Excerpted from Healthy Beaches (TheGreenGuide.com):

For recent beach closings and information on how to find out if your favorite swimming spot is currently home to unsafe levels of bacteria, see the EPA’s Beach Advisory and Closing on-line Notification (BEACON) site and Earth911’s Beach Water Quality pages. Beaches that aren’t listed may not be monitored regularly.

* Swallowing water is the most frequent way swimmers are exposed to bacteria, so keep your head above the waves.

* Avoid swimming near flowing stormdrain outlets, outfalls or runoff ditches. A study of Santa Monica beaches found that swimmers near stormdrains had a 57 percent greater chance of fever than those swimming over 400 yards away.

* Don’t swim alone and don’t dive into water you haven’t been in previously.

* Don’t swim after a heavy rain or near trash.

* Keep an eye on the waves-don’t be caught unawares by large ones.

* Shower after visiting the beach.

* Disinfect cuts or abrasions to avoid infection.

* Those with suppressed immune systems should be checked for cuts both before and after swimming.

To help preserve the health of our beaches:

* Some chemical preservatives and stabilizers in sunscreens can damage coral reefs. For reef-safe lotions, see our Sunscreen Buying Guide.

* To protect your beach, contact the Surfrider Foundation (www.surfrider.org).

* Since the stormwater runoff accounted for the majority of closures, support measures to reduce runoff in your community.

In one of the many letters he wrote to his son in the 1740s, Lord Chesterfield offered the following advice: “There is time enough for everything in the course of the day, if you do but one thing at once, but there is not time enough in the year, if you will do two things at a time.” To Chesterfield, singular focus was not merely a practical way to structure one’s time; it was a mark of intelligence. “This steady and undissipated attention to one object, is a sure mark of a superior genius; as hurry, bustle, and agitation, are the never-failing symptoms of a weak and frivolous mind.”

In modern times, hurry, bustle, and agitation have become a regular way of life for many people—so much so that we have embraced a word to describe our efforts to respond to the many pressing demands on our time: multitasking. Used for decades to describe the parallel processing abilities of computers, multitasking is now shorthand for the human attempt to do simultaneously as many things as possible, as quickly as possible, preferably marshalling the power of as many technologies as possible.

The New Atlantis » The Myth of Multitasking.

By Moira E. McLaughlin
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, June 20, 2008

The summer before I entered seventh grade, my mother (the consummate organizer) and two of her friends decided to take their gang of six kids on various day trips throughout the hot months. The point was fun, of course, but we were also supposed to learn something. We went to Baltimore, Manassas, Chesapeake Beach and (what we all recall most vividly) Vera’s White Sands restaurant in Lusby, where the pictures on the walls drove us to fits of laughter.

I realize now that those trips were not just about the kids. They were about the moms, too. Driving in the car to some random place solidified their friendships, which have lasted long beyond the day we got stuck in that rainstorm or the day we were spooked by the “ghost” of Edgar Allan Poe.

So this summer try something new, and break out of your regular routine with a day trip or two. My mother had only two rules for our day trips, and you should, too: Bring your sense of adventure, and always pack a bathing suit.

Road Trip! - washingtonpost.com.

BestBuy in Frederick is handing out gift cards for good grades. $5 for 1 A, $10 for 2 A’s, $15 for 3 A’s and $25 for 4 A’s. I took my daughter yesterday and she received a $25 gift card, which she was able to use immediately to buy two new summer videos. (K-12)

Thanks, Debra!

NOTE: O’s count as A’s. Report cards must have been issued by schools in Frederick County (public or private). Offer expires July 1. ~Tracey

In conjunction with this year’s FCPL Summer Reading Club, Busch Gardens and Water Country USA (Williamsburg, VA) have signed up to give kids a 30% discount on single day admission tickets to both parks.

To receive the discount, kids need to show their library card at the ticket counter.

Promotion open to students 18 and younger.

Avoid buying the following recalled toys at yard sales this summer:

Originally Published: August 2, 2007

Firm’s Recall Hotline: (800) 916-4498
CPSC Recall Hotline: (800) 638-2772
CPSC Media Contact: (301) 504-7908

WASHINGTON, D.C. - The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission, in cooperation with the firms named below, today announced a voluntary recall of the following consumer product. Consumers should stop using recalled products immediately unless otherwise instructed.

Name of Product: Sesame Street, Dora the Explorer, and other children’s toys

Units: About 967,000

Importer: Fisher-Price Inc., of East Aurora, N.Y.

Hazard: Surface paints on the toys could contain excessive levels of lead. Lead is toxic if ingested by young children and can cause adverse health effects.

Fisher-Price Recalls Licensed Character Toys Due To Lead Poisoning Hazard.