Joslyn House Revisited

Rumble Strip

Erica Heilman / Rumble Strip

Places & Travel, Personal Journals, Society & Culture

4.9 • 1.2K Ratings

🗓️ 21 October 2025

⏱️ 27 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

People often assume the Joslyn House is a nursing home, probably because a lot of old people live there. But it’s not a nursing home. It’s not assisted living. There’s no anonymous art on the wall. It’s a house. It’s a a place where up to twenty older people live independently together…in a huge, elegant house furnished with their own things. It is a place where you don’t have to worry about cooking, where if you’re lonely at night there‘s someone to talk to, or sit with. In other words, a civilized, safe place where love is evident.

Transcript

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0:00.0	This is Rumble Strip. I'm Erica Heilman. A note before we begin. I am working on nine shows at the moment,
0:07.0	and none of them are getting done very fast. So in the meantime, I want to run some older stories, and this is one of my favorites. It aired on Vermont Public recently, and I fell in love with these people all over again when I was working on it. So here it is.
0:21.8	Jocelyn House.
0:28.0	Quiet around here this morning.
0:32.8	People haven't gotten up yet.
0:35.3	No.
0:36.9	Years later, she's taking pictures?
0:39.4	No, she's getting a little bit of sound.
0:42.6	I'm working on sound.
0:43.7	I'm recording all of that.
0:45.0	The sound in Jocelyn House this morning.
0:47.5	Yeah.
0:48.1	Oh.
0:50.4	Yeah.
0:51.2	That's interesting.
0:52.5	Yeah.
1:01.4	Is it a nice sound? Yeah. That's interesting. Yeah? Is it a nice sound? That's Becky and Millie before breakfast of the Jocelyn House in Randolph, Vermont. Breakfast is at 8.
1:06.9	Oh dear, I'm in the middle of the way here. People often assume that Jocelyn House is a nursing home, probably because a lot of old people live there, but it's not a nursing home. It's not assisted living. It's a house. It's a place where up to 20 older people live independently together in a huge, elegant house furnished with their own things.
1:29.6	They're socializing when you want it, silence when you don't. There's sociable silence.
1:35.5	Residents are given a room, three meals a day, and rent is $1980 a month. Becky and Arlene, the
1:42.4	managers of the house, provide loving care and attention, but no medical services.
1:47.0	If residents need extra help, they hire in nurses, and there are nurses who visit the house regularly.
	...

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