CONTENTS 3/12021
Neighborhood
Columbia Neighborhood Membership
Vaccines
Plant Sales
Scams & Phishing Defense
Lost iPhone
Homelessness
SwiftHaven Painting Party
Juice? Jackets? Blankets?
Soup Brigade
Affordable Housing
Music
Jerry Teagarden
Radio Free Fl!p: Hole In The Air
COLUMBIA NEIGHBORHOOD MEMBERSHIP
To sign up or renew your membership, write new president Deb Valentine for details. It’s cheap and easy. dj.val88@gmail.com
VACCINES
In Bellingham
Vaccine at Rite Aid. Be aware that Rite Aid on Telegraph has been consistently scheduling for vaccinations. They schedule one day at a time, about a week out, and allow for daily openings as cancellations allow. The calendar is updated very early morning, perhaps even just after midnight. Seems that appointments have been filling by about 8:00 in the morning.
Be sure to click on the date highlighted on the calendar to see availability, and note that they have options of morning, afternoon, and evening, spaced 3 minutes apart. Seems like a slick system.
They have the Pfizer vaccine.
Also, have they been successful in scheduling the 2nd dose at 21 or 28 days out? Or has there been a little give in the 2nd appointment scheduling? (They automatically schedule a second dose for people, sometime after the first dose has actually been administered.) Ht/t Kate McCarthy, Lettered Streets (This is where Zeke & I got ours Saturday. It felt so weird! I hadn’t been inside such a store since last March.)
https://www.riteaid.com/pharmacy/apt-scheduler
In Arlington
I just went to the Arlington Airport to get vaccinated yesterday. They vaccinate between three and four thousand people a day. Sign up is the day before. I don’t know what time the sign-up starts but I was able to get an appointment the day before. It’s the Pfizer vaccine. It’s a drive-thru, you stay in your car the whole time. You don’t hvae to live in Snohomish county. ~ Kristin Barber
https://www.signupgenius.com/go/arlington02_28
PLANT SALES?
It’s getting towards Spring, and gardeners start dividing plants. (I spent a happy, sunny hour yesterday weeding with my perfect new buttercup hand weeder!) If you have extra plants, or know when local plant sales are happening, please let me know and I’ll post them here. I keep talking with new neighbors who are looking for guidance and plants for their new gardens. I didn’t give them a single buttercup! Let’s help them out!
SCAMS & PHISHING DEFENSE
Re the phishing and scams you’ve noted: It shouldn’t be necessary to copy/paste stuff into Word to see the original sender and the pathways through which the email came. Most email clients have a mechanism to do that. In Gmail, click the three dots to the right of the Reply button at the top right of the message. A drop-down menu will show you a bunch of options that come below Reply and Forward. One of those is “show original.” Click this, and it will show you where the message originated, the email of the sender, all the pathways through which it came to get to your inbox, and a whole bunch of other stuff most of us don’t need to know and probably won’t understand. If it comes from someplace weird, delete that puppy forever. Please note that each email client will show these things differently and people need to learn how theirs handles it. Used to, you could pick up a virus or malware just by opening an email (or so I’m given to understand; I’m a suspicious character and if I don’t recognize the sender or the preview doesn’t sound like the sender if I know them, I’ve never opened one. I email the sender, if I know them, separately and ask if they sent it). According to this, that doesn’t happen anymore, although I think a spammer can determine whether your account is active, thus a target for more spam, if you open it. https://www.howtogeek.com/135546/htg-explains-why-you-cant-get-infected-just-by-opening-an-email-and-when-you-can/
So many things to watch for in our modern world, and so many of them target us older folks. Be careful out there! ~ Anna Lawson
LOST iPHONE
Did you find an iPhone with a clear case painted with a cowhide pattern? It was lost this afternoon, likely somewhere between Lynn/Monroe and Haggen. Please get in touch if you did! (Christina and I have been having a pretty fun exchange over this lost phone. C: I am hoping that we will find it under a pillow as soon as you post the notice. F: Of course! But then again, would you find it if we didn’t post? C: Definitely not. I know what is required…) Please see if you can find her missing phone!
Christina Nichols, Lynn St. (360) 820-9266
HOMELESSNESS
SWIFTHAVEN PAINTING PARTY
Look what they did yesterday! What a joyful difference…
https://www.facebook.com/HomesNowNotLater/photos/pcb.1402820760060540/1402820313393918/
JUICE? JACKETS? BLANKETS?
People keep asking for juice. Boxes or pouches. They crave sugar. There’s no sugar in water. Maybe some chocolate? Little packs of M&Ms? We still need 2x large men’s jackets to wear over multiple layers. And both wool and fleece blankets. I somehow hadn’t realized fleece blankets would help. Sounds like they will. You can bring donations here to 2518 Cherry Street. Thank you!
SOUP BRIGADE
It turns out I could use a few more cooks after all. Volunteer cooks have been turning out 50 – 75 hot homemade dinners a day? Give me a shout and we’ll sign you up! We need a couple more hot dinners, and it turns out cookies and muffins are also a huge hit. Did you know that if you add extra butter to cookie dough, the cookies spread out further and get crispier? For muffins, slather them with butter the minute they come out of the oven. I’ve got packaging. You can decorate the little white bakery bags or send them out plain. It’s a heartfelt kindness. Hearts starve as well as bodies…
AFFORDABLE HOUSING
I’ve been thinking about what “affordable” means. That is going to be a big issue going forward. Here’s what I’ve been thinking: Something a front-line, essential worker could pay for with a minimum wage job. A job that the worker can’t quite get 40 hours a week at, because the company can’t hire full time because they’d have to pay benefits. Maybe the worker has a second part-time job. So many have to do that. We need housing that that worker can afford to rent. Small and plain, but safe and decent.
MUSIC
JERRY TEAGARDEN
July 30, 1948 – February 1, 2021
Longtime local musician and songwriter.
https://www.legacy.com/obituaries/bellinghamherald/obituary.aspx?n=jerry-tegarden&pid=197838342
As a friend wrote to me: “This news struck me hard. We were not close, Or so I obviously and mistakenly thought. He was a kind and respectful person.” Jerry was all of that. And a fine musician.
RADIO FREE FL!P: HOLE IN THE AIR
Jim Page wrote and performs this. The words are included. This is for Jerry. And for Michael.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VMxQPyLUBo4
Love/Fl!p 360-671-4511 2518 Cherry Street flip@columbianeighborhood.org
If you’re willing to share your phone with me, personally, I would love that, and would not share it further without your express permission. Nor would I ever exploit it. You might put mine in your phone so if I were to phone you, you’d know it was me. I’d also suggest adding flip@openaccess.org to your contacts because that helps keep my emails from going to your junk mail.
If you want to ask me to post something, just email me. If it’s urgent, phone. If it’s a real emergency, call 911.