Salvation Army and Briarwood team up for Haiti

The Salvation Army of Washtenaw County (TSA-WC) has teamed up with Briarwood Mall to raise funds, disperse information and enlist volunteers to assist in providing relief for those affected by the earthquake in Haiti. The Hope for Haiti fundraiser takes place at Briarwood Mall on Friday, Jan. 22 and Saturday, Jan. 23.

Washtenaw County residents can gather information on The Salvation Army’s approach to disaster relief and how the organization has learned the best way to provide aid from past disaster efforts.

Children can decorate T-shirts and play in TSA-WC’s new red kettle bounce house that will be in front of Build-A-Bear in the Von Maur Corridor. A wide variety of musical performances will take place in front of Von Maur from 10 a.m. – 9 p.m. on Friday and 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. on Saturday. $10 wristbands will be available at Guest Services and the red kettle bounce house for anyone wishing to participate in the activities.

The best way to support The Salvation Army’s efforts to help Haiti is to donate by:

Giving by phone: 1-800-SAL-ARMY (1-800-725-2769)
Texting the word “HAITI” to 52000 to automatically give $10 to The Salvation Army’s relief efforts
Giving online at www.salvationarmyusa.org

For more information about the Hope for Haiti fundraiser, contact TSA-WC at 734-668-8353 or visit www.sawashtenaw.org or www.shopbriarwood.com.

The Salvation Army (TSA), an international movement, is an evangelical part of the universal Christian church dedicated to serving people in need without discrimination. Operating in Washtenaw County for more than 100 years, the non-profit addresses the physical and spiritual needs of the area through various programs and service centers located in Ann Arbor and Ypsilanti. Essential services provided by TSA of Washtenaw County include a food pantry, soup kitchen, clothing, an emergency family shelter, transitional housing and counseling for veterans, character building for youth, camp programs, emergency and disaster relief, utility assistance and eviction prevention.

You can become a fan of TSA-WC on Facebook and follow us on Twitter (@sawashtenaw).

Want to partner with us?

In these difficult economic times, many groups are hurting for funds. Thanks to state-wide budget cuts, public school systems across Michigan are in trouble. Many programs that we’ve learned to take for granted over the years – athletics, band, etc. – are under a heavy budget crunch.

So why not partner with The Belleville View or Ypsilanti Courier – and help your organization raise needed cash?

We are offering $10 for every NEW one-year subscription to The View or Courier that your group sells. That means $100 for only ten orders; $500 for 50 orders; and $1,000 for 100 orders! There is no limit to our partnership. Sell 500 orders and we will give your organization $5,000!

We understand how difficult it is to raise money with the same old fund-raisers year after year. After all, families can only use so much wrapping paper and candles. The Courier or View can be a gift that lasts. This is why our fund-raising opportunity has such great value.

The View or Courier papers are delivered directly to the homes of our customers 52 times a year, with fresh content and local news and information that is important to the people that live and work and attend the schools in your community. We offer award-winning news coverage, including the area's best and most comprehensive sports sections. In addition, we offer discount coupons, entertainment news, classifieds and more, making a yearly subscription a fantastic value.

A one-year subscription to the Belleville View is only $24 (one-year mail delivery) and to the Courier $29 (one-year home delivery) and $78 (one-year mail delivery). A new subscriber is anyone who has not taken either of the papers in the past 90 days.

All you need to do is sell the order, fill out a provided form, collect payment and turn in the orders to us once a month. That’s all there is to it. We will cut your organization a check!

All we need to set up your group as an official partner is the following information:

A contact name and number from your organization
A W-9 form for payment purposes
A logo (in PDF format) for use in the printed materials, which we will supply your group for your sales effort.

It’s that simple.

To set your organization up as an official partner, please contact Bob Riddell at 734-246-0757 or e-mail briddell@heritage.com.

The lost art of manners

The following was submitted by Heritage Newspapers' Austen Smith:

During the glorious week of vacation that I enjoyed two weeks ago, there happened a curious incident that served as a stark reminder of just how rude and callous people can be.

I drove into Ann Arbor on one of my days off to pick my wife up for lunch, which was something that simply pleased her to death (take note here husbands of the world, little things really matter). On our way to Bagger Daves, a great little burger place, driving down a busy part of Main Street near downtown, I noticed slow traffic coming along in the opposite lane. As the cars cleared a bit, I saw a woman who had somehow gotten her car to turn sideways in the middle of the road. In other words, her car was perpendicular to two lanes of rush-hour traffic in the middle of Ann Arbor and, as you could imagine, she seemed distressed as she was standing nearby cell phone in hand undoubtedly calling a friend or family.

