More places to help Hurricane Katrina Victims

The Federal Emergency Management Agency lists these organizations for those seeking to assist victims of Hurricane Katrina:

Donate cash
American Red Cross (800) HELP NOW (435-7669) English; (800) 257-7575 Spanish

Operation Blessing (800) 436-6348

America's Second Harvest (800) 344-8070

To donate cash or volunteer
Adventist Community Services (800) 381-7171

Catholic Charities, USA (703) 549-1390

Christian Disaster Response (941) 956-5183 or (941) 551-9554

Christian Reformed World Relief Committee (800) 848-5818

Church World Service (800) 297-1516

Convoy of Hope (417) 823-8998

Lutheran Disaster Response (800) 638-3522

Mennonite Disaster Service (717) 859-2210

Nazarene Disaster Response (888) 256-5886

Presbyterian Disaster Assistance (800) 872-3283

Salvation Army (800) SAL-ARMY (725-2769)

Southern Baptist Convention -- Disaster Relief (800) 462-8657, ext. 6440

United Methodist Committee on Relief (800) 554-8583

Loss

I was watching the news footage about Hurricane Katrina this morning online. There was a man with a small child, howling with grief when the news crew walked up. They asked where he had been; on top of a roof with his wife and family he tells them. "But where is your wife?"they ask. He sobbs that they cant find her body, that he tried to hold onto her but she slipped. Right before she lost her grasp she tells him to take care for their children and grandchildren. The she sank out of sight.
There was so much devastation that it overwhelms you and numbs you. But that one news cast will haunt me for I don't know how long. This is what people need to see, the human cost.
How you can help:

The American Red Cross
http://www.redcross.org/

The Salvation Army
http://www.salvationarmyusa.org/

Love and separation and love some more

Daniel and I have tried to keep a steady, every weekend visiting policy. He's been with me the past two weekends, and its been heaven. It is getting so painful to see him go, and it's always traumatic each time. I used to think people who tried to keep long distance love going were dumb to waste their time, and masochistic. LOL let me enter the club, because now I understand.
We are talking about deep, important things now: marriage, children, future. Our life views are amusingly different on so many things. He has a Protestant work ethic, whereas I will work like a Protestant only if the work has meaning. I tend to let stress either bounce off like water or just pile up until I have a huge anxiety attack, but Daniel hits it head on like a challenge.

The biggest thing is that he worries that I will fall out of love with him. I was crying on the way home from breakfast Sunday because: 1) He was leaving sooner than I had anticipated, since our friend who he was taking home needed to leave, and 2) My antidepressants aren't working that well and I've been crying at toilet paper commercials. It was the first time I'd let myself cry in front of him, the biggest sign of love and trust there is. If I cry in front of you, then I trust you enough not to hurt me, because when I cry, I am an open wound. He asked me if this was a "breaking up" kind of cry, which made me cry harder because it was the farthest thing from my mind. I wanted to keep him by my side, as long as I could, and short of cutting his tires or removing his distributor cap, I was helpless to make him stay.

Daniel,
I can honestly say that I have had two great loves in my life: John, and now you. I told you last night that I don't fall out of love, I just reshuffle people on my love hierarchy. You fill my heart, and will be there as long as I am breathing. I was scared to have children with John, and I never told him that. I am not scared to have them with you. In fact, this is the very first time in my life I have wanted to have a child this badly, and ONLY with you. You have such a caring, loving soul. Your are as wise as you are passionate ( and for a Scorpio passion is paramount so.....). To say you complete me is pretty damn cliche, but you bring out the very best in me, how's that ( saying you had me at hello is also true but pretty bad too...I hated Jerry McGuire). I just know life is too short, and I want things sooner rather than later, so I need patience. But know that I love you, you are my all.

POETRY ALERT!!!!!!!

I've said before that every craftsman searches for what's not there to practice his craft.
A builder looks for the rotten hole where the roof caved in. A water-carrier picks the empty pot. A carpenter stops at the house with no door.

Workers rush toward some hint of emptiness, which they then start to fill. Their hope, though, is for emptiness, so don't think you must avoid it. It contains what you need! Dear soul, if you were not friends with the vast nothing inside, why would you always be casting you net into it, and waiting so patiently?

This invisible ocean has given you such abundance, but still you call it "death", that which provides you sustenance and work.

God has allowed some magical reversal to occur, so that you see the scorpion pit as an object of desire, and all the beautiful expanse around it, as dangerous and swarming with snakes.
This is how strange your fear of death and emptiness is, and how perverse the attachment to what you want.

Now that you've heard me on your misapprehensions, dear friend, listen to Attar's story on the same subject.

He strung the pearls of this about King Mahmud, how among the spoils of his Indian campaign there was a Hindu boy, whom he adopted as a son. He educated and provided royally for the boy and later made him vice-regent, seated on a gold throne beside himself.

One day he found the young man weeping.. "Why are you crying? You're the companion of an emperor! The entire nation is ranged out before you like stars that you can command!"

The young man replied, "I am remembering my mother and father, and how they scared me as a child with threats of you! 'Uh-oh, he's headed for King Mahmud's court! Nothing could be more hellish!' Where are they now when they should see me sitting here?"

This incident is about your fear of changing. You are the Hindu boy. Mahmud, which means Praise to the End, is the spirit's poverty or emptiness.

The mother and father are your attachment to beliefs and blood ties and desires and comforting habits. Don't listen to them! They seem to protect but they imprison.

They are your worst enemies. They make you afraid of living in emptiness.
Some day you'll weep tears of delight in that court, remembering your mistaken parents!
Know that your body nurtures the spirit, helps it grow, and gives it wrong advise.
The body becomes, eventually, like a vest of chain mail in peaceful years, too hot in summer and too cold in winter.

