How to Help Hurricane Sandy Victims
www.redcross.org/charitable-donations or text Red Cross to 90999
The DailyNews
1 I copped this from the actual New York Daily News:
New York
GETTY IMAGES
Christina Aguilera, Jon Bon Jovi and Bruce Springsteen will perform at a live benefit concert to aid victims of Hurricane Sandy on Friday.
Forty years ago, Bruce Springsteen serenaded a loving girl named Sandy in “Fourth of July, Asbury Park.” Now he’s joining forces with other artists to raise Christina Aguilera, Jon Bon Jovi, Billy Joel and Sting will Jimmy Fallon and Brain Williams will emcee the event.
FOLLOW OUR LIVE COVERAGE OF SANDY’S AFTERMATH
The show, titled “Hurricane Sandy: Coming Together,” will be shown across the entire NBC Universal Network, viewable on NBC, Bravo, CNBC, E!, G4, MSNBC, Style, Syfy and USA.
Officials suggested that other networks may join the telecast broadcast.
Money raised will be donated to the American Red Cross to provide shelter, food, emotional support, and other assistance to the millions affected by the disaster.
The personal connection among stars like Springsteen, Bon Jovi, Sting and Joel to the storm-ravaged areas couldn’t be more
obvious. Both the Boss and Bon Jovi hail from New Jersey, which has endured some of the greatest hardships in the catastrophe.
PHOTOS: SANDY’S DEVASTATING TOLL
And Springsteen has always chronicled disaster, from decline (“Atlantic City”) to terror (the post-9/11 song, “My City of Ruins”).
Joel grew up on Long Island, also hard hit by the storm, which is something of a coda to his song, “The Downeaster Alexa” about the hard life on Long Island’s waterfront.
To donate, visit www.redcross.org or call 800-RED-CROSS.
Donations of $10 will also be added to your cellphone bill by texting the word REDCROSS to 90999.
For information, visit redcross.org or http://blog.redcross.org.
jfarber@nydailynews.com
With Lary McShane.
Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/star-studded-benefit-concert-planned-hurricane-victims-article-
2 I’m riveted to the television and thinking of our friends on the East Coast. It is horrible, and quite real.
3 I’m worry about scam artists. There are phony charities, and people who will take advantage of the people going through a crisis of this magnitude.
4 I tend to go Red Cross, because they are the most organized, at least from my perspective.
5 I love that David Letterman is doing his shows without an audience. Class act.
6 So everyone out there, if you are somehow listening, this Old Brown Shoe is asking all his students and everyone he can reach to donate, and to pray.
7 I can’t begin to imagine. I just can’t begin to imagine.
8 Moving on, Part the First: I did the ghost stories yesterday in the Theatre.
9 That gets harder and harder each year, because the story continues, and has seemingly no end.
10 I have added my experiences at Evergreen to the story. For example, my very first day working at Evergreen, a car pulled in front of me at the corner of Ruby and Quimby.
11 It wasn’t an Audi, which really would have been interesting for those of you who know the entire story of Heidi (I had the word “Yadda” in a play I wrote about the Titanic, spell-checked it, and Audi was the first word that came up, followed by Heidi, the purported ghost who haunted the Theatre at my old school.), but the license plate said this: High T 2.
12 I smiled.
13 Sometimes I have to spell things out for people, and a LOT of people don’t quite get that one. Phonetically, High T 2 sounds like “Heidi 2.”
14 My first year doing the Chronz at Evergreen I was Activities Director.
15 I stayed many late nights working at the school, often from 7 a.m. to 11 at night when the alarms were set to go off.
16 One night I was again working late at the school putting together a Poe unit. It was right around Halloween.
17 I heard a flutter, then looked up to see that a black bird had landed on the small television in my office. It stared at me, and stayed for almost fifteen minutes.
18 I’m sorry.
19 That was just strange.
20 These oddities and coincidences continue to this very minute.
21 For example, you might have noticed that I had been posting the same picture of Laurel and Hardy shushing us throughout the playoffs. Like many other Giants’ fans, I didn’t want to change too many things.
22 The other day when I went into the Theatre, the door I usually go through was locked.
23 I walked across the lobby to open the other door, and there was the same picture on a “Please turn off all cell phones” poster left over from when David did Midsummer. Here is a photo of his sign once again:
24 David, our drama director, has no idea that I write this. He chose that picture out of millions of others. The odds of him choosing the same picture that I have put up here for several weeks are not astronomical, but certainly huge. Just sayin’.
25 Granted, he is a Theatre person, and probably Googled something like “Celebrity shushes,” but it still spun me around, given I was immersed in coincidences, especially on the day the students told their ghost stories.
26 I also have written about garbage trucks, because if you REALLY followed the Giants closely, Duane Kuiper, the Giants