Hi everybody, did you have a merry Christmas and happy New Year? I hope you made several resolutions: the kind you’ll keep. I’ve made some; do yours match mine?

1. To find more ways to promote research in our field.

2. To write, to document, the things we see happen every day to patients--good things because of recreation.

3. To find more visual methods of telling others of our work.

4. To enlist at least one high-school or college student into a hospital recreation curriculum.

5. To interest our surrounding communities in bringing recreation to their local hospitals which are without recreation.

Christmas here in New York City was wonderful . . . Operation Christmas Welfare Island by Land, Sea, and Air did the trick. It was a beautiful day. A helicopter, a police launch, and a red station wagon, carrying three Santas loaded with gifts, by land, sea, and air, to the Welfare Island hospitals. We received swell publicity: a feature picture in every newspaper.

The result: over twenty thousand gifts for the city hospital patients were donated by the public.

The institute for the northeastern area concerning “Recreation for Senior Citizens in Hospitals, Nursing Homes, and Institutions” is scheduled for January 180290 at New York University--just about the time this magazine goes to press. I’m hoping for a heavy registration for four reasons.

1. So few nursing homes have varied recreation programs for their ill and handicapped.

2. Quite a few, but far from all, homes for the aged realize a resident’s interests and morale are of equal importance to his physical well-being.

3. Recreation personnel wonder more and more how to program for the aged. Obviously, it takes much more time to develop interest in activities on the part of our senior citizens than in younger folks. How do we get the time when, more often than not, we work at a ratio of one thousand patients to one worker?

4. What part should the community play in developing recreation centers and home visits for the thousands of non-institutionalized ill and handicapped senior citizens?

If only we come up with a few good constructive ideas, we’ll have achieved our purpose. Tell you next month about the institute and the results of last year’s study of the value of recreation for the chronically ill.

Don’t Overlook . . .

A new publication for you next month: Dramatic Activities In a Hospital Setting, published by the Hospital Recreation Consultant Service of NRA.

More new films on the subject of the aged: Our Senior Citizens, which is a new mental health documentary, and Still Going Places, produced by the Department of Health of New York City.

A good book: Introduction to Psychiatric Occupational Therapy by G.S. and J. W. Fidler. (MacMillan Publishing Company, 60 Fifth Avenue, New York 11, New York. $4.00)

Last but not least, we owe it to ourselves to read Dr. Alexander Reid Martin’s talk, “A Philosophy of Recreation,” published by the University of North Carolina.

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