Shh? No! Speak up!

Advertising is a great tool, but advertising incorrectly, with more license than necessary, just shoves your product or service into the trash heap for many of us. You may trick me once, but if I have done my research and/or the second time you attempt, you are only playing tricks on yourself.700 is not the same as 640.  Large may be relative, but there is a distinct difference between a large piece of cake and a slither of cake. Freshly made is not the same as days old.  Excellent quality is not a synonym for falling apart. And so on. 

Community Emergency Response Team - a good thing. I am still trying to figure out how I could work for a phone company, live in Florida, and listen to the news and NOT know about them until I moved to Washington state in 2004. . .  (NOTE: this is also published on TumbledWords.com)

Though just normal people (ok, normal, above-average, and chickens like me), those who have attended classes and done a mock disaster drill, however tiny, earned their certificate, and many have signed up to become team members. Across the country, C.E.R.T. members have already proven their worth during natural disasters in communities for years.

In many cases they become the first responders, walking from house to house or business to business before the professionals can get there. Obviously there are limits to what they can do, but there is plenty they can do! They are trained:

• from basic first aid such as stopping bleeding and making splints out of whatever is available,
• to putting out small fires
• to turning off gas and water
• to removing those they can from further harm.
• Not to be left out is instruction in the basic psychology of how people, including the rescuers, may react.

Another C.E.R.T. function is to get information to the command center on what the needs are of their local areas and how many people are in such dangerous situations that they need be rescued by professionals, when heavy equipment is needed.Leon and I took the classes and earned our certificates. For him to learn it is just a normal thing. For me to even consider taking it has probably completely thrown the universe, for I am a complete chicken who gets nauseous at just about anything — and it was my idea to take the classes. Yes, I was probably the weakest link in the class, and yes, I mainly took it so that I could, at least, know enough not to need rescuing! And honestly, I am sure several members of our class were glad I didn’t live in their neighborhood or that at least when Leon was home one of us would be coordinated enough. . . but!

But! I, at least, now know:

• how to use a fire extinguisher without having to stop to read the directions
• how not to use a fire hose
• how to turn off gas and water and electric
• how to assess who needs immediate help and who can wait (triage)
• how to use common objects to make a splint
• ways to stop bleeding
• how to move people when possible without injuring ourselves
• how to work as a team with people we don’t know

Sure, a lot of us know some of this and the other helpful things they teach, but refreshers are always a good thing. . . And I can tell you that just a few years later, I need the refresher. I can only hope, if I need the information it is lurking in my head… kind of like the self-protection moves I learned in Tae Kwon Do classes years ago. Many of you are not like me, you will retain more, especially if you go into it without fear.

For the record, C.E.R.T. members are reminded to put themselves first again and again, because if they try to do something they are not able to do with their skills they become not ONLY just one more person for the professionals to rescue, but one less person to rescue/help the many. That is something we all, as everyday people need to remember even in life’s daily emergencies.

By the way, those large X’s with writing you have seen on doors in disaster news clips. . . they give a lot of needed information to the professionals, including triage information. . . and many of those were made by C.E.R.T. volunteers as they got to their neighbors and friends.

Check it out, even if you are just a chicken like me. . . you may be the very chicken that makes a difference and people may then find out the answer to, “Why did the chicken cross the road?”

——-

Just put C.E.R.T. in your search engine of choice or call your local community’s emergency management group. . . Our small town just had two classes of 17 people each. . . that is 34 more people who now are part of the solution rather than the problem that year - and each year is similar.

Thank you to:

• the Department of Emergency Management of Monroe, Washington, for offering the classes to us
  and teaching much of the class — and answering and repeating the answers - and explaining with patience
• the members of the Police and Fire Departments who shared their time and patiently answered all of our questions
• all those that have attended in an attempt to better themselves, prepare to help others, and encourage each other

C.E.R.T. is a good thing. A very good thing.

to be as big as a person allows it, pure and simple fact. We have all seen evidence of it over the years, well, adults have anyway. A child’s heart just expands unnoticed it is so natural at that age, they don’t realize it is. In fact a heart can expand so much we have to tie it shut for the love to settle to make room for more.

My last post here, I wrote that “hearts are expandable” — it was one of my “One Nice Thought” posts, short and sweet. That thought has been in my head and heart a lot lately. Many of you may have heard of Shelly’s Share A Square Project (SAS) - for those that haven’t she commandeered our hearts and received 10,000 squares knitted or crocheted - since June, 2007. She only needed 6,720, so the extras are also being made into afghans for children not attending camp.

Already volunteers, including Shelly, have put together 100 afghans to distribute to the 140 kids who will attend Camp Sanguinity, near Fort Worth, Texas this July. It is a special camp!! But it is told well by Shelly. People came through to make one dream come true… one that will, and has already, affect so many people in a positive way.

But Shelly is an experienced dreamer.

She now wants the blogging community and their family, friends, and assorted strangers to band together and PAY the 150 dollars per child for 140 children to attend this year - and she wants to raise that money in just THREE short months. And you know, we want it, too. I want it, he wants, it she, over there, all who have participated in this project from the beginning or just read about it with a grin on their faces — they want the project to succeed. So, how about it. Take a few minutes to read her post… and take a gander at the gallery of the 100 afghans already completed… (Just follow the link above and at the bottom of the page.)

Don’t stop there! Head on over to twelve year old Mr. T’s blog, Young Warrior, lovingly typed by his grandmother, Matty. No, he is not a Camp Sanguinity camper, but he was the recipient of the first afghan created - when the project was in its infancy, just last year. Check out his reaction, see his afghans with all the tags still intact — and see how important it is to him today.

You will be so glad you stopped by.

And if your checkbook is not empty, why not help us finance the kids weeks at camp this July — Money talks — and the cool thing about raising money this way — it doesn’t take huge amounts from few people — Think about it like feeding a piggy bank — it all adds up! Click here to read the details of the fund raising.

And by the way, they still need little tiny bags to hold the tags so the kids can look at them again and again… they will love seeing how many people helped make their afghans, and their families will be just as excited about it, I am sure! So, after you have read all of the above, click one of the two links below for simple ideas about making the bags and where to send them. — I still have to make some this week, too.

Now, I have to get back to work — but thank you for reading and pulling the kids into your heart.

If you haven’t already read or heard of it, check out this article on Kiva.org. It is a wonderful idea that is growing. I gave, only a little, for now, but that little will be passed on to other businesses as it is repaid… the program makes it easy to just keep reinvesting in the lives of yet another business person… few times 25 dollars can be reused by so many.

There will be days you will fall behind and not meet deadlines no matter how hard you try to do otherwise.