Big Hurricane News
You MUST Watch This Video (footage of my family's house!)
Thanks to the incredible support of some very kind people we added our 200th donor and we blew past our goal of $20,000 by Christmas! This is just the best news. I’m so touched and I’m so proud of everyone for wanting to help people who really, really need it.
The Hurricane is most definitely out of the headlines isn’t it? But I can speak from experience here, having lived through Harvey (Houston, 2017): it is absolutely not out of the lives of the people affected. This was a CATACLYSM. It’s not every day I get to use a fancy powerful Greek word like that. But, this was indeed a cataclysm. Cataclysmic. The word pertains to a deluge, THE deluge in fact, aka Noah’s flood. “Cata” is Greek for “down” or “all over” and klydzdein is “to wash”: to flood over all the way down...you get the picture. Biblical. Civilization-ending. Another one or two of those and a country won’t recover. There will need to be a reordering of how human beings do things on a planetary scale.
My cousin Owen tells me that the moving wall of mud went right up to the curtain rods!
So this event is a huge wake-up call for everyone. Let’s treat it accordingly. Make it a New Year’s Resolution to talk about it. Write about it . Put it in context. Describe how it happened: global warming created water and wind that couldn’t cut into or disrupt the vortex, it was able just to build and build and build for days. There will be more. All will be affected. Category 6 will become a thing.
Maybe promise yourself you’ll say or write ONE thing about it per week to more than one person.
This is how we prep everyone to understand and cope with and adjust to, and change our world. A lot of good can come of this.
Please share the appeal! And if you like, please share this update in particular. As you can see, the holidays really made me reflect on things.
I’m attaching a video, released just a couple of days ago, that shows the extent of the damage and why it was so bad: Montego Bay got the EYEWALL, the worst part of any hurricane. PLEASE watch up to and beyond 20 minutes. You will SEE Mommy and Treena’s house in the center of the shot at 20:09!!! And SO much incredible footage from their neighborhood. It’s REALLY crucial to see this.
You’ll see the stream (Barnett River) where my cousin Owen has been washing his clothes.
You’ll see that the video was created to reassure people thinking of traveling to Montego Bay for its main economic driver: tourism. BUT, the person who made it lived in Montego Bay for eleven years and she REALLY knows her way around. It’s incredible for me to see footage that includes Mommy’s house. And MegaMart, the huge store fifteen minutes’ walk away.
In the parking lot, thousands had parked thinking they would be safe. But the windows blew out and knife-sized shards of glass flew everywhere at one hundred and fifty mph. It’s unblievable.
It’s very affecting for me to see all kinds of places I recognize and have visited, such as Pier 1. (Not the same as the American store!)
You may see in the video the work World Central Kitchen is doing in Montego Bay. But Mommy tells us that this organization is finding it difficult to reach everywhere, for example.
Treena and I have extracted Mommy! She’s safe here, telling tales and receiving calls from her colleagues and friends who survived the hurricane.
It’s moving to talk with them and it’s amazing to know they’re doing all right given what we’ve been raising to help in this fundraiser.
Yours, Timx