Archive for April 30, 2016

Get Rid of those Drugs Today!

Stop accumulating those drugs!  There are Drug Take-Back Days throughout the year, but today is the DEA’s Prescription Drug Take-Back Day–a good day to take care of this important chore.  Gather all your left-over prescriptions, those drugs that you don’t need, and ones that are outdated. Take them to a near-by collection site to be disposed of properly.  Call your local police department to find a location or ask at your favorite pharmacy.

Medications don’t have to be in their original containers.  Also, you just drop them off–no questions about who you are or where you got them.

This cleans out your medicine cabinet, safeguards young children in your family, and prevents the drugs from polluting the earth and poisoning wildlife, which happens when drugs are flushed down the toilet or tossed into the garbage (landfill).

Do this as soon as you read this, so you don’t forget.

 

Thursday on Friday

I was going to lie to you and say that I decided to give my Friday readers a taste of my Thursday Thoughts.  Truth is, I lost a day.  Here, then, on Friday–thanks to Pope Francis–is my offering of a something-to-consider Thursday Thought:

“If we want security, let us give security; if we want life, let us give life; if we want opportunities, let us provide opportunities. The yardstick we use for others will be the yardstick which time will use for us.” – Pope Francis in his 9/24/15 address to the U.S. combined Congress

 

 

When Cops Should NOT have Guns

A retired NYPD police officer should be so familiar with his gun that he should know better.  But he was so interested in showing it to his doctor during an exam that he wasn’t careful.  Maybe that’s the reason he brought it to his appointment in the first place, because he obviously didn’t fear his physician.

Anyway, once in the exam room he pulled his licenced 10 mm semi-automatic out of its holster, only to have it go off, hitting himself in the thigh and his doctor in the foot.

I have no idea what side of the gun-regulation issue this story falls on.  I just found the situation curious.

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Mound of Plastic in the Back Yard

You probably recycle those plastic bottles and anything else with the recycle symbol on it.  I know I do.  It’s a little thing we can do to help our environment.  Except that there’s a problem.  That is, many U.S. “recylers” haven’t been processing it (or electronic waste) here but shipping it to China, where it’s cheaper to deal with because they toss it into a landfill.  China, drowning in our plastic, is wising up and saying NO MORE!  They now have a Green Fence Policy, which says that they won’t be importing most of that plastic any longer.

What are our recyclers going to do?  And those in Europe, Japan, and Hong Kong? They don’t know yet.  And it’s a big problem–China imports 70% of the 500 million tons of electronic waste and 12 million tons of plastic waste each year that the world creates.

This will be costly (labor, technology, environmental safety standards), but it’s past time to actually recycle  the waste rather than letting it pile up in landfills in China’s–or our–back yard.

 

 

The Transgendered-Bathroom Issue

Today I read that 650,000 people have signed a pledge to boycott Target because of their policy to allow anyone to use whichever bathroom corresponding to the sex they identify with.  Their reason they give for the boycott is to protect children from child molesters.

That made me re-think my understanding that transsexuals are not normally pedophiles.  I did a little research.  Here’s what I found.

Univ. of Michigan’s Prevention and Awareness Center:  “There are no statistics that support the idea that…transgendered individuals are more  likely to commit sexual assault or be sex offenders than heterosexuals. In fact, sex offenders are disproportionately  likely to be heterosexual men.”

Wisconsin Coalition Against Sexual Assault: “Another common myth about LGBT people is that they are child molesters. This is also untrue; in fact a groundbreaking study of sexual-abuse offenders concluded that a heterosexual adult is more likely to be a threat to children than a homosexual adult is.”

Advocates for Youth: “Most perpetrators of child sexual abuse are relatives or close acquaintances of the youth they target. ‘Stranger Danger’ — the notion that youth are at highest risk of sexual abuse from strangers — is a widely-accepted myth that continues to drive public policy around this issue.”

(Note: I tried to cite neutral sources who have a reputation for being non-biased and statistically accurate in their studies. I found many others, who had agendas to promote, which I don’t cite here.)

What I’m trying to say is, each of us has the right to follow our moral or religious codes, some of which say that a transsexual is “unnatural” or “sinful,” or whatever. If that case, we should own those beliefs and fight our battle on those grounds rather than on false assertions that we’re simply trying to protect our children.

On a side note, as a person with a disability, I’ve used unisex/handicap bathrooms, all my life and am quite comfortable with them.

 

 

Eclipses, Meteors. and Rockets

Are you fascinated by meteor showers, rocket launches, and solar and lunar eclipses?  If so, you don’t want to miss a single one.  Here’s a website that gives you a calendar of all those spectacular events in 2016:  YOUR ULTIMATE GUIDE TO METEOR SHOWERS, ROCKET LAUNCHES AND MORE IN 2016.

Enjoy!

No-Mess Clean-Up

Clean up that mess!  But not with paper towels.  They get too gunky and degrade so much when wet that they can’t be recycled.  If all Americans used one less per day of the 13 billion pounds we use annually, we’d save 571,230,000 pounds of paper a year. Use a rag instead, then toss it in with your wash and reused it for a later mess.  That way, you clean up a mess without creating another one for our planet.

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[For more easy, money-saving, earth-friendly tips, download a FREE copy of Green Riches: Help the Earth & Your Budget. Go to www.Smashwords.com/books/view/7000 or your favorite e-book seller and download to your computer or e-book device. Totally free, with no strings attached.]

I Can’t Cope!

I want to die.  Life isn’t worth living.  I can’t go on like this. You may not feel like this right now, but you probably know someone who does. The U.S. suicide rate is the highest it’s been in 30 years. It’s up to those of us in a good space to help those in a dark one.  We can’t erase all the negativity in the world–we don’t control oppression, war, power-hungry dictators, or devastating disease.  But we can keep a positive attitude around others (we never know when an affirmative word or action is just what the person we’re with needs). And we can speak up against public people who constantly spew negativity.

In everyday life we can watch for suicide warning signs (see http://www.suicidepreventionlifeline.org/learn/warningsigns), keep the Suicide Prevention Hotline number (800-273-8255) handy to give to an at-risk person, and lend him/her our cell phone to call immediately.

Together, giving of ourselves and positive, concerned actions can stop that suicide rate from increasing and bring hopeless people back into the light.

 

 

Earth Day and Lady Bird Johnson

Lady Bird Johnson gives us a Thursday Thought for Earth Day:

“The environment is where we all meet; where all have a mutual interest; it is the one thing all of us share.” —Lady Bird Johnson

 

 

Personal Note

Here’s some personal news to pass on to you.  My paper-book, Small Things Count, is now also available in e-book format.  If you’re interested in learning what it’s about, please go to https://smthingscount.com, where you’ll find information about the book, sample pages, critical reviews, readers’ comments, and how you can buy either the paper or the e-book version (with direct links to the book’s page at e-book sellers).

Please note that, although it’s written from a Christian point of view, it’s for anyone who wants to help make this a more peaceful, loving world.  (No preaching in it.)

I also invite you to read about my other five e-books, including a book of poetry (God Sneezed) and a free download of a my book on economic ways to help the environment.  See http://www.jackieodonnell.net/book-previews for descriptions and where to find them.

Happy reading!