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Blogging here has slowed while I work to get my new blog, 2BHuman, up and running.

Blogging for Katrina Relief

As per Hugh Hewitt's suggestion, many, many bloggers are setting aside today in order to help raise money for disaster relief for the victims of Hurricane Katrina. Glenn Reynolds at InstaPundit is keeping a comprehensive list, as is Truth Laid Bear.

My personal recommendation is that you consider donating to the Southern Baptist Disaster Relief Fund.

If you would like to make a financial contribution to the Southern Baptist Disaster Relief Fund, make checks payable to the North American Mission Board (NAMB) and mail to:
NAMB
P.O. Box 116543
Atlanta, GA 30368-6543

To make a donation online, Click here.

I'll also point out that CBHD is collecting eyeglasses and contact lenses for the hurricane victims. For more information see "How Can I Help?": Meeting Immediate Needs After Hurricane Katrina.

...we want to meet the tangible immediate needs of people who are suffering in the wake of this disaster. CBHD shares this desire and is firmly committed to the idea that issues of life and health must be dealt with in a way that recognizes the innate dignity of human beings. To that end, the Center is collecting used eyeglasses and new packages of disposable contact lenses to distribute to people impacted by the hurricane. No doubt many of our fellow citizens have lost their glasses and contact lens supplies and are in need of an interim solution. By providing them with temporary replacements, we help them regain control over one of the most basic functions of living.

Please ship your used eyeglasses or new disposable contact lenses in a padded envelope to:

The Center for Bioethics and Human Dignity
Attn: Katrina Relief
2065 Half Day Road
Bannockburn, IL 60015

HT: Paul at Wizbang

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hurricane katrina, flood aid

"How Can I Help?" Meeting Immediate Needs After Hurricane Katrinaby The Staff of CBHD

From www.cbhd.org

Most of the bioethical issues in America are a result of what the philosopher H. Tristram Engelhardt calls "an embarrassment of riches." Technological advances and individual prosperity in our country provide us with increased means for the sustainment of life and health, the primary concerns of bioethics. In the wake of hurricane Katrina, though, many people have been stripped of the very riches that we often take for granted. In such circumstances it is natural to ask, "How can I help?"

There are a number of avenues for real involvement in helping alleviate the effects of the hurricane. The website of the Federal Emergency Management Administration (FEMA) lists a number of disaster relief organizations that will accept and make valuable use of cash donations.

At the same time, we want to meet the tangible immediate needs of people who are suffering in the wake of this disaster. CBHD shares this desire and is firmly committed to the idea that issues of life and health must be dealt with in a way that recognizes the innate dignity of human beings. To that end, the Center is collecting used eyeglasses and new packages of disposable contact lenses to distribute to people impacted by the hurricane. No doubt many of our fellow citizens have lost their glasses and contact lens supplies and are in need of an interim solution. By providing them with temporary replacements, we help them regain control over one of the most basic functions of living.

Please ship your used eyeglasses or new disposable contact lenses in a padded envelope to:

The Center for Bioethics and Human Dignity
Attn: Katrina Relief
2065 Half Day Road
Bannockburn, IL 60015

Wow

A Moment of Grace New York Times

In an age whose crabbed sense of justice finds expression in dismal phrases like "zero tolerance" and "three strikes and you're out," the events in a Long Island courtroom on Monday came as an undeserved gift, something startling and luminous.

It happened when Ryan Cushing, a 19-year-old charged with assault for tossing a turkey through a car windshield last fall, approached the driver he nearly killed, Victoria Ruvolo. Ms. Ruvolo, 44, suffered severe injuries and needed many hours of surgery to rebuild her shattered facial bones.

When Mr. Cushing left the courtroom after pleading guilty, he came face to face with his victim for the first time. He said he was sorry and begged her to forgive him.
She did. She cradled his head as he sobbed. She stroked his face and patted his back. "It's O.K.; it's O.K.," she said. "I just want you to make your life the best it can be."

Mr. Cushing was one of six teenagers out for a night of joy riding and crime, which often happens when childish aggression and stupidity merge with the ability to drive and steal credit cards. The five others have pleaded guilty to various acts like forgery and larceny, but Mr. Cushing, who threw the turkey, could have faced 25 years in prison. At Ms. Ruvolo's insistence, prosecutors granted him a plea bargain instead: six months in jail and five years' probation.

The prosecutor, Thomas Spota, had been ready to seek harsh punishment for a crime he rightly denounced as heedless and brutal. "This is not an act of mere stupidity," Mr. Spota said. "They're not 9- or 7-year-old children."

