Typhoon Haiyan

To those of you who have already made efforts to help, thank you. I know first-hand how impoverished much of the Philippines is. A disaster such as this typhoon would cause massive destruction anywhere, even cities or regions with strong infrastructures, so I can only imagine the damage and destruction that has been left in category 5 Haiyan’s wake. A Reuters report states that “the storm lashed the islands of Leyte and Samar with 275-kph wind gusts and 5-6 meter (15-19 ft) waves on Friday.” An estimated nine million people have been affected by this super storm.

Please remember, cash is the best thing to donate after a disaster, not canned good, old shoes, or teddy bears. Relief efforts need to concentrate on helping people in need, not in sorting through donations. Please consider making a donation through one of the organizations listed below (just a few of the legitimate organizations participating in relief efforts).

I could post pictures of the people, but choosing just a few doesn’t seem to begin to cover it. For many stories on the people and what is being done, here is a link. The following aerial images show you what is left after the typhoon hit:

Typhoon Haiyan’s impact revealed in before-and-after satellite images By NBC News

                   

From Yahoo:

With reports of more than 10,000 estimated casualties, and an excess of 9 million people affected, Typhoon Haiyan is one of the most devastating storms ever to make landfall.

With the Red Cross and other agencies saying they expect the number of casualties and total damage from the storm to soar, there are many organizations stepping up to provide relief to the victims and families of Haiyan.

Here are just some of them:

American Red Cross: Sent support specialists to help the hardest hit areas.

Direct Relief International: Direct Relief is collaborating with its partner on the ground, Asia America Initiative (AAI), to coordinate the delivery of needed medical aid, which is expected to arrive in the Philippines capital, Manila, early next week.  The donation contains antibiotics, pain relievers, nutritional supplements, anti-fungal medications, wound dressings, and chronic disease medicines.

Global Giving: Initially, the fund will help first responders meet survivors’ immediate needs for food, fuel, clean water, hygiene products, and shelter. Once initial relief work is complete, this fund will transition to support longer-term Haiyan recovery efforts run by local, vetted Filipino organizations.

Mercy Corps: Mercy Corps is launching immediate relief efforts after one of the strongest storms in recorded history devastates the Philippines.

Oxfam: Oxfam rapid assessment teams are poised to provide emergency supplies and shelter in parts of the Philippines hit by Typhoon Haiyan.

ShelterBox: Donations designated toward ShelterBox’s Typhoon Haiyan relief efforts will be used to supply the most vital equipment needed and will not be assigned box tracking numbers. Each ShelterBox supplies an extended family with a tent and essential equipment to use while they are displaced or homeless.

UNICEF: UNICEF is working to provide safe water, hygiene supplies, food, shelter and a safe environment to recover.

World Food Programme: WFP is mobilizing quickly to reach those in need. Please make a donation now to provide emergency food assistance to families and children.

Or, check out check out Charity Navigator or GuideStar. These are two websites that are extremely useful tools in finding out where your dollars will be stretched the furthest in relief aid.

                   

The Ten Worst Things to Donate after a Disaster:

10. Used Clothing

9. Shoes

8. Blankets

7. Teddy Bears

6. Medicine

5. Pet Supplies

4. Mixed Items

3. Canned Food and Bottled Water

2. Your Unsolicited Help

1. Money to the Wrong People

If anyone knows of any links that might be useful to add to this post, please let me know.

Related articles

• Response to Typhoon Haiyan (nonprofitnewswire.wordpress.com)
• MLB to donate $200,000 for Typhoon Haiyan relief (nbcsports.com)
• Here’s how you can help Typhoon Haiyan relief efforts (wtvr.com)
• Apple Now Accepting Red Cross Donations For Typhoon Haiyan Victims Through iTunes (cultofmac.com)
• Typhoon Haiyan Relief Telethon (ksfm.cbslocal.com)

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“Anyway this is just a note to tell you I’m in a new shell or an old one, like a hermit crab and the ink is now out of two of my pens and this is the last one. I have no more ink in the house tonight. I’ll keep you posted.” ~ John Steinbeck, in a letter to Pascal Covici, September 1948

Sibutu Island, Tawi-Tawi, Philippines* 

“Dreams are the unfinished wings of our souls.” ~ Simon Van Booy, The Secret Lives of People in Love

Tuesday evening. Hot and humid.

Coral Reef, Turtle Islands, Tawi-Tawi, Philippines

Two dreams from last night that have stuck with me:

First, I dreamed that I was with Jammi. She and Austin (her ex) had bought a home, but the house itself had to be moved. Jammi was driving the truck that was pulling the house on a trailer. I was in the truck with her. We moved through the streets of Norfolk very slowly until we arrived at the location in which the house would be placed. It was on a hill.

