With great fear and trepidation, I carefully step into writing something this week concerning a topic that has nothing to do with the Seahawks, “Deflate-gate” or the Super Bowl.

The topic is NextDoor, a free private social network just for your neighborhood. I know, just what you needed, another opportunity to sign up for some online application, in addition to Facebook, where you already spend 90 percent of your waking hours. Either that or you avoid these things like the plague. Yes, I know you. You have committed in blood that you will go to your deathbed without ever touching a computer keyboard. Be that as it may, I step into this knowing you may have already left me because of the subject. However, I found it of interest and full of potential for all of us.

My friend Pete Hubbard recently gave an informative presentation on NextDoor. Yes, this website leads to a social network, but it is far more local geographically than other options. If you are on this network, the other members you can contact are actually your physical neighbors, many of whom you probably know. The network was started in 2011 in San Francisco and today has more than 49,000 neighborhoods in the USA. Approximately 1,000 neighborhoods are added each month. NextDoor optimistically projects all 150,000 neighborhoods in the country will join the network in the next few years.

At this time in Jefferson County, there are more than 600 members of NextDoor, with 115 in Port Ludlow. (More than half of its total members in Jefferson County live on Marrowstone Island, not surprisingly the home of my friend Pete Hubbard.) A few noteworthy locals I have discovered on NextDoor include Anne Burrell-Smith, Barbara Berthiaume, Bill Dean and Dave Aho.

This network can be used for the standard stuff such as sending messages to one or more folks and providing access to classified advertising, although there doesn’t seem to be a lot that is current in that section. Of much greater importance is the access to emergency management alerts of almost any kind and sharing of information that may be of interest to our particular neighborhood. Let’s face at least one glaring fact about our area, including Port Ludlow and the rest of East Jefferson County. We are already somewhat remote from emergency help. (I even heard that this area will experience an earthquake some day.) We may need help getting transportation or other assistance, and frankly, our neighbors are usually the nearest option and the ones most familiar with the situation. Being able to update and contact your neighbors may provide the best avenue to solve a problem. Bob Hamlin, the director of the Jefferson County Department of Emergency Management, has said, “The ability to deal with a crisis is largely dependent on the structures and relationships that have been developed before the emergency.”

All this being said, NextDoor may also be a way to share joy or despair concerning the fate of the Seattle Seahawks this coming Sunday. However, watching it on TV with a crowd of your friends, drinking great beer and eating Doritos will be a lot more fun. No matter, take a minute and check out NextDoor.com.

Go Hawks!

Love a curmudgeon and have a great week.

(Contact Port Ludlow resident Ned Luce at NedLuce@sbcglobal.net.)