While this was ongoing and I was passing in the other lane, would any of you care to guess how many people had stopped to help this woman? If all of you cynics chimed in and said "Zero," you are absolutely right.

I turned left at the next opportunity, parked quickly in somebody's driveway and went over to help the lady. Turns out she had ran out of gas and apparently she had tried to turn around somehow in order to go roll down the hill (to perfectly honest, I still have no idea how she got facing sideways). But anyway, I pushed her car from off the curb and it slowly started rolling down the hill where she met her son who was at a gas station less than a quarter-mile away. When I got back in the car, my wife said, "Well that was nice of you," and I wasn't exactly sure how to respond to that. I turned to her, a little baffled, and said "Isn't that what you're supposed to do?" I mean is my time all that precious that I couldn't take five minutes to help somebody who was in a potentially dangerous situation and obviously needed some assistance? The answer is no, and it shouldn't be for any of you either. This kind of thing should be basic human engineering but sadly, now it is considered "nice" or something considered above and beyond your societal obligations to take literally five minutes in order to help out a poor woman broke down in traffic.

Later that night, I started thinking about how many cars passed during the five minutes it took me to park and get over there (in addition there was somebody standing nearby at a bus stop, literally watching the entire situation - unbelievable), and I estimated that it was probably a good 15 to 20 cars; like I said, it was in the middle of rush hour. And I thought about what incredibly important things all of those people could have been attending to where they were unable to stop and help. Oh, I'm sure all of those people had legitimate excuses as to why they didn't stop such as being late for a pedicure and/or manicure, they might have thought that the woman - who was around 50-something driving a Volkswagen Bug in the middle of the day - could have been a homicidal maniac, or maybe they figured that since nobody else was stopping, why should they? Ahhhh...I bet that was the most frequented excuse.

And then I had the strangest thought, possibly the last person I would ever think about outside of work popped in my head suddenly, unexpectedly and certainly unwanted - Belleville City Councilman George Chedraue.

For those of you who don't know, Mr. Chedraue served one term as a City Council member for Belleville from 2005 up until the last election where he decided not to run for a second. During that time, he was know for being gruff, direct and at times bullyish. He took it upon himself to berate, talk down to and insult a vast number of people who walked into those meetings. Now, I have seen elected officials like this before and let me tell you that at first, they may be off-putting and even upsetting to some people, but almost always it is the person who is willing to lose popularity contests in order to make his or her point, often directed at important issues, and to get things accomplished.

However, during the time I covered Mr. Chedraue twice a month over a period of three years or so, my impression was that Mr. Chedraue often wielded that gruff personality and his limited amount of power in that manner for no other reason except for the fact that he could. In short, he was simply rude just like those motorists passing up a woman broke down in the middle of the street.

But - and this is a big but - that is not to say that he was all bad for the city. As a matter of fact, I believe he was well liked by city staff and his fellow elected officials. In addition to the faltering attributes of his personality, from what I could tell he was a dedicated public servant and he was brutally honest - which is becoming a real rarity in public officials big and small. I very much respected that even while completely disagreeing with his conduct.

In a society that seems to be less and less concerned with the art of manners, there were a lot of times during those City Council meetings I sat there thinking to myself that Chedraue was single-handedly leading the assault on basic politeness. And I guess the point I'm making is that it doesn't have to be that way. It's okay to be "nice."

It's Beginning to Look a Lot like Christmas

The following was submitted by Staff Reporter Gerald LaVaute:




It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas around the house - just this side of chaos.




The table in the kitchen is piled high with wrapping paper and gifts. The counter a few feet away is covered by gifts that my wife Jan received at a party last night. The cookies that were on the counter until I moved them yesterday are now downstairs, where they belong.




The downstairs closet is filled with gifts waiting to be wrapped. My wife, I think, now plans to move from decorating the house to addressing and sending Christmas cards, and then to wrapping the gifts.




Where, you ask, am I? I'm taking orders in a cheerful manner, for getting ready for Christmas in our house is much bigger than one person.




The rest of the house now looks pretty good, after we worked hard on it this weekend. The tree is up - it looks as if it was professionally decorated, my wife is that good - and the fireplace mantel is decorated and aglow with soft light.




