Take a Dip
Posted at 6:05 AM on May 13, 2010
by Dale Connelly
(26 Comments)
Radio Heartland has tickets to a landmark event at the Cedar Cultural Center this Saturday night - the first Twin Cities appearance in five years by the legendary Doc Watson. The concert has sold out at $65 per seat.
Only three pairs of tickets remain.
As is the case with all our drawings, this is open to everyone.
You do not have to be an MPR member to enter or to win.
We will close off entries at 1pm and notify winners later this afternoon.
Enter the drawing.
Follow the rules.
Good Luck.
There was a message waiting for me this morning from idea and event maker Spin Williams, the genius who chairs an ongoing brainstorming session out in L.A.
Here at the meeting that never ends, we're getting excited about hair! Hair soaks up oil, so people are shipping nylons stuffed with their own clippings to the gulf area to help clean up that oil spill! Imagine - sending off something you had absolutely no use for in the first place! That's really generous!But there's this problem - BP isn't using the homemade "hair booms". The official explanation is that they're uneven in quality and difficult to manage and there are lots of artificial oil suckers available so shorn locks are piling up in warehouses and may go unused - a terrible shame and a horrible waste of hair.
But then I realized something while watching coverage of the unemployment rate and another Tea Party rally on Fox ... we don't have to ask permission! A human being is quite portable and under the right conditions, easy to manage! And if you count all of the very fine strands that grow just about everywhere on you except for your eyeballs, the human body has about 5 million hairs on it. That's a lot. So you are really your own hair boom, with legs and a brain! Even baldies like you, Dale! So why can't we follow the example of the Tea Party and self organize into a human sponge brigade? Even if it was just the nation's unemployed - that would be more than enough. We can go dip ourselves!
This is an incredibly simple thing. Arrange your own transportation to the troubled area. Once you get there, shampoo yourself thoroughly to wash off all the natural oils, and then go soak up some crude! Allow yourself to steep for a bit. Dunk your head. Splash around. Do the backstroke. You'll be surprised at what you accumulate! You'll be as pathetic looking as an otter at the Exxon Valdez, but much better able to take care of yourself!
Walk ashore and look for a place to clean up. If the volunteer clippings keep coming in from hairstylists and pet groomers, I predict the people down there will have to dump them in mammoth open hair pits. You can jump in and roll around to transfer the oil, and then go back to the ocean and dip yourself again! Simple!
People are generous with themselves and their time, and they like to solve problems. Here's an idea that can make a difference. It's a REAL Tea Party, and you're the bag!
Although he doesn't care for negativity, I told Spin this seems like a very bad idea - just a way to drag the oil ashore to be deposited in motel bathtubs. It's great to volunteer, but most people would draw the line at diving into a pit of donated hair. I think.
What has been your most unusual volunteer experience?
Comments (26)
"Pies" in the face.
Just a quick note to say hello! It's been busy. Have a great day, all!
Dunking booth at church bazaar. Luckily it was a very warm day because there were quite a few of the youth group who had very good aim!
I was new to the eden prairie school district and asked how I could help and they told me to run the music program and be the vice president of the PTA. I did and it turned out the music program was a goner, doomed from the start. They had decided to end it before they asked me to save it. The vp job was supposed to be a transition year to the presidency the following year but the lady in charge didn't like giving up control and upon the principles suggestion I gave it back to the moms who were very comfortable doing things as they had been and didn't want newpeople ideas input or involvent. Ah those burbs with their stepford wives survival skillsi. I quit the ladies teas and joined the dfl and am happily challanged there. I don't belong to any organized political group, I am a democrat
Once a year, my father threw a party for businessmen who had been good to his little stuffed toy factory that year. The party featured fishing, gourmet food and copious amounts of booze. (We served martinis from a 3-gallon pitcher, which might tell you something.) This was on an island on Lake Saganaga, sort of between the US and Ontario.
