Techological generosity

From the American Red Cross:

In addition, several hundred thousand people have chosen to make a mobile donation. Donors can text "Haiti" to 90999 on their cell phone to send a $10 donation to support Red Cross relief efforts in Haiti. The mobile giving effort raised more than $3 million by Thursday morning, and all money raised goes to support Red Cross relief efforts in Haiti.

An interview this afternoon mentioned this. They were really pleased by the ability to raise so much money in so little time by taking advantage of the marvels of modern technology. Telephones are nothing compared to this.


That said,

I strongly urge anyone who can to donate blood. Go find someone to do it for you, if you can't. The lines outside the Red Cross office in Lansing stretched around the block on the evening of September 11, 2001. I was there for 5 hours (well, first donating & then helping). This is a much, much, much greater disaster.

And, sure, donate money. Directions are above. This is assuredly the most pressing item. But, if the ARC is going to send blood & blood products to Haiti, they need to replace them here.

The president of Haiti is homeless; I can't imagine anyone ever saying that here. Here there's always a few more miles to go before getting out of a disaster zone. Haiti is about the size of New Jersey.

The sheer poverty of the country beggars the imagination. And that was before Tuesday. I'm left wondering how much money will be dedicated to relief efforts. I am then left wondering why it couldn't have been sent there some time over the past 20 years. No different than the bottom of New Orleans: sure, we can spend a billion dollars to do a half-assed repair job after a hurricane, but we sure couldn't possibly be bothered to have spent anything before Katrina, to have minimized the disaster.

It's so soul crushing to look at the sheer waste of human life resulting from humanity's unwillingness to engage in anything preventative.

The immediate disaster is going to be horrible, yes. But there's no water; and certainly no clean water. After the acute care, disease is going to set in. TB is rampant in the country already; so is AIDS. They can soon expect everything else water borne to set in - typhoid, malaria, dysentery, etc.

The bill in the long run is going to be in the trillions. Jee, if the GDCSMF bankers hadn't tanked our economy, maybe we could have spent a few billion dollars on our neighbors rather than even further padding the GDCSMF's self-righteous nest eggs.

&

Pat Robertson is evil.

[review] The Soloist

Went to see The Soloist a few days ago. Music & Drama: a pleasant combination. Downey & Foxx: another pleasant combination. Author & Ms.Gopher: friends always a pleasant combination. Altogether, a pleasant experience. The Author wrote - of course - a nice review of the movie here.

Up here in lovely (and as of today mosquito-free) Land of the North Star, the question of ethics and medical treatment are the topic d'jour. (Although perhaps the topic of ethics & Hollywood & Good Samaritan-ism ought to be, too.) Anyway - movies

How much right do We (a.k.a. Society) have to dictate someone else's well-being? If someone is not demanding anything of Us, should we be able to demand anything of them in return?

An L.A. Times writer inadvertently meets a mentally ill, yet extremely talented, homeless musician. I'm wondering how to describe this person. Does our description reveal our prejudices? Which is the noun used here? Musician, homeless, or schizophrenic? Does it matter? At one point in the film, we see 'sanity' merging with 'insanity' with sufficient stress and stellar acting from Downey.

I don't recall anymore what the specific script prompt was, but it included the Lord's Prayer. I sincerely wish I could watch that 2 minutes of it again. The musician & reporter were in Skid Row to give The Viewer a montage of the misery of living on the streets and being God Awfully Poor. The recitation of the prayer had gotten to "... give us this day our daily bread..." as the camera is panning down the alley past a soup kitchen line. "... for thine is the kingdom ..." looking down a seemingly endless homeless shelter. Driving home (no doubt quite intentionally) the point that these people are the God's Kingdom as much as the Rich sitting on their therapists' couches explaining their financially motivated neuroses.

Unlike my friend The Author, who is concurrently A Musician, I am an enthusiast rather than a skilled musician. I wouldn't have recognized the specific pieces of Beethoven's music (in fact, I wouldn't have even recognized it as Beethoven). Being stupendously ignorant of the specifics of music theory or classification (is he Baroque?Romantic?HeavyMetal?Other?), I'm not sure if the choices of music were really the best available from J.S.'s extensive repertoire. They are stylistically apt, at any rate.

I'm not sure if the central point of the movie is the issues of mental illness & coping with society's expectations thereto - or whether it is about the relationship between two different men - or perhaps nothing at all. Will the musician get treatment? (maybe yes, maybe no) Will the reporter get a story? (definitely, this is based upon a book) Will Society act on the burgeoning poverty in L.A. (who are you kidding?) Perhaps the one aspect the most appealing is the depiction of the musician's descent into mental illness. This one string of the story is the most interesting. At what point is it recognized as illness? How does this effect the family cohesion? This topic could perhaps get its own movie, solo.

The soloist is whom? The isolated homeless man? The divorced reporter? Or any one of us in society who are inevitably cut off from a whole lot of the rest of society?

Gopher's Rating:
Definitely see it on video

Creepy

Now, is he creepy or what?

Homeless in a Desert of Wealth

This is identical to the banner hanging across the front of the Dorothy Day Center. The Monument to Poverty across the street from the soon-to-be-consecrated Temple of Evil in St. Paul.

i.e., the central homeless shelter is directly across the street from the Xcel Energy Center.





Apparently it caused quite a little stir when the Powers That Be realized that their Only Secret Service Pre-Approval Security Zone includes the homeless shelter. And we all know what sort of rock-throwing suicide-bombing terrorists those homeless folks are.

And, yes, it was strongly suggested to shut down the shelter for the duration of the convention. A fact greeted by shocked silence, swiftly followed by a hue and cry. Did the idiots actually think the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of one of the most liberal metropolitan areas would go quietly into the night at such stupid suggestion as this?

Not only are they staying open, they are expanding services and bed space.