Recent Stories with tag Haiti

Okay, you donated $10 via text message. You called into the Hope for Haiti telethon and, thirty minutes later, gave a woman who wasn't Julia Roberts your debit card number. You're feeling pretty good about your efforts. As you should. So why not reward yourself by giving more—and enjoying some great tunes in the process? Pearl Jam's Eddie Vedder and Mike McCready, along with a host of local musicians, can help you with that.

For under a buck, you can score Vedder's beautiful rendition of The Boss' "My City of Ruins," performed last month for the latter's Kennedy Center Honors ceremony. (Proceeds benefit Artists for Peace and Justice Haiti Relief.) Springsteen's inspiring ode to Asbury Park, New Jersey ("Rise up!") has new, internationally apt meaning now. Vedder's take is faithful to the original while also a close sonic cousin to his Into the Wild work and the tear duct-punching "Just Breathe" from Pearl Jam's Backspacer. One dollar. One amazing song. One way to help your fellow human beings rise from tragedy.

Another way: buy tickets to next month's "Hootenanny for Haiti." The details:

Showbox and Seattle Theatre Group (STG) present “A Hootenanny For Haiti” at Showbox at the Market on Sunday, February 28th at 7:30pm.

Duff McKagan, Mike McCready, Kim Virant, Kristen Ward, Kim Warnick, Mark Pickerel, Star Anna, Chris Friel, Gary Westlake, Jeff Rouse, Justin Davis, Ty Bailie and friends perform together in an intimate setting to support the Haiti relief efforts of Partners in Health (www.pih.org).

“A Hootenanny For Haiti” is possible by the generous donations of the artists and venue with 100% of the ticket price going to Partners in Health.

That's right, this is a night with members of PJ; McKagan's Loaded; McCready's first band, Shadow; UFO tribute band Flight to Mars; the Fastbacks; etc. It's an eclectic and insanely talented mix of artists—and I wouldn't be surprised if "and friends" included the likes of Stone Gossard and Tim DiJulio. All for $15 donated bucks.

There are other local music-related outlets for Haiti support. They deserve your patronage, too. But will they rock you like these?

You've probably spent a lot of time the past week watching video and photos, reading news articles and tweets about the Haiti earthquake. You've felt sorry for the Haitians, aghast at the scenes of death and ruin, and agonized over the condition of the survivors. But you probably haven't imagined anything remotely similar happening in the Seattle area.

Back in June 2005, a half year after the earthquake and tsunami in Southeast Asia, and over four years after the Nisqually earthquake, the Earthquake Engineering Research Institute and the Washington Military Department brought out a "Scenario for a Magnitude 6.7 Earthquake on the Seattle Fault."

That is, an earthquake slightly lighter than what struck Haiti last week, and one that would come on the Seattle Fault, which runs through south Seattle, Mercer Island, Bellevue, and the Issaquah area. It wasn't pretty: the vision of the aftermath of a 14-mile surface rupture running roughly parallel to I-90 involved over 1,600 dead, another 24,000 wounded, $33 billion of damage, and months of transportation problems for Puget Sound.

The scenario said a 6.7 Seattle Fault quake will cause damage "far worse and more extensive than seen in any earthquake in the state's history."

"The viaduct will be heavily damaged or collapse," in a way very similar to how Oakland's Cypress Viaduct pancaked in the Loma Prieta quake, Boeing Field "will experience significant liquefaction" on its runways and close for several days, the Seattle ferry terminals "will shut down for at least a week due to damage from ground failures and failure of the seawall," and we'll see a lot of the brick buildings in Pioneer Square tumble, along with a lot of the concrete warehouses south of downtown....

(more)

A great international tragedy has unfolded this week. Of course I refer to the tribulations of Conan O'Brien, who may soon cruelly be forced to go from making an exorbitant amount of money to host a talk show on one national television network, to making an exorbitant amount of money to host a talk show on a different national television network. I have lost much sleep over this indignation. Oooh, Jay Leno, you make me SO MAD!

Image from a tee Rainn Wilson's auctioning off

Then there's this Haiti earthquake. Thousands suffer from lack of food, clean water, and medical treatment after the quake, hundreds more are buried under rubble. Many local organizations large and small are doing what they can to support the relief effort. Thought it might be worth showing who's doing what, bless them. This is not an exhaustive list, I certainly don't intend to exclude anyone, so if you know of any other events/contributions/whatever, please add them in the comments.

Of course, as an intelligent person, you will know that the best thing you can do, even better than reading this post, is to donate what you can right now. The Mobile Giving Foundation of Bellevue has created this list of organizations you can donate to from your phone. Okay, here's the promised list:

Microsoft: Has donated $1.25M in cash and in-kind support.

Amazon: Put a Haiti donations message and link on their home page.

Pearl Jam: Has created a suggested list of organizations to donate to.

Rainn Wilson: Is auctioning off memorabilia from The Office to support a favorite organization, Planting Peace.

Seattle Symphony: Will accept donations for Haiti relief at two upcoming community concerts.

Liberty on Capitol Hill: Buy their "Help Haiti" drink for $6, 100% of proceeds go to Haiti relief....

(more)