I YEARN FOR YEARBOOKS

 I run an active Facebook group for my high school alumni.  One feature of the group that makes it lively is the yearbook collection in the group.  After so many years out of school, people lost their yearbooks.  Maybe it was lost during a move, maybe it got flood damaged, whatever the reason, people love to see the pages of the yearbooks.  By some luck, when I got involved with the alumni, my yearbook was sitting right there on the shelf behind my office desk.  I was able to scan the pages and share the content with my class.  But it was just one book, 1985, and the alumni group that I run have people from all over, as far back as 1956 and as recent as 2007.  A few people lent me book from their own year, like 1971 and 1956.  A few other people helped by doing the work themselves, by scanning and uploading the pages.  But for a school that existed over 125 years, there are many yearbooks totally missing.  Enters eBay, mostly.  I set an alert in eBay to notify when the school name, "Newtown High School", is part of an offer.  Newtown yearbooks are hot items on eBay, a few times I had to enter a bidding war, sometimes I lost, other times I won.  But at $70 or so a pop, buying yearbooks from eBay is expensive.  From my point of view, the best case scenario is when someone offer the book(s) to me for free.  It actually happened twice, in bulk.  The first time was when dear Mr. Weinstein passed away and Mrs. W didn't want to keep his yearbook collection.  The school was offered first but they didn't want it.  Other people in the alumni group want pieces of the collection, some may have mentioned willing to re-distribute.  Luckily, many recommended that I be given the collection, because I had the track record of scanning the pages and sharing the work for the group to enjoy.  Another occasion, a teacher decided to give me a collection that cover a few 1990s books.  Over the years, I got a few more, usually it started with someone offering a parent's book and the group would in unison recommended that I be the benefactor.  Thank you, alumni!  With great power comes great responsibility, I won't let you down.

The latest, possible donation I just learned a few days ago is from a 1969 alumnus whose mother attended the same school in 1946.  The donor knows someone in the alumni group, I provided my contact info to the group member and now I just have to wait.  One of these days, I will make the drive to Bayside, Queens NY to pick up the items.  Yearbooks are valuable to me, I prefer to personally pick them up instead of having the items sent through the mail.

MILES FOR MICHAEL!

The business world seems to highly value multitasking.  I love efficiency too but most of the times multitasking just doesn't work.  Like walking or driving while texting.  Just plain stupid, sometimes even deadly.  But I make an exception for Charity Miles, the smartphone app that tracks distance for walkers, runners, or cyclists, and get sponsors to donate money to charities x cents or dollars per mile.  Sometimes I walk with Charity Miles while listening to audioCD - walking, fundraising, and "reading" done simultaneously.  The standard fundraising rate is 25¢ per mile for runners and walkers, or 10¢ per mile for cyclists.  However, through a wonderful arrangement with MichaelJFox.org and Medtronic, for most of the month of October, and into early November, it's $1 per mile for all three categories of long-distance exercises.  Even better, for Saturday 26 October and Sunder 27 October, it's $3 per mile whether you walk, run, or bike!  If you are like me, love long-distance workout but a bit tight on money yet want to donate to charities, Charity Miles is the app to have.

For my part, I've been logging many miles on behalf of MichaelJFox.org via my daily runs.  During the week, it's only a few miles each early mornings, but on weekends I had more time to log five or six miles each day.  I even made the GPS art below, although I must say that the path was drawn with my Garmin GPS watch and not with Charity Miles app.  Thank you, Medtronic, for sponsoring the challenge to raise $100,000 for MichaelJFox.org by November 3!