Great, I thought, but Jammi backed the house onto the hill, and it slid into place. We went inside, and there was a lot of work to be done. We worked on painting and putting up wallpaper, but the next day, it all had to be done again. I didn’t feel that I could do all of that work again.

Austin had to leave that day to go back to the war. I asked Jammi if she ever regretted her decision. It was a question that had been on my mind. She looked at me a long time and then looked at the floor as she answered me, “It was the right thing to do for the kids.”

In the second dream, I am embarking on a cruise with my mother, father, and my two sons; my sons are about eight and nine. It is very crowded getting on the ship, and my mother and I become separated from my father and the boys. I tell my mom that we need to follow the line to get to the dining room. We go down a long hall full of people, and then we are in line for dinner, but it is cafeteria style. I’m wondering what happened to the dining room and the wonderful food.

I get in the salad line first, and the lettuce is frozen. I’m already disgusted and wondering where my father is. Then I get in a line for sushi, but the sushi is like the nasty kind that is prepackaged in supermarkets. I order something that will take 15 minutes and am told that it will be brought to me. I wonder how they will find me.

A steward approaches my mother and me and tells me to follow him. He takes me into a room where my dad and the boys are lying on a blue bed; the boys are playing a video game. They’ve been there the whole time waiting for me. The boys are wearing communication devices on their wrists, and they could have sent us a message using those, but they didn’t think about it.

The whole cruise sucks already.

“I write this very decidedly out of despair over my body and over a future with this body . . .” ~ Franz Kafka, from The Diaries, 1910

Friday night. Cool and clear.

Bongao, Capital of Tawi-Tawi Province

So I didn’t get back to this post until now. On Wednesday, I saw my pain doctor and got trigger shots all over my neck, back, and lower back. I lost count. My doctor said afterwards, “Wow. That’s a lot of shots.”

No kidding. I actually thought that I might throw up on the way home. I guess they bothered me more because it’s been several months since I’ve had any trigger shots, and I was one giant muscle spasm. I woke up every three hours or so and took another muscle relaxer (no worries, I’m supposed to take two at a time, and I only take one usually). By Thursday morning, I still hurt.

Fortunately, to take my mind of my excruciating back pain, I got to have my breasts smashed. Yes, the annual mammogram, which, it turns out, I have not had since 2008. I’ve been—shall I say—neglectful of my ta tas. Anyway, let me explain this to those of you who may be unaware: Mammograms hurt more for small-breasted women because the technician has to take your champagne-glass full (before flutes) and pull it onto the platform. I feel like saying, “I’m not Gumby. I don’t stretch that way.”

Not to mention, I went to the wrong building for my appointment and was told to go to the first floor of building 880. I went into the office in building 880, and the woman says, “We don’t have you on the schedule.” Finally, I take out my appointment sheet, and I say, “Am I here?” like I’m some kind of moron. The woman says, “No, that’s next door.”

I’m hot, and the little bit of makeup that I dared to put on is running down my face, and I’m afraid that I’ll be late for my 3:30 therapy appointment. I ask the woman if they can just do my boobs there. She checks with the people in the back (those ominous faceless people one never sees in a doctor’s office), and then tells me that sure, they can work me in.

Done and done. Of course now, I hurt on my back and front . . .

“We hear in retrospect what we have understood.” ~ Marcel Proust

An Island in the Tawi-Tawi Province, Philippines

Well, the computer is going so slowly tonight that I feel sort of like I do in a traffic jam: that I could make more progress if I got out of the car and ran alongside the cars, only in this case, it would be faster if I turned pages by hand instead of searching through files. I fear that I may have to abandon this post once again and come back to the computer possibly in the morning after running a scan; I know when I’m defeated.

Saturday evening. Hot and humid.

After removing spyware and adware, deleting unwanted files, and scanning, the computer seems to be working a bit better, seems being the operative word. I did get this funky black screen when I rebooted, one I have never seen before, so that was a bit scary . . . So where was I?

“The color of truth is grey.” ~ André Gide

Tawi-Tawi Archipelago, Philippines

I find that my mind is not even anywhere near the track I was on when I first began this post, and I probably should have scrapped the whole thing except I hate to do that. I feel as if it’s wasted time. I mean, I’ve picked out the quotes, and I have an idea as to the theme that I’m going to use for my images. I usually already have my poem and song picked out, so to scrap everything because the post is all over the place is a bit disingenuous, especially since that’s exactly how my mind works most of the time anyway—all over the place.

So I’ll finish on this note: I went with Ann, my s-in-law to see her mother today. It was not the best visit as she was in and out as far as being able to converse. We had stopped at McDonald’s to get her a cheeseburger and fries for lunch, which she seemed to enjoy, but she turned down my offer to paint her nails, and didn’t really seem to want me to put lotion on her legs. A few other things happened while we were there which caused me to get rather brusque with her nurse, but I don’t want to get into it.

