MedicWorks

While Spokane Area Parks and Schools Are Looking To Remove Soil and Natural Grass from Baseball ⚾️ Infields and Football 🏈 and Other Playing Surfaces, Others Are Finding The Health Benefits Of Natural Surfaces.

From Anish Moonka:

Finnish scientists trucked in real forest dirt and grass and laid it over the gravel at four daycare yards. They let the kids dig around in it for a month. The blood tests came back with changes the researchers hadn’t expected to see so fast or so clear.

The study ran at ten daycares in two Finnish cities with 75 kids aged three to five. Four of the yards got the forest treatment: about a tennis court worth of soil and grass laid over the gravel, plus planters and peat blocks the kids could dig and climb on. Three others stuck with their normal gravel yards. The last three were daycares where the kids were already visiting real forests every day.

After one month, the variety of bacteria living on the kids’ skin shot up, and the kind that helps train the skin’s immune defenses jumped the most. Their gut bacteria started to look like the gut bacteria of the forest-visiting kids. Their blood showed more of the immune cells whose job is to keep the body from freaking out at harmless stuff like pollen and peanuts, and overall inflammation dropped. The kids on the plain gravel yards showed none of this.

Childhood asthma in the US doubled between 1980 and 1995. Food allergies in kids jumped 50 percent between 1997 and 2011, then jumped another 50 percent between 2007 and 2021. And peanut allergies in one-year-olds tripled between 2001 and 2017.

The Finnish researchers think one of the reasons is simple: kids today don’t get dirty enough. 37 percent of American preschoolers now spend an hour or less outside on a normal weekday. Their immune systems are getting trained in environments stripped of the bacteria humans have always lived around.

Aki Sinkkonen, who led the study, put it in plain words: “It would be best if children could play in puddles and everyone could dig organic soil.” The Finnish government is now helping pay for daycares across the country to make the same changes.

SOURCE: https://x.com/anishmoonka/status/2059561230201913589?s=20

Sometimes You Stand Alone In Your Beliefs, While Others Think You’re Crazy.
Believe In Yourself and What God Has Put On Your Heart.

For eight years, Rick Rescorla was the man everyone rolled their eyes at.
As head of security for Morgan Stanley in the World Trade Center, he did something that made executives groan and employees grumble — every three months, without warning, he would shut everything down and march all 2,700 people down the emergency stairs. No exceptions. No shortcuts.
"This is ridiculous."
"It'll never happen."
"You're wasting our time, Rick."
He'd heard it all. He didn't care.
Rick had been a decorated combat veteran — a man who had looked war in the face and understood one truth that most people spend their lives avoiding: disasters don't warn you. You either prepare, or you suffer.
Back in 1990, he submitted a detailed warning to management: terrorists could park a bomb in the World Trade Center's underground garage and bring the towers down. His bosses filed it away and moved on.
Three years later, in February 1993, a truck bomb exploded in exactly that garage.
Rick stood and watched hundreds of people flood out in blind panic — confused, slow, dangerous to each other. He didn't say I told you so.
He pulled out a stopwatch and started timing.
If something bigger ever came, his people would not panic. They would move.
He redesigned the drills. He found the bottlenecks and fixed them. He studied exactly which stairwells were fastest. And as people filed down floor after floor in practice runs, Rick walked among them — singing. Old Welsh military hymns, in a booming voice that bounced off concrete walls.
"Men of Harlech, march to glory…"
People laughed at that too. But somehow, they always kept moving.

September 11, 2001. 8:46 AM.
The North Tower was struck. Smoke filled the New York sky. And over the intercom in the South Tower, an announcement echoed through every floor:
"The building is secure. Please return to your offices."
Rick Rescorla picked up his bullhorn.
He had not spent eight years preparing to follow that announcement. He ordered every Morgan Stanley employee to evacuate. Immediately. Now.
And because they had walked those stairs dozens of times, because their feet knew every landing and their minds knew every exit — they moved. Calm. Focused. Fast.
Rick stood in the stairwells as they passed, his voice steady and strong:
"Men of Harlech, march to glory…"
At 9:03 AM, the second plane hit the South Tower.
Colleagues who passed Rick begged him to come with them. He shook his head each time, the same quiet answer on his lips:
"As soon as everyone's out."
He kept going back up.
Of the 2,700 Morgan Stanley employees in that building, the overwhelming majority made it out alive. It stands as one of the most remarkable survivals of that entire day — an outcome that did not happen by luck, or accident, or fate.
It happened because one man spent eight years being laughed at, and never once stopped preparing.
Rick Rescorla's body was never found.
But the 2,700 people who walked out of those towers because of him? They found their way home.
History didn't laugh.

Looking for Some Cheat Entertainment this Weekend??

Boat 🚤 Ramp Watching Can Brings More Laughs Than TV Bloopers

Bike to work Day

Which One You Taking??

Harley Davidson
Indian
BMW
Honda
Kawasaki
Triumph
Schwinn
Huffy

Other

Where Were You When The Mountain 🏔️ Blew??

May 18, 1980 @ 8:32am

The 1980 Mount St. Helens Loggers’ CB Net — Washington, 1980

May 18, 1980. 8:32am. Mt. St. Helens erupts. 1,300 feet of mountain gone. Lateral blast at 300 mph. 230 square miles of forest flattened in 3 minutes. 57 dead.

But 200 loggers were inside the blast zone. Weyerhaeuser crews, independent guys, all cutting timber. No cell phones in 1980. No way to warn them.

Except CB radios. Every logging truck had one. And at the Kelso yard, 40 miles out, dispatcher Dorothy “Dot” Simmons, 62, ran the board. She knew every voice, every truck, every cut.

At 8:31am, USGS called her: “Dot, the mountain’s bulging. If it goes, tell your boys run south.” At 8:32am, it went.

Dot didn’t freeze. She keyed the mic and said: “ALL STATIONS. ST. HELENS BLOWS. SOUTH NOW. DROP SAW. SOUTH NOW.”

For 6 minutes she repeated it. 200 loggers heard it. They dropped chainsaws, left trucks, and ran downhill south. The blast went north.

They clocked it. The guys who listened lived. The ones who said “finish the cut” died. 57 dead — but 143 loggers lived because a 62-year-old woman yelled on a CB.

Weyerhaeuser tried to give her a bonus. She said: “Bonus is they came home.” She kept dispatching till 1987. Her call sign was “KELSO BASE.” Loggers still use it.
#1980

Prepare, and Know When It’s Time To Go, That Means You Don’t Have Time To Go Back For More Lamp 🪔 Oil or Finish The Cut.