Gone now are most of the 18-gallon plastic tubs that I moved from a storage shed outside into the house. I counted 30 tubs, some of which are much larger than the 18-gallon size. They're back in the shed for now, till sometime after the Christmas holidays, except for one large tub that contained the Christmas tree that we usually put upstairs.




It looked as if the mice that appear to inhabit the storage shed had gotten to it, and we decided to throw it out. Most of the tubs are highly resistant to mice, but this one was a bit of an off-brand; it protected its contents for many years, but was violated at some point since last Christmas.




The living room was filled till yesterday with about 40 bags of gifts planned to be given to 10 children among four families whose kids attend the school where my wife works each day. My kids raised the money and did the shopping at Walmart.




Did I mention that my wife works at a school? Because its teachers and its students will produce still more stuff, gifts to be exchanged, and then the newly received gifts will be brought home, where they will be added to the other stuff already in the house; whereupon my wife and I will cleverly manage the influx and stay organized as best we can, preparing for the big day.

Ducks in the Stream

The following was submitted by Staff Reporter Gerald LaVaute:

I watched an unusual fight early this morning between two ducks, in the stream that runs through my backyard. I had just completed feeding the cats, walking the dogs, and I was retrieving my 14-year old Yellow Lab, who is deaf and was wandering off into a neighbor's yard.


The loud quacky combatants were surrounded by a couple other ducks in the stream. I believe that those fighting were male, the others female. I know how to distinguish between them, but they were around 100 yards distant, and they were moving pretty fast.


I was struck most by how cold I would have been, had I been floating in that stream like they were. And to raise the energy to fight viciously with another duck, and raise a terrible racket on a cloudy, gloomy day whose temperature was below freezing, well, I was pretty amazed - vive la difference.

A Date That Will Live in Infamy; Another Sad Anniversary Tomorrow

Today is the 68th anniversary of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.

The attack forced the U.S. to declare war, after sitting on the sidelines for over two years after Great Britain and France declared war against Nazi Germany, after the Germans invaded Poland on September 1, 1939.

I read yesterday in the Detroit Free Press how different people experienced first hearing the news, in a manner familiar to many when they recall how they first learned of President John Kennedy's assassination. Legendary golder Arnold Palmer was 12 years old in 1941, and was caddying on a golf course.

The war brought much suffering into the world, and stands as a cautionary tale about allowing the menace of evil to linger too long without a firm, decisive response.

Tomorrow is the 29th anniversary of the murder of John Lennon, the first of the Beatles to die. I was asleep at 6 a.m. when the clock alarm rang that morning in 1980 . The radio announced that Lennon had been shot.

I was stunned. Political leaders, yes, but entertainers being gunned down? For me, it was a new, unprecedented low in human behavior. I remember the gut emotional reaction of shock, followed by horror, followed by revulsion, to this day.

Lists

The following was submitted by Staff Reporter Gerald LaVaute:

I've become a big believer in lists. It's gotten worse since I retired earlier this year, and returned to work as a writer. If I'm inspired to write about a subject, say while I'm shaving, I go to a list and write down the idea. Occasionally, I will stop shaving two or three times to return to the list and write down additional ideas on the same subject.

I keep a list and a pen on my dresser in my bedroom, in the kitchen, in the home office, in the work office, on a table next to my chair in the living room, and in the car. For those of you who were counting, that is six lists. And they're all well-used.

My paper of choice is from Andrew's Sav-Mor Pharmacy on Main St. in Belleville. The paper is 3 inches by 5 inches, and it's a small pad - I don't care for the sticky notes.

In fact, I was thinking the other day about replenishing the stock. Oddly, I didn't write it down on a list, because I think that, unconsciously, the irony was too much for me - writing on a list an assigment to purchase small tablets to create yet more lists.

Last week, I was talking about WW II non-fiction with a Sports Editor, and I mentioned that I had recorded the HBO series "Band of Brothers" on VHS tape. I told him I'd bring it in to him the following week and, after writing it down on a list , I put the tapes in my briefcase after I returned home on Thursday evening, and I dropped the tapes on his chair on Monday morning when I returned to the office.

I currently have six separate lists in my wallet. They compete with my cash for space. Too often, the lists win.

As I write this, I have four lists on the desk in front of me. This is not a cry for help, although my wife, who rarely makes a list, would probably disagree with me.