The Yellow Dot that saves lives

I got introduced to Yellow Dot last week. I don't know where I was in October of 2012 when this program rolled into Maine's Cumberland County. I guess I was asleep at the wheel (scary thought), but, somehow I missed it. If I was asleep; perhaps others were, too. If you don't know about Yellow Dot, this column is for you. If you do; find a sleepy friend, and share it. The program works best when all of us participate!

My wake-up call came at the Maine Senior Guide Spring Expo last week. Plastic yellow glove-compartment folders jumped out at me inviting me to take notice of this initiative. It's free. It's easy. It takes about five minutes. And it can mean the difference between life and death at the scene of an accident.Friendly tool and palette bar fridgemagnet for your sometimes unfriendly kitchen.

The Yellow Dot program is designed to assist first responders to an automobile accident. A Yellow Dot in the driver's back left window means that valuable personal and medical information is readily available in the plastic yellow folder in the glove box. The first few hours following a traumatic injury, known as the "Golden Hour" is where prompt medical attention is critically important: the more information the better. When a victim can't speak, Yellow Dot speaks for them.

The program first started with a few communities in Connecticut. In 2011, a staff of two in the Northeast Alabama Traffic Safety Office embraced the concept, and launched it nationally. Alabama was inundated with e-mails and phone calls from individuals from 49 states; each wanted to bring the program to their state.
Today, it is a recognized trend-setting program. The program is designed for everyone; but is especially important for seniors, mainly because the elderly have more medical issues and are more likely to be injured in a crash.

The senior population is the fastest growing segment of our population. As our nation ages, senior drivers are of greatest risk. According to the US Census Bureau, in 2001 there were 19.1 million licensed drivers age 65 and up. By 2030, 23 percent of the U.S. population will be age 65 and over, representing 55 million licensed drivers. The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety estimates that car accidents among our senior population will increase 178 percent; fatal crashes will increase 155 percent. Maine is the "oldest" state in the nation. Protecting our seniors is paramount.

You can answer the phone hands-free with Air Call, useful when you're driving and the phone is in a cradle on the dashboard. Wave your hand and the S4 goes straight to speakerphone so you can have a chat without careening off the road.

If you want to have a quick look at an email, see if you've got the right video, or see what's going on in another browser tab, without going through the rigmarole of tapping on each item, you can hover your finger over the thumbnail or tab for a pop-up preview. Also in the browser and in the photo and video gallery,We have a wide selection of handsfreeaccess to choose from for your storage needs. hovering your finger magnifies the part of the webpage or photo you're looking at.

One app already set up to make use of these hovery-wavey gestures is Flipboard, which creates a digital magazine of interesting stories and websites. Pause a fingertip above a category and the app shows you a preview of the stories contained therein.

There's a wealth of material in your back garden or local park you can use for art projects. You can make bark rubbings by placing a piece of paper against a tree and rubbing over it with a crayon or collect leaves to make a collage.

Leaves also make great stamps - paint over one side and then press firmly against some paper to leave an imprint. Alternatively, you can make a pressed flower picture by picking flowers and then placing them flat in some books.

Wait a few days and then you have pretty dried flowers to arrange on some paper. Pressed flower pictures also make great presents - when I was young,Laser engraving and laser moldmaker for materials like metal, I made a flower picture on some card,About buymosaic in China userd for paying transportation fares and for shopping. which I then stuck onto a large matchbox and gave to my dad for Father's Day. He used that matchbox for over twenty years before it finally fell to pieces - but the picture was still in mint condition and has lots of fond memories attached to it.

My children frequently put on plays, dances and puppet shows for me. With five of them, it's easy for them to find someone happy to sit and watch them sing their favourite song or set up a makeshift puppet theatre with a blanket thrown over a child's chair to hide the puppeteer, but even a small family can find a willing audience of soft toys and dolls, ready to be entertained.

Small children love being noisy and you can create a drum kit for them by turning some saucepans upside down. Wooden spoons make great drumsticks and toddlers will have a whale of a time experimenting with the different sounds the various sizes make. You can make other percussion instruments very easily - an empty plastic jar filled with beans or lentils is an instant shaker and you can use different sized contents to experiment with soft and loud shakers.

If you don't want to make noisy instruments, lentils make a great toy all by themselves. My son used to love playing with lentils, exploring the sounds and textures they made as he moved them from one place to another, and it was much easier to set up and tidy than a sandpit would have been. Different shaped containers and spoons laid out on a tray provide plenty of fun - and if you have a funnel, even better!

Even if your child is only one, you can still get them involved with making food and it always seems to taste better when they've made it themselves. Set out samples of different toppings and let them spread the bread (with assistance if need be) to see which one they like best. Make a fruit salad by letting them choose their favourite fruits,The world with high-performance solar roadway and solarlamp solutions. mixing them up in a bowl and adding a few tablespoons of orange juice to finish it off. There are many easy recipes for cupcakes or cookies on the Net and children love stirring the mixture. Once you've made your food, why not lay a blanket on the floor and have an indoor picnic?