But the body's desires, in another way, are like an unpredictable associate, whom you must be patient with. And that companion is helpful, because patience expands your capacity to love and feel peace. The patience of a rose close to a thorn keeps it fragrant. It's patience that gives milk to the male camel still nursing in its third year, and patience is what the prophets show to us.

The beauty of careful sewing on a shirt is the patience it contains.
Friendship and loyalty have patience as the strength of their connection.
Feeling lonely and ignoble indicates that you haven't been patient.

Be with those who mix with God as honey blends with milk, and say,
"Anything that comes and goes, rises and sets, is not what I love." else you'll be like a caravan fire left to flare itself out alone beside the road.

Rumi VI (1369-1420) from 'Rumi : One-Handed Basket Weaving

Hawthorne

Once again, Kelly (www.kellyrae.blogspot.com) posts a snippet about Portland, OR and it sends me into a tailspin of memories. The Hawthorne District of Portland is a hippy liberal paradise. I absolutely adored every sublime inch. The biggest memory her blog brought back was about a Goddess Temple there. I can't remember the name, and when I looked I couldn't find it online. It has been 6 years, and is probably gone by now.
But it was there when I needed it, after my aunt Tish died of lung cancer in October, 1999. It was a huge Victorian house with a wild and perfect garden on all four sides. They never questioned my motives, just gave me a tour of the house and told me I was welcome to all they had. Each public room was dedicated to a particular deity or usage.

I wanted only to commune with Kali Ma (http://www.themystica.org/mythical-folk/articles/kali_ma.html). My own patroness was, and still is, Hecate. Kali Ma is somewhat like Her, except where Hecate is old and wise, Kali Ma is furious. As I was furious and helpless over Tish's death, a death that came at such a young age (she was a few months shy of 40). I was 28, and hers was the closest death to me I had ever known at the time. I wanted to feel blood and taste blood. The Kali Room was blood, saguine red, with soft red pillows all laying on red carpet. I spent quite a few hours in that room, crying and asking why. I gradually came to the conclusion that it was not my place to ask why, just to deal with what happens. It was a cleansing, and very useful lesson that would serve me well later in life.

I often wish that a place like that was here in Lexington. But, I don't think magick like that really could exist anywhere else. Portland, especially Hawthorne district, has a spell all its own. McMennamins has the best beer, and the shops added a presence. Lexington is too Southern, a different vibe. I so miss it sometimes....thanks again Kelly.

Heros come from all places

I have been following Cindy Sheehan's story for the past week now. It's only been today that I have been compelled to write. To begin here is something about her:
Cindy Sheehan was a normal housewife from a normal family, with 4 healthy children from California. She bothered no one and minded her business. Many would have called her the picture of normal American middle class values. Then her son Casey, a father of twins himself, was killed in the line of duty in Iraq. Devastated by her loss, she eventually met with our "president" (my quotation marks). To Cindy, his reaction to her seemed remote and unfeeling. A few weeks later, Dubya called her son's death "noble". That's what set this otherwise placid woman off.
She wants to meet Bush again and ask him some fairly simple questions: what made her son's death noble? If it was so noble, why isn't Bush's two hellion daughters in the armed forces, in Iraq? And finally, she wants to ask him to quit using her son as an example to boost morale about an immoral war.
This is not an unreasonable request. She is camped out a few miles from his ranch in Crawford Texas until she gets her answers. What got my nickers in a bunch about the whole thing was one woman's criticism about Cindy Sheehan. This woman, the mother of a serviceman, claimed Cindy was disrespecting the troops, that Cindy doesn't support them.....
This woman is trying to make sense of her son's death, and have the troops that are on duty returned home safe and sound. What is disrespectful about wanting our troops out of harm's way? What is disrespectful on wanting accountability for the death of her son that was caused by a war based on a LIE!!! Bush started this war on a lie, there were never WMS in Iraq. What do you call a president that uses thousands of American troops in a personal vendetta, not giving a flying fuck if they live or die? What do you call a man who personal agenda is the ends that justifies the means, at the cost of American lives? I have many names for such a man: Satan, Hitler, despot, lunatic, sociopath. My favorite is Scumfuck....
I consider this woman my hero....and here are ways we can help her. The following comes from the website http://www.meetwithcindy.org/

What you can do to help:
1. Come to Crawford
We need your support. There is power in numbers. Join us in Crawford now!
Crawford Peace House
Mapquest
Directions to get there
2. Help Others Get to Crawford
If you can't come to Crawford, please contribute to a fund to cover the costs of assisting others with their travel and their stay in Crawford.
DONATE to the Crawford Peace House.
3. Contact the Media
Ask the media to cover Cindy Sheehan's request to meet with the President, and to cover the contrast between pre-war claims for why war was needed and current knowledge of what the facts were known to be. Here's how.
4. Call the White House
Call the White House and ask the staff there to contact the President on his ranch and ask him to meet with Cindy Sheehan.
Comments: 202-456-1111Switchboard: 202-456-1414FAX: 202-456-2461E-Mail comments@whitehouse.gov
Contact Congress
Sen. George Allen (Republican, Va.) has publicly encouraged the President to meet with Cindy Sheehan. Has your Congress Member and each of your Senators done so?Ask them to!

Hmmmmmmmm

Ok, here is an update to the status quo that is my life. Have heart, I shall return to posting pithy, intelligent entries in the near future.

* The money situation still sucks, but I did get another job at the university with my own office and everything, just not a raise.

*Ebay business is finally running, albeit slow.

* Escort business is pitiful, I wonder how long it will take for things to pick up.

* Daniel and I are better than ever, and very much in love....and looking at rings.

Some creative things going on, but not nearly enough.