One Community is a monthly photo project in which participants photograph their homes and communities with a theme in mind. The theme varies by month. The goal is to both showcase similarities and differences in our communities worldwide – and bring us all closer together in understanding through art.
Each month, one of the hosts picks four words for us to interpret through photographs of what we see around us in our daily lives.
The Rules: Post one or more photos interpreting the words for the month, and add your blog post to the link-up. Please include a link back to the link-up post on your One Community post, and take a look at some of the other links and comment on them.
This month’s words, selected by Eduarda, are: needle, chair, pillow and speech.
I work in downtown Phoenix; this bus can be regularly found at a parking lot nearby. Within it, you’d find a team of 4-5 phlebotomists, four benches that recline, two privacy rooms and stacks of salty snacks at one end.
Within this small space — magic happens. Folks line up to donate a pint of blood, which takes 30 minutes or so for the entire process. In return, our health care system, both researchers and actual individuals, have blood when they need it. Theoretically. The most annoying aspect of the entire process is the lengthy questions you have to answer about your sexual history, and if you’ve ever had Mad Cow disease, or lived in a country where you could have been exposed. (If you are in Arizona, you can now do this online before donating. And if you don’t want your blood to be used for research, most hospitals have blood banks that could use your help for their patients.) The most gratifying aspect is knowing that within 30 minutes, you may have just helped to save someone’s life.
The physical pain of donating is about the equivalent of a minor pinch. I have done squats that hurt more.
If you aren’t a regular donor, and you qualify, I can’t encourage you enough to give back to your community in this simple way. Plus, the cookies at the end are usually pretty good, and your glass of wine at dinner the night of donating hits the spot.
Needle, chair, pillow and speech all in one photo, unless you want a gross shot of me actually donating. You’re welcome.
~K
Join the link up to One Community here: