Good afternoon,

I know you come here for entertainment, which is exactly what I intend my site to be, but I felt moved to write a few thoughts about the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. The federal relief effort finally seems to be mobilizing, but obviously the residents of the ravaged areas are going to need a lot of help rebuilding their lives.

Members of our military are at war, an overwhelming number of people and animals in the Gulf Coast are hungry and homeless, and those of us safe and sound at home probably all feel a bit guilty about not being able to do more to ease any of the tensions and turmoil in the world. I know I do. Helplessness is not a good feeling, but I suppose one is never truly helpless. Today I mobilized in a small way and donated some money to two disaster relief funds.

My choices were Habitat for Humanity
www.habitat.org and the Humane Society of America
www.hsus.org

The amounts I donated are what I feel I can afford at the moment, and even together they are not a big sum. Still, every little bit helps. It's hard to know which organization to trust with donations, but I've always held both the Humane Society and Habitat for Humanity in high regard. Both organizations have done a lot of good and right now they both have special pages on their sites to facilitate donations to Hurricane Katrina relief funds.

I rarely encourage people to make charitable contributions because it is such a personal matter, but I thought I'd mention it today because I actually felt a bit better after sending some money to the relief effort.

On the humorous side..I was trying to remember the web address of the Humane Society off the top of my head and first punched in www.hsus.com instead. That site is for Hsu's Restaurant, a Szechuan Chinese restaurant in Cleveland or something :)


-- XXOO Tanya