“The 7.0-magnitude quake, Haiti’s worst in two centuries, struck south of Port-au-Prince, on Tuesday. Prime Minister Jean-Max Bellerive told US network CNN he believed more than 100,000 people had died. The Red Cross says up to three million people are affected.

The quake, which struck about 15km (10 miles) south-west of Port-au-Prince, was quickly followed by two aftershocks of 5.9 and 5.5 magnitude.The first tremor had hit at 1653 local time (2153 GMT) on Tuesday, the US Geological Survey said. Phone lines to the country failed shortly afterwards.”

Photo: ingro.comagenciadenoticias2.0

My design client, Mor Aframian, executive director of non-profit Morlove, which provides aid to indigent and abandoned children in Uganda, identified Haiti as her newest campaign months ago. In light of the recent events, Morlove is accelerating its plans and has begun fund raising and is accepting donations of basic and medical items. Specific needs can be found here.

Although Morlove operates locally in Raleigh, North Carolina, there are others with international reach responding to this crisis. Please donate money, blood, supplies or your time to the following organizations:

American Red Cross
American Jewish World Service
American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee
Artists for Peace and Justice
CARE
Salvation Army
UNICEF

To help requires more than good will. Leverage your local church, synagogue or mosque. We are uniquely positioned to make a difference.

Along the way, Waterlife shows us the Lakes as they might appear to a seagull, a fish, a water molecule and other amazing perspectives. It courses through the lives of extraordinary individuals: the Anishinaabe medicine woman who walked the 17,000 km perimeter of the lakes out of empathy, the last of the great Michigan fishing families, the village where toxins ensure that most new babies are girls.

Although initial screenings are confined to Canadian audiences for the near future, I highly recommend visiting the website which must be as compelling and immersive an experience as the film. It is a deep website that explores our relationship to the Great Lakes and to water itself in great detail.

Beautifully designed, the site interface is rich yet doesn’t get in the way of the story. It is complemented by an impressive score with musical compositions by the likes of Brian Eno, Hilmar Orn Hilmarsson and Philip Glass. Waterlife is a beautiful way to learn about what is happening to one of the great wonders of the natural world and what we can do to keep it that way.

There’s only so much that you can convey in a few humorous moments at work, so I thought it best to list a few independent sources as verification that Jews, like other global religious groups, come in all colors.

Try these links on for size, my friends:

Organizations and Resources

Be’chol Lashon (Hebrew, for In Every Tongue)

Kulanu (Hebrew, for All of Us)

Scattered Among the Nations

Beth Hatefutsoth The Museum of the Jewish People

Beta Israel of North America Ethiopian Jewry

Africa

Leah Stern’s Ethiopia Mission

Jews of Nigeria – film

Jewish Life in Nigeria

The House of Israel and Kush (French)

The Abuyudaya Jews of Uganda

Asia

Navras, the Jews of South Asia

Next Year in Mumbai

The Jews of Eastern India

The Jews of Kaifeng, China

Historical Sites

Jews in Africa, Part I A Four Part Series

Wikipedia – the Radanites

Wikipedia – Jews of Bilal el-Sudan

Wikipedia – History of the Jews in India

Personal Sites

The Chronicles of Ehav Ever

MochaJuden

Memoirs of a Jewminica

A Mixedjewgirl World

The Comic Torah

I can’t tell him these things now, at least not face to face. But here is how I’d like to tell it to everyone. Inspiration by Daniel Beaty.

As a test, I read an earlier post from this blog, Personal Energy and Change. I think you’ll find the recording clear but a little lackluster. Odd for an article about personal energy, but it was late and I was tired. Regardless, the application has good utility and for $0.99 at iTunes, good value.

Have a listen and let me know what you think.

I could register a complaint with the U.S. do not call registry but that’s been done and hasn’t stopped the calls. Fortunately, my published phone number is virtual through Google Voice (formerly Grand Central) which routes all my calls through a single number. Since it also allows me to block selected incoming numbers, killing these unwanted calls was simple.

Among its many features, the ones I currently use are voice transcription where I can read voicemails before listening, record incoming and outgoing conversations, send free SMS text messages and conference multiple incoming calls.

Do yourself a favor and explore Google Voice. It’s a free service (except for the low cost international calls), has great functionality and provides a way to minimize phone spam damage.