Category: PublicService

Scarcity of Blood Donors

I was shocked the other day to read the other day that only 38% of Americans could give blood if they wanted to. The CBS article Number Of Americans Eligible To Give Blood Overestimated By 60 Percent  explains why.  When I started donating in college, I think they asked potential donors about seven questions, including about how the donor was feeling that day.  I think there were several dozen questions that I answered to today before I donated.  Without working at a place with a regular visit by a blood bank, I hadn’t donated in four or five years.  With my new job, I now drive past a hospital with a blood bank four days a week, so I decided to schedule an appointment there.  I am pleased to report that the juice and chocolate chip cookies were very good.

Powers and Old Ranch

This morning, the Gazette reported

The intersection of Powers and Old Ranch Road now tops the city’s list of the 25 most dangerous intersections while many hot spots from the past year saw fewer crumpled cars and injuries.

This is an intersection I drive past several times a week, and I thought it looked extremely dangerous from before it opened. Powers looks like a limited access highway at that point, and there is very little warning that there is at grade crossing with a signal at the top of the hill. In addition, the drivers on Old Ranch do not have good visibilty to see the traffic that might be approaching on Powers. I wonder if this report will lead the traffic engineers to consider some risk mitigation like flashing lights on Powers to warn of the intersection.

Freecycle

I had heard about Freecycle some time ago, but there didn’t seem to be an active local group. A few days ago, I checked again, and found that the Freecycle yahoogroup for our area had grown to 800 members.

Freecycle started as a way to exchange goods that were no longer wanted and keep them out of landfills. In our abundant society, people frequently discard things that are still useful, or would be to someone else. I take a lot of our discards to Goodwill, but I didn’t think Goodwill would welcome a short cord of firewood.

Since we hadn’t used our wood stove for several years, and finally sold it last summer, we didn’t need the firewood. Worse still, the firewood was stacked along our dog run fence, and two of the local dogs had discovered that it made a perfect ramp allowing them to jump in and join our dogs, which also gave them access through a dog door to the mudroom. (This was especially annoying since these dogs were chewers, and we didn’t have the mud room policed for dogs that chew. I try to keep the chemicals in the mud room secure, but don’t normally have to worry about the rest of the room.) We put up some mesh to keep the dogs off the wood, which worked but made the area even more of an eyesore. I had thought about putting a sign offering the firewood out on our road, but hadn’t gotten around to it.

Freecycle asks that your first post to the list be an offer, so I offered the firewood on Wednesday afternoon. I had over ten responses in twenty minutes. After a little correspondence with the first responder, I had arranged for her to come and pick up the firewood on Thursday afternoon. She and her two children arrived promptly at the arranged time, and it took us less than an hour to load the wood into her cargo van. I had no idea you could fit so much into one of those big vans.

Freecycle accepts posts about almost any legal item except for firearms, alcohol and tobacco. You are also allowed to post an occasional “wanted” item, and the one that amused me most was someone requesting a size 10 blue evening gown. The request was fulfilled the same day.

Bunny Lacing

Everyone over the age of four or so knows how to tie shoes, right? However, a few days ago I learned about Bunny Lacing from Marn at Marn’s Big Adventure. This is a way of tieing the laces on athletic shoes so that the heel is better anchored within the shoe. I tried it, and it works. It isn’t even particularly difficult. (Read down a bit in the entry to find complete illustrated instructions.)