Dave Richards for August 21st…………
--Before we begin today’s deliberations, I want to lend my support to the Athena’s Cup Bra Collection.
Last Monday’s Car Show and Food Truck event at Market Square was postponed due to rain to this coming Monday, same place, same time, 5 to 8:30pm. Among the classic cars on display Monday will be a beautiful 1958 Cadillac owned by the grandfather of a friend of mine, Jennifer Jolicoeur. Jen’s a Woonsocket girl who has built a $4-Million business right here in her home town. Her heart is here and she is dedicated to promoting her city, so much so that she wants to bring an honest-to-goodness Guinness Book World Record to Woonsocket.
Several years ago Jennifer started the Athena’s Cup charity to bring attention to breast cancer research. Thousands have been raised and donated to organizations like Gemma. But Jen wanted to do more. So she started to collect and hook together the largest chain of ladies bras the world has ever seen. And she’s about to do it.
I’ll save the details for another time. Let’s focus on the fact that Jen has a little over 195,000 bras donated at this point but she needs 200,000. It’s remarkable that the last 5,000 is the hardest to collect, and that’s why she needs everyone’s help.
She, and her friends and supporters of the Athena’s Cup (which includes Mayor Lisa Baldelli-Hunt) are putting the last push to collect bras into high gear at Monday’s Car Show and Food Truck event. Bring your ill-fitting or worn-out bras to Market Square during the event. Each donor will receive a ‘Thank You Ticket’ which will enter them into a raffle for some delightful spa products from Athena’s. If you can’t make it Monday, you can bring them to our radio station weekdays from 8am to 4pm or Athena’s HQ on Winter Street. But make it Monday for the raffle. You’ll feel good you took part in putting Woonsocket “on the world map” for a very worthy cause.
--We’ve had a fairly hot summer here in the Blackstone Valley. But it’s been much hotter in other parts of our country. Figures I read yesterday indicate that so far this summer 300 infants have been killed or seriously injured by being left in cars by their parents or guardians. If it were only one, it would be too many, of course. The shocking part is that the figure used to be 32 and this is a nearly ten-fold increase.
In cooperation with the Rhode Island Broadcasters Association and our state government agencies, mine and other radio stations are broadcasting urgent messages free of charge to remind adults about the problem. But let’s take a step or two backward in time, shall we?
Everyone can see that the reason for the increase in infants being left in hot cars is because the baby is quiet and in an approved car seat which is in the BACK SEAT of the car. You can’t see the baby while you drive, and unless they are crying you don’t even know they are there. I always thought putting babies where you couldn’t look over and see they were okay was a bad move. What if they would choke? When I brought this up at the time I was told “that seldom happens.”, an answer which just wasn’t good enough for me. But ‘well-meaning’ legislators made it a law you had to do it. Why?
I’ll tell you why. Because automobile manufacturers and insurance companies convinced law makers that the back seat was safer than the front seat. While that may be true, there are other considerations, in addition to the ones I’ve raised above. Today’s cars are safer than any other models in automotive history. Better crumple zones. Air bags which come in from 12 different directions in the event of a crash. Automatic driver assist with obstruction avoidance. The list goes on.
I still say that when you consider everything, the situation has changed and babies are, in the current era, safer in the front seat of a vehicle and the laws should be changed to reflect this development. It’s better for baby, better for the parents, too. And it’s certainly better than babies dying quietly in the back seat of a car, with the horror of a loving parent who finds they have killed their baby in a terrible mistake, and then parents facing legal charges for negligent homicide…….all for being human.
Time for a change.
--That's what I think. What do you think? Comments to: dave@onworldwide.com or postal mail to Dave Richards, WOON Radio, 985 Park Avenue, Woonsocket, RI 02895-6332. Thanks for reading.
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