What I’m doing
Dawn suggested that we talk about what we’re doing to help Katrina’s victims, because doing something is the best antidote to despair that we’ve got.
I gave some money to the Red Cross. I deliberately requested that it go to the general disaster relief fund, not just to Katrina’s victims, because you never know what’s going to hit next week. I want them to have the flexibility to use the money where it’s needed most.
I gathered up a big bag of summer clothes to donate — a bunch of stuff that won’t fit N by next summer, the shoes that he wore for about 3 weeks before outgrowing, some of my rejects from the great shorts hunt. When I went to Target for dishwashing soap and milk, I also picked up a stack of underwear. Because lots of people are donating used clothes, but who wants to wear used undies? I’ll bring it all in to work, where one of my coworkers said she’d bring it to a friend whose company is sending a shipment to Texas.
(I know, I know. All the experts say that money is the most useful thing to send. But I’m hearing reports out of Houston and Baton Rouge that the shelves in the stores are bare. And I think it’s a mistake to discount the human connection that grows when you make an in-kind donation and imagine the people who will be wearing those specific clothes or eating that food. It sounds like the people coordinating services for the evacuees here in DC have all the donations they can handle.)
I volunteered at work to come in over the weekend to help answer the hotline for medical professionals who want to volunteer, but wasn’t called in. I suspect they had many more volunteers than they could use. (Grim note: the list of professionals they use has been expanded as of today to include coroners, medical examiners, morticians…)
I gave blood a few weeks ago, so can’t give again right now. But I’ll give when I can. The Red Cross comes to our office building on a regular cycle, which makes it easy.
On re-reading, this doesn’t feel like very much, not in the scale of the disaster. But the idea is that it’s a big country, and a bigger world, and if we all do the little that we feel able to do, it will add up to a lot.
September 7th, 2005 at 12:35 am
I gave some money, which my employer matched (yay, heartless DC law firm, yay!), and put my name up on the “will take in refugees” list, tho the latter is pretty much just a gesture this far from the Gulf.