That is true. But Ms. Ruvolo's resolute compassion, coming seemingly out of nowhere, disarmed Mr. Spota and led to a far more satisfying result.

Many have assumed that Ms. Ruvolo's motivation is religious. But while we can estimate the size of her heart, we can't peer into it. Her impulse may have been entirely secular.

Court testimony by crime victims is often pitched as a sort of retributive therapy, a way for angry, injured people to force criminals to confront their shame. But while some convicts grovel, others smirk. Many are impassive. It's hard to imagine that those hurt by crime reliably find healing in the courtroom. Given the opportunity for retribution, Ms. Ruvolo gave and got something better: the dissipation of anger and the restoration of hope, in a gesture as cleansing as the tears washing down her damaged face, and the face of the foolish, miserable boy whose life she single-handedly restored.

After My Own Heart

Texas Man Aims to Visit Every Starbucks

On his Web site (http://www.starbuckseverywhere.net) Winter, who was born Rafael Antonio Lozano, said that as of Aug. 8, he had visited 4,775 Starbucks in North America and 213 in other parts of world. Outside of North America, Winter has gone to Starbucks in Spain, England, France and Japan. There are 5,715 corporate-owned Starbucks in the world, according to the Seattle-based company's August newsletter on its Web site.

How I'd Like To Be Remembered

On June 3, 2005 at 10:45 p.m. in Memphis, Tenn., Dorothy Gibson Cully, 86, died peacefully, while in the loving care of her two favorite children, Barbara and David. All of her breath leaked out. The mother of four children, grandmother to 11, great-grandmother to nine, devoted wife for 56 years to the late Ralph Chester Cully and a true friend to many, Dot had been active as a volunteer in the Catholic Church and other community charities for much of the past 25 years.

She was born the second child of six in 1919 as Frances Dorothy Gibson, daughter to Kathleen Heard Gibson and Calvin Hooper Gibson, an inventor best known as the first person since the Middle Ages to calculate the arcane lead-to-gold formula. Unable to actually prove this complex theory scientifically, and frustrated by the cruel conspiracy of the so-called "scientific community" working against his efforts, he ultimately stuck his head in a heated gas oven with a golden delicious apple propped in his mouth. Miraculously, the apple was saved for the evening dessert. Calvin was not.

Native Marylanders and longtime Baltimore, Kent Island and Ocean City residents, Ralph and Dot later resided in Lakeland, Fla., and Virginia Beach, Va.. Several years after Ralph's death, Dot moved to Raleigh in 2001, where she lived with her son David.

At the time of her death, Dot was visiting her daughter Carol in Memphis. Carol and her husband, Ron, away from home attending a "very important conference" at a posh Florida resort, rushed home 10 days later after learning of the death. Dot's other children, dutifully at their mother's side helping with the normal last-minute arrangements -- hospice notification, funeral parlor notice, revising the will, etc. -- happily picked up the considerable slack of the absent former heiress.

Dot is warmly remembered as a generous, spiritually strong, resourceful, tolerant and smart woman, who was always ready to help and never judged others or their shortcomings. Dot always found time to knit sweaters, sew quilts and send written notes to the family children, all while working a full-time job, volunteering as Girl Scout leader and donating considerable time to local charities and the neighborhood Catholic Church.

Dot graduated from Eastern High School at 15, worked in Baltimore full time from 1934 to 1979, beginning as a factory worker at Cross & Blackwell and retiring after 30 years as property manager and controller for a Baltimore conglomerate, Housing Engineering Company, all while raising four children, two of who are fairly normal.

An Irishwoman proud of and curious about her heritage, she was a voracious reader of historical novels, particularly those about the glories and trials of Ireland. Dot also loved to travel, her favorite destination being Eire's auld sod, where she dreamed of the magic, mystery and legend of the Emerald Isle.

Dot Cully is survived by her sisters, Ginny Torrico in Virginia, Marian Lee in Florida and Eileen Adams in Baltimore; her brother, Russell Gibson of Fallston, Md.; her children, Barbara Frost of Ocean City, Md., Carol Meroney of Memphis, Tenn., David Cully of Raleigh, N.C. and Stephen Cully of Baltimore, Md. Contributions to the Wake County (N.C.) Hospice Services are welcomed. Opinions about the details of this obit are not, since Mom would have liked it this way.

HT:Chicago Tribune

Now Here's Some Good News

House, Senate OK Daylight-Saving Extension

House and Senate negotiators on an energy bill agreed to begin daylight-saving time three weeks earlier, on the second Sunday in March, and extend it by one week to the first Sunday in November