I was a college kid who went along to tote canoes, net fish, wash up dishes and bait hooks for the business moguls who were too fancy to do that. I smiled broadly like a shoeshine boy and carefully hid my left-wing politics.
I could write a novel about the lessons I learned by watching those highly placed executives letting down their hair. One night a buyer for a major company dropped a valise, spilling $6,000 on the cabin floor. This was a kickback bribe he had just collected from some desperate businessman who needed an order to keep his business afloat.
By the time I'd spent three days fishing, eating and drinking with those captains of industry, I knew most of them better than their wives.
I spent a Saturday picking up garbage, refuse, furniture, and other non-hazardous stuff from alleys and streets for a neighborhood cleanup day. We had a real "garbage man" with us - he was quite philosophical about what gets tossed and clearly liked his job (he couldn't have been more than 25). I learned that I do not have the skills necessary to back up a trailer without jack-knifing the thing (when we brought some of what we picked up to the county transfer station). I also learned that we all keep stuff we really don't need.
Good morning all. Like most people my age, I have been involved in lots of volunteer experiences and most of them were good experiences and not too unusual. I am a member of the Seed Savers Exchange, which is a little unusual, and I have had a lot interesting experiences exchanging seeds, and collecting and producing rare types of vegetable seeds.
I seemed to have supressed the memory of most of the volunteer work that didn't turn out so good. I did have a kind of unusual experience helping with the set up for a graduation night party for high school seniors designed to keep them off the streets and safe instead going to drinking parties.
We decorated and set up activities in several rooms and the gym of an old school building and set up casino games. It was a lot of work done by a fairly small group of parents. I didn't volunteer to do this when asked to do it a second time.
I keep "volunteering" to correct the driving habits of Mankato drivers, but no one is taking em up on it.
for the Heart Assoc. - a grocery store sample lady with an apron. only trouble was, it was Heart Assoc. recipes (NO CHANGES!!) and not very good ones at that (healthy food CAN be good, but this wasn't). so we stood, lonely, trying to hand out stuff (i think it was a dip or something) that couldn't compete with the pizza-sample lady down the aisle.
busy day here - have a good one, All
Cly de Terre Blu, I have also given a lot of voluteered advice that has been mostly ignored. Some of this advice is that people should follow through on things they have volunteered to do and not leave things for other people to clean up. Of course, this advice is usually ignored.
Jim--I live the seed savers!! Keep it going!!
Lots of my volunteering is unwanted, but it goes with the age.
I am a volunteer for the local food shelf without meaning to be. Our line 2 was the local food shelf number a few years ago and then in the phone book they published the wrong number, last two digits switched. So for awhile both numbers wrang there. Then after awhile they dropped our line two number. Then a year later gave it to us. So I regularly, well end of the mont regularly driect people to the right number. Been an education. Oh, yeah.
Spin certainly has been... can't think of a word for it!
Husband's company sent a crew to Denver for a week on a Habitat house, and I got to tag along. The foreman was a really young kid that let me try all kinds of stuff -- ran a skill saw, and a device I can't remember the name of that surveyers use. (You'd be proud, Anna.) Friday it rained, a washout, so we did get to see the Denver Art Museum. :)
Off topic: Something's wrong with the computer I'm using at my mom's place - Tim's post has caps.
tim, was that you as Tim this morning? Are you making capital improvements?
This off-topic story is for you tim/Tim and any other marketers out there:
Verizon bought a closed Starbucks (open two months) on the very edge of the MSUM campus. They have been in business there for about 4-5 months. Today they starterd their Grand Opening event, the week after term ended on campus. Must have been one of those corporate decisions.
In years past I have been a volunteer at the MN Landscape Arboretum, most often in the fall of the year to help bed the rose garden down for the winter. One year a woman and I were assigned an area of the rose garden that, unbeknownst to us, had clay soil. Our job was to dig around all the rose plants in that section to loosen them from the soil so that they could be tipped over and covered with dirt and mulch to protection them from winter weather. The clay soil was so heavy that we had a hard time getting a spade into the soil much less lifting the soil and and loosening the roots of the many roses! We managed to get the job done, though. The following year I returned, but couldn't find my partenr from the previous year - probably still recovering! What did my previous year's work teach me? I learned to check the soil in the rose bed that I was helping to winterize - sandy soil rose beds are WAY easier to work with.
