I've just heard my new favorite idea regarding printed college T-shirts.
My ex-favorite came from friend Roger Frost, a world traveler and former director of Sonoma Charter School. He advocated that it be illegal to wear a shirt from a college you didn't attend.
Such a law would save folks from the exasperation of walking up to someone wearing a shirt from say, University of Colorado in Boulder, declaring "Go Buffs! When were you last in Old Main?" and having the baffled person glance down at the shirt and reply, "Oh, this. I bought it at a thrift store."
An even better idea comes from Jenni Klose, the Santa Rosa school board member.
She asks that if you were fortunate enough to go to college, you purchase a printed T-shirt from your alma mater and get it to her. And send along with it a note about your college experience.
Klose wants to boost the likelihood that more students will aspire early on to attend college. Toward that end, she seeks to collect 740 college T-shirts -#8212; and notes -#8212; and give one to each child who enters the second grade at a Santa Rosa public school this fall.
Donors can hand Klose shirts and notes at any school-board meeting, or mail or deliver them to her at 703 2nd St., No. 310, Santa Rosa 95404.
She suggests size child's large. Room to grow.
SHE'S ALIVE. That's the main thing to Janelle Rossi.
An avid cyclist and third-generation Santa Rosan, Rossi was riding down Pine Flat Road near Healdsburg in July when she crashed, hard.
She was hospitalized with a head injury, shattered elbow, broken collarbone, fractured ribs and other injuries.
Today, Rossi has lost her job and she doesn't yet have full use of her damaged arm. Following her most recent surgery she was back in the hospital with a pulmonary embolism.
But she is so grateful.
"Everyone I've encountered has touched my life and my heart," she said.
You might have read in Robert Digitale's business story Sunday that fellow cyclists donated nearly $800 to the
locally conceived crowdsourcing site, Plumfund. That money paid for meals for Rossi.
Helpers have stepped up to clean her apartment, wash her hair, do her grocery shopping and raise money for her medical expenses.
"I still get teary eyed when I think about it and wonder what I did to deserve all this goodness!" Rossi said.
She intends to get back on a bike this spring, again with aid and encouragement from fellow cyclists. And she vows she'll pay it forward.
THE '70S WASHED UP at Dillon Beach last weekend.
Hair styles and dress went retro for the shooting of an indie film inspired by the 1971 collision of two Standard Oil tankers near the Golden Gate. Oil fouled miles of coastline and killed marine life.
Actor Mike Colter plays Charlie Walker, the charismatic businessman who displeased some people and took some liberties with the law after he won the contract to oversee the cleanup of Stinson Beach.
At present, the film shares the not-so-catchy title of the book Walker wrote, "America is Still the Place."
Chris Smith is at 521-5211 and chris.smith@pressdemocrat.com.
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