I applaud you for your relief effort.

Val, sorry I did not list my dolllar amounts so you can add to the Babalú total: $40 to Red Cross, $30 to Catholic Charities, $30 to Salvation Army.

Please add my contributions:
$60 to Catholic Charities, $25 to Feed the Children

Thank you George and eb!

Val there are rumours starting to arise about a possible disappearence of Humberto Fantova. I don't know if this is true about Fantova missing. Can you maybe clear this up. OH, and sorry for the long periods of silence.

Val, Just made another contribution - this time to the Salvation Army in the amount of $50.00

By the way the finger pointing on the left is in full force - so damn disgusting.

Felix,

I heard from Humberto's Goddaughter. He and his wife and family are OK. Their home in Covington is gone and they still dont know about the fate of Humberto's father's home in Metairie.

Kudos on your efforts to bring relief to the victims of Hurricane Katrina. There is another way bloggers and other thoughtful people can help:

I have opened forums at www.DisasterReliefIdeas.org for the discussion of ideas to aid disaster relief in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. I am not soliciting donations, only ideas. Experts in aspects of disaster relief (housing, healthcare, rebuilding, etc.) are also able to rate these ideas, giving us a means of identifying the most promising ones, which will be shared with disaster relief professionals and persons in authority. Please help our society by contributing your ideas, especially if you are unable to contribute financially to relief efforts.

Another $50 to Catholic Charities, it's Friday folks!

I have donated $100 to the American Red Cross. It' s not the kind of thing I like to advertise but since I did it directly through their web site, you'd have no way of knowing.

$30 to Catholic Charities, $50 to Red Cross.
Please dontate the shirts to the victims.

Val,

I plan on chipping in an extra $50 to the Red Cross drive at my work, sometime this weekend or early next week when everybody's back to work.

I just got back from picking up $80 worth of clothes for a clothing drive for some 13 (!) folks who made it here to Austin to stay with a cousin who lives here - does that count (they showed up with one day's clothing and some of the folks are bigger than off-the-rack sizes, so finding used stuff to donate is sort of problematic).

I'll look at Catholic Charities after I do some auditing of my own recent expenses - don't want to mismanage some money to the point of ending up in need of assistance myself, you know how it is.

BTW, when we hit $5000 are we going to see Valentina?

Tell you what, Murel, if it hits $5000 by noon tomorrow, I will dress in drag and post the pictures.

Ill update the post now.

val
for those who donated the shirts, they say that they will accept clothes at the dolphin games, at one of the gates, but i didnt hear all the info, so keep an ear out for that.. if i hear it i will post it

Your legs are in danger, VP, get some kind of easy-on-the skin shaving cream because there's nothing so unlovely as razor rash on a Cuban leg.

I just sent a $300 to Red Cross. What kind of confirmation do you need before razor touches leg?

hehehe. Ok Murel. Ill need some kind of official confirmation from the Red Cross iffin I have to take razor to legs.

Guys what do you think about fidel offering doctors for the relief. I think it is great, at least it is better than the 50,000 dollars offered by bush when cuba was hit by the hurricane.

New Orleans is the oldest "Cuban" city in the U.S. after St.Augustine. Under Spanish rule, it was governed as a department of Cuba's colonial administration. In other words, no decision could be taken in New Orleans, no laws enacted and no appointments made without obtaining prior approval from Havana. This was the closest that Cubans ever came to having a "colony" of their own. Naturally, such a symbiotic judicial identity also manifested itself in a hundred other ways, including the constant exchange of emigrants.

When Louisiana passed from Spanish control to French control and thence to U.S. control in 1803, thousands of refugees found their way to both Cuba and Haiti (then under French control). When blacks rose in Haiti, the Louisiana emigrants who had settled there also fled to Cuba. So, in the end, Cuba received practically all of the Spanish and French population of New Orleans. Cubans, then, are the only real descendents of the founders of New Orleans.

In the mid-19th century, New Orleans became the center of Cuban separatist activity in the U.S. Narciso Lopez's expeditions to liberate Cuba were financed and launched from New Orleans. The first large Cuban emigre colony was based in New Orleans. No Cuban can contemplate the destruction of that once beautiful city without feeling that he has lost something of his own history and past: if not a mother, then a beloved aunt.

I have donated $500.00 to the New Orleans Historic District Landmarks Commission care of the Louisiana Governor's Office (since I presume the Commission's own office, on Julia Street, is also flooded amnd abandoned).

I do not know if this counts as a charity with you; but I feel that New Orleans' cultural patrimony also needs to saved (especially when it is now being debated whether the whole city should be razed and abandoned). Since we cannot save Cuba's historic patrimony, let us at least help where we can.

My grandmother was born there and named my mother after the city, M.A.T. I imagine the connections people have for New Orleans run both deep and wide. If a tragedy hadn't left my grandmother in an orphanage, we might never have existed as a Texan family. We might have been there instead of here. That's really how close any one of us is to such a tragedy - maybe no more than one "if" away.

val-

how much for the eyebrows??

tony

Murel, I'm thinking shaving is too easy. Val, how much more to make it a waxing?

Kathleen, waxing would probably be kinder to the missus. It must be pretty harsh when that stuff starts growing back in - I imagine last time Val was able to pick up a few bucks as an afilador just by sharpening knives on his calves.

He, He, I was just kidding! Also, I think he should leave the eye brows alone, that would be too scary.

Yeah, if he did the eyebrows he'd have to go whole hog and bleach his hair, wear black lipstick and sing depressing songs about self-hatred for some morbidly-self-obsessed post-post-modern post-punk post-goth post-emo post-post-post band. And where's the joy in that?

How long to Halloween?

As of 3:00 pm, Tuesday. There was an elderly Cuban man, brought to Houston from New Orleans. I am also elderly and don't speak Spanish. The best that I could make out, he speaks very little English. He was in Reliant Arena, alone, afraid and had no idea what to do or where to go. He said he had worked in Jesuit Schools all his life. If there is anyone out there that could locate a Catholic charity or America-Cuban group, he needs help. It is so hard to track folks in these places, so if someone wants to help him I will try to get you folks together.
Sandra
bubbette70us@yahoo.com

Hopefully he has been taken care of, but as far as I could see, it will take a long time.

Solo buscaba un sitio para expresar mi solidaridad con los afectados por el huracan Katrina, y mi deseo de que pronto comienze nuevos tiempos para las gentes de Nueva Orleans.