Dale and Mike - do you have the song "I Never Promised You A Rose Garden"?
Terri--thanks for time at Arb. We went there last weekend; was wonderful. Was so easy to get a wheel chair, and free. Was not as hard as I thought it would be to push my wife around the main gardens; even took her into the path in the woods. I grew up farming and gardening in the red clay of the North Shore. Could get dangerous: when clay was wet, cattle would make deep foot prints in the barnyard. Then two days later the footprints would be baked hard. Dangerous to walk in for cattle or boy.
Checked and the Sioux Falls school year ends next week. Will Donna be back or does she work year round or does she go walkabout with Carlos?
Greetings! Many years ago while working at Pillsbury, I volunteered a week at the Habitat for Humanity house Pillsbury was building and sponsoring. That was fun, educational and a nice break from office work. Just good, hard physical labor. I became quite adept at caulking -- the Caulk Queen (make sure you pronounce that correctly).
Plus the lunches were fabulous. Different departments at Pillsbury would volunteer to bring in or cook the lunch, which got to be competitive. The best ones (which I missed) were lunches the one and only Rose Totino herself prepared fabulous Italian food. Not much work got done in the afternoons on those days!
Greetings! Many years ago while working at Pillsbury, I volunteered a week at the Habitat for Humanity house Pillsbury was building and sponsoring. That was fun, educational and a nice break from office work. Just good, hard physical labor. I became quite adept at caulking -- the Caulk Queen (make sure you pronounce that correctly).
Plus the lunches were fabulous. Different departments at Pillsbury would volunteer to bring in or cook the lunch, which got to be competitive. The best ones (which I missed) were lunches the one and only Rose Totino herself prepared fabulous Italian food. Not much work got done in the afternoons on those days!
Aargh -- I did not hit "Post" twice, honest! My internet connection has been intermittent this morning (no RH either). Had to "Resend" the page or something to refresh it. A thousand pardons ...
Yeah Seed Savers! I should be getting my starters soon from them to plant in my Earth Boxes. I buy all my seeds from them -- have not tried saving or trading seeds, though. Still a brown thumb at heart.
Is contributing to this blog a volunteer activity? If it is I think it is very interesting, but I think it is more like going down to the coffee shop to visit with friends.
Jim--I thought it was mandatory.
I rode by a sign on the MSUM campus this morning that directed people to the "Addictions Conference" and felt a strange compulsion to attend.
Joanne--I know it is a big place with many nitches but do have to aks: did you know Laura Edeburn at Pillsbury?
Clyde - I don't recall her offhand. It's been 10 years and names/faces are fading from memory. Perhaps if you knew her department and position, then I could determine if I would have had contact with her.
Sorry for delay, but my first post went into la-la land and internet is fritzing.
Joanne--very fritzy Internet. Cannot stay on my company database. ERRRR!!!!! You mentioned RH connection issues. I do much better by choosing the Windows Media Player option. For one thing it restores itself.
Laura is wife of my sister Cleo's second son. She left there too a year or so ago. I am not sure what she did. Not worth pursuing.
Joanne--very fritzy Internet. Cannot stay on my company database. ERRRR!!!!! You mentioned RH connection issues. I do much better by choosing the Windows Media Player option. For one thing it restores itself.
Laura is wife of my sister Cleo's second son. She left there too a year or so ago. I am not sure what she did. Not worth pursuing.
Clyde, participation might be mandatory for you. I may be fooling myself,but I will not admit to being an addict at this point in time.
Joanne, I also had a post go into the void today, but it might have been due my clumsy use of my computer.
very fritzy--so fritzy it capitalied tim, who commented on my facebook rant but is hiding from here.
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