I’m pretty sure we’ll also be writing a check to “Nothing but Nets” in the near future.

-S

I once gave a buch of clothes to a friend who works for Head Start- including my work clothes from when I was a professional.

I asked her if they needed anything else and she said “Underwear”. So I went to Target & Walmart, got lots of kids & adult undies & socks. Now I do that every few months. Smaller shops, like Gymboree, will give me a nice discount on items which haven’t moved. I got 100 pairs of blue socks once for around $30. I like a lot of the suggestions listed here, especially the micro-loans.

I have provided new underwear for prisoners. The feedback was that it was most welcome. There’s sufficient loss of dignity being locked up, the least we can do is provide for their human needs.

Every day it costs nothing to click on The Hunger Site. It links to 5 other related sites. If you do a “google” search, you will find more information, including discussion of how much money actually gets donated. I figure that whether it is 3 cents or 30 cents or hundreds of dollars, it costs me nothing to click and every little bit helps.

Also, The American Red Cross always needs blood donations. According to the Red Cross, every donation potentially saves 3 lives, yet only a small number of people who could donate blood actually do.

Thanks for these excellent reminders, Anna.

The Hunger Site takes only seconds to click thru and helps several deserving groups.

And the need for blood donations is constant. Go with a friend and make a social occasion out of it!

Also, The American Red Cross always needs blood donations. According to the Red Cross, every donation potentially saves 3 lives, yet only a small number of people who could donate blood actually do.

This morning, my boyfriend read to me portions of an article from the Sierra Club newspaper. What are sinkholes and why do they happen?

It became obvious to me that the issue of mysteriously sudden sinkhole events is the same as mysterious collapsing bridges– aging infrastructure

Some interesting facts, recited from memory (he took the paper with him):

News coverage of sinkholes generally takes the story of city officials saying, with wide eyes and hands on cheeks, “We have no idea why this happened”

sinkhole experts say that, no, it’s no mystery– it’s bad sewer pipes. When you get a hole in a sewer pipe, sure, you might get leakage out in to the surrounding soil, but you also might get surrounding soil to enter the sewer pipe, which gets carried away to wherever sewage goes. If that goes on for a while, a hole in the earth develops, and lo! a collapse from above fills it in. Sinkhole.

If there’s a nearby manhole cover (entrance to sewer pipes) near a sinkhole, it’s a smoking gun.

Municipalities don’t like to come out and say “it’s a sewer problem” because, well, they’ve just admitted liability.

Many sewers were constructed 60 years ago; they’ve got 50 year lifespans. Look for more sinkholes as these sewers age and break and carry away earth that falls into sewer pipes.

The news coverage about sinkholes has to change from some sort of X-file mystery to “it’s the sewer, dagnabbit” in order to pinpoint the cause and deal with the problem. Oh, and in cases where they say, “Look, there’s a sinkhole that caused damage to the sewer pipe” — that’s completely backwards.

This makes for an interesting local blog issue. Citizen journalism and all that. Calling bullsh*t on any “OMG, we have NO idea why it happened” news coverage.

And, in light of the Minneapolis bridge collapse and attention being paid to aging infrastructure, now’s a great time to talk about sinkholes. Because it’s the same problem.

I asked her if they needed anything else and she said “Underwear”. So I went to Target & Walmart, got lots of kids & adult undies & socks. Now I do that every few months. Smaller shops, like Gymboree, will give me a nice discount on items which haven’t moved. I got 100 pairs of blue socks once for around $30. I like a lot of the suggestions listed here, especially the micro-loans.

And Montag, a political recipe! will have to tell my granddaughter about that one, she is just learning to bake scratch food, and is a rabid Dem. college gal. She will love it!

Off for Saturday stuff–