The other news is that my ex father-in-law, who was admitted to the hospital about ten days ago after falling and breaking a couple of ribs, will also not be coming back home. Ann went to see him on Friday, and she said that while he is more coherent than m-in-law, he seems to know that he is dying.

I texted the kids to let them know the status on their grandfather. Eamonn got back to me right away. Alexis got back to me eight hours later with more of the same: Sorry, will be over soon, ya da ya da ya da. I didn’t bother to reply. I’m going to try to take Eamonn and Brett to see their grandfather this coming week.

This is all too depressing.

More later. Peace.

Music by Aimee Mann, “Save Me”

                   

The Tawi-Tawi group of islands is located at the southwestern tip of the Philippine archipelago. It lies along the earth’s equatorial zone and is composed of 307 islands and islets, 88 of which are characterized by extensive reefs. Tawi-Tawi is an island province of the Philippines located in the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM). The capital of Tawi-Tawi is Bongao. The province is the southernmost of the country sharing sea borders with the Malaysian State of Sabah and the Indonesian Kalimantan province.Tawi Tawi is a province that consists of 107 islands in the Sulu Sea, once part of a land bridge linking Borneo

                   

in time of daffodils(who know
the goal of living is to
grow)
forgetting why,remember how

in time of lilacs who
proclaim
the aim of waking is to dream,
remember so(forgetting
seem)

in time of roses(who amaze
our now and here with paradise)
forgetting if,remember yes

in time of all sweet things
beyond
whatever mind may comprehend,
remember seek(forgetting
find)

and in a mystery to be
(when time from time shall set us
free)
forgetting me,remember me

~ e. e. cummings

“My advice to you is not to inquire why or whither, but just enjoy your ice cream while it’s on your plate—that’s my philosophy.” ~ Thornton Wilder

 

“Have patience with everything that remains unsolved in your heart. Try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books written in a foreign language. Do not now look for the answers. They cannot now be given to you because you could not live them. It is a question of experiencing everything. At present you need to live the question. Perhaps you will gradually, without even noticing it, find yourself experiencing the answer, some distant day.” ~ Rainer Marie Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet

I haven’t done an update in a while, and since I am supposed to be filling out FAFSA applications for both Brett and Eamonn, I thought that this would be a good topic to keep me from completing more forms. So here goes.    

Twenty-five things:   

1. This time ten years ago I was just beginning my relationship with Corey as friends and co-workers.



Egret in Flight

2. Five years ago I was miserably working for a real estate company as a marketing director.
3. This time last year I was doing exactly what I’m doing now: frittering my life away, attempting to write, being a slug.
4. One of my favorite moments at the museum was the time that I was at the shoot for our Monet exhibition, and there was a frog wrangler. Seriously.
5. Corey and I were walking through the Botanical Garden when we decided to get married.
6. My dad loved to go fishing late at night, and when I was a girl, it was always a treat when he took me with him.
7. The part of my body that I hate the most is my neck. Second, my arms.
8. I think that Gwyneth Paltrow has a lot of nerve complaining about her bat wings (upper arms) as she is skinny and knows nothing about real bat wings.
9. When I was in the 6th grade, I pretended that the man in the picture was not my father. I am still ashamed of that.
10. My cell phone was stolen out of my car by a man I let wash my car. I was so stupid, which is what the police pointed out in a neighborhood meeting about crimes committed by the men who went around and offered to wash cars.
11. When I was a teenager, I cleaned my mother’s house every Saturday. No one made me. I just did it.
12. I have a soft spot in my heart for short, elderly Filipino men.
13. I think the reason that I am so intrigued by my dreams is that they are so much more interesting than my real life.
14. I am afraid of snakes and centipedes but not spiders.
15. I love to listen to the birds singing in the early morning, when the air is filled with many different songs, creating a natural harmony.



Chickadee

16. When I was little, I always wanted to have a sister, but not necessarily a brother.
17. The most beautiful place Corey and I saw when were in Mexico was the Mayan ruins in Tulum. I much preferred the natural beauty of the ruins, the Iguanas,  and the blue water hitting the rocks to the crowded, touristy atmosphere of Cancun.
18. The Mexican soldiers patrolling Tulum carry automatic weapons, which is quite a jarring sight in the midst of such natural beauty.
19. I wish that elves and fairies were real.
20. I have boxes and boxes of photographs that I have taken over the years but have never sorted or arranged. I also have several empty albums that I bought with the intention of putting the pictures into albums.
21. I don’t think that there’s an episode of Law & Order that I haven’t seen, and the show has been on for 20 years.
22. I still want to go back to graduate school to get my PhD.
23. Is there such a thing as a family that isn’t dysfunctional?
24. I have had three bosses for whom I would work again in a heartbeat—the City Editor at the newspaper where I cut my teeth, the marketing director at the Museum, and the Director of Marketing and Communications at GW.
25. The worst boss I had was at the department store. He was a misogynist, and he had no sense of loyalty.

