, and I was able to grab more freelancing and some good paying transcription work, as well (for Martha Hume, I think).

So I went to meet this legend of a woman, Nadya Olyanova Carruthers. A noted handwriting analyst (or graphologist), she was a pretty big deal for a while. In fact, when I met her, she had me write a page in longhand as a sample for her to analyze before deigning to hire me as a part time helper.

I passed the test -- for years, I had studied graphology informally and made sure I had all the good traits, or at least, I cultivated them. “Change your handwriting, change your personality, change your future,” was the idea -- and as a kid, I desperately wanted to change because I was one unhappy twelve-year-old. Of course, now I know that most 12-yr-olds are desperately unhappy, but I digress.

(from the NY Times obituary in ’91) Nadya Olyanova, a graphologist who analyzed the handwriting of Adolph Hitler before his death and said he showed strong suicidal tendencies, was a consultant to the psychiatric services of Kings County Hospital in Brooklyn and to the Menninger Clinic in Topeka, Kan. She was also a consultant to psychologists, psychiatrists and businesses.

Born in a small town near Kiev in the Ukraine, she was brought to the United States as a child and grew up in Brooklyn.

In the early 1930's she studied psychology in New York with the Austrian psychoanalyst Alfred Adler. She had a weekly radio show on WOR and analyzed the handwriting of thousands of people.

In the fall of 1939, six years before Hitler's death, she wrote in The Ohio State Journal in Columbus: "Characteristic of Herr Hitler's handwritings are three outstanding traits: indecision, depression and morbid introspection. It takes no handwriting expert to recognize the cramped, drooping uncertain signature as a manifestation of the Fuhrer's cramped, self-centered approach to life."

Now that we know more about this amazing woman, I’ll come back and talk about what it was like to care for her in 1981. . .