Community Service for Gmail

2004-06-14T07:22:00.000-07:00

A friend of mine on LiveJournal brought to my attention the Gmail swap, where you can sign up and promise various things to swap for a Gmail account. What started out as something silly ended up being something I could contribute for the greater good.

I had first offered to take a picture of my friends and I at the top of the incline plane in Johnstown, PA holding a sign with the message my fellow swapper would determine. After some seriously questionable and indecent mottos were sent my way, I decided to go with another offer.

Morgan Brown instead asked me to do some sort of community service in Johnstown or the surrounding area. Little did he know that I had already promised my weekend to going to a junior high church youth event, where the kids were making sleeping bags and donating the proceeds of their recent food drive to the homeless.

Morgan and I came to terms and the pictures that follow are me keeping my end of the bargain. I just want to thank Mr. Brown one last time for my .gmail account and his flexibility and eye-opening offer!

So on the the pictures, please note, names with held to protect the innocent.

I wasn't able to get any pictures of the food drive, everything was done during a church service.

The following are pictures of the group making our "ugly sleeping bag". The idea with the ugly sleeping bag is that the more ratty it looks the less likely it is to be stolen on the street from a homeless person. We could easily go and buy new sleeping bags, but more than likely they would be stolen right away. These sleeping bags were made out of material that was 7 feet long and 7 feet wide. We then gathered donated t-shirts and ties. The material was laid flat and spread across the floor, the t-shirts were layered and lined on top of the material then sewn onto the material for a lining. We then folded the whole thing in half, sewed the bottom and half way up one side. The old neck ties were used to tied the bag after it was rolled up. It took my group about 4 hours to finish 2 of them. Our bags will taken en masse with the other 99 and distributed around the Southwest and Southcentral parts of the state from State College to Altoona to Johnstown to Pittsburgh.

A Schmidtie Story

Community Service for Gmail