“Where am I? Who am I?
How did I come to be here?
What is this thing called the world?
How did I come into the world?
Why was I not consulted?
And If I am compelled to take part in it,
Where is the director?
I want to see him.” ~ Soren Kierkegaard

Twenty-five more things:  

1. I once worked as a temp for a company that was so cheap that they counted paper clips.
2. I used to clean my guy friends’ apartments whenever I visited.
3. I used to dream of owning a muscle car. Now, I couldn’t bend down to get into one.



Pelican at Sunset

4. Someone once told me that my legs weren’t perfect and hers were because mine didn’t touch at the top.
5. I wish that my legs still didn’t touch at the top.
6. If I were a billionaire, after I paid for college for everyone in the family, I would set up a foundation specifically for young women in need of start-up funds. I would also start a foundation for unpublished writers to get the funds needed to work on their writing full time.
7. If I were a billionaire, I would donate a chunk of change to the campaigns of whoever ran against Michele Bachmann, Sarah Palin, and a handful of other extremists.
8. One day I will go to Australia and Ireland.
9. I sing to my dogs.
10. I think that I’ve taught Tillie how to say I Love You, but she could be saying “I want cookies.”
11. One of the most beautiful valentines I ever received was from a boy I was not dating. It was a hand painted butterfly, and in it he wrote a poem about me. I found out later that he killed himself the following year.
12. I love pens but hate ball point stick pens that run on my fingers.
13. When I was a little girl, I thought that I would help my mom with the ironing. I melted one of her blouses.
14. I polished the floor of my grandmother’s house in the Philippines with coconut halves that were strapped to my feet. The dark floors were so smooth that it was like skating.
15. I’ve always wished that I could draw.
16. My parents had a tree on the side of their yard that I climbed and from which I could jump onto the roof.



Cedar Waxwing

17. I have wanted to live in Blacksburg ever since I went to grad school there, but I think that it’s more the idea of living in a college town.
18. Corey and I want to go on another cruise one of these days.
19. I remember returnable soda bottles.
20. I have a vague memory of the shops on Portobello Road in England.
21. The green grocer whose shop was just down the street from our apartment on Goldhawk Road in London was named Mr. Higgins. He gave me sweets.
22. Two traditions that I think Americans should adopt are tea time and the siesta. Both make so much sense to me.
23. I haven’t bought a new pair of shoes in over two years. I think that must be a record.
24. Ideally, I would love to have a beach house and a house in the mountains. Then I could have the two environments that I love the most.
25. I let my dogs steal the covers during the night.

“To be on a quest is nothing more or less than to become an asker of questions.” ~ Sam Keen

Twenty-Five Questions:   

1. If you could have lunch with anyone in history, who would it be?  That’s hard. It’s a tossup between Thoreau, Einstein, or Anne Boleyn, all for different reasons
2. What is the one thing you want more than anything else at this very moment? A haircut.
3. What it the one thing you hope to accomplish this year? Work on my book idea to the point that I have something to show an agent.
4. What do you hate the most? Intolerance, followed closely by a lie.
5. What do you love the most? Love and being loved
6. How old were you when you first encountered death in a real way? Twelve, when my mother’s father died
7. What modern convenience would you miss the most: a computer, a cell phone, a television, a microwave? Definitely a computer.
8. If you could do one thing for anyone in the world, what would it be? I would get a job for Corey.
9. Which person that you do not know do you relate the most to? Virginia Woolf.
10. What is your worst trait? Jealousy followed by insecurity.
11. How do other people characterize you that doesn’t match how you see yourself? I am frequently told that I am confident, which I am not.
12. What is the one thing in this world that you would eliminate if you could? Famine.
13. Glass half empty or half full? Empty.



Great Blue Heron

14. Are people inherently evil or inherently good? Good.
15. Do you keep secrets from those you love? No. Absolutely not.
16. Where is the one place you return to again and again?  The cemetery where Caitlin is buried.
17. Is there a place you go to when you need to clear your head? Barnes & Noble Booksellers
18. Are you happy with your life? Not really. There are too many things I want to change.
19. Which affects you more: smell or sound? Sound. Music has a way of playing into my moods.
20. If you had the power to change one thing in your life, what would it be? I would have had another baby.
21. What would your super power be? Flying
22. Can men and women be friends without sex getting in the way? If one of them is gay.
23. If you could live in another country, where would it be? Australia or Finland.
24. When you are away from home, what do you miss the most? My dogs.
25. Do you believe in revenge? In concept.

Well that was harder than I had anticipated. More later. Peace.   

Damien Rice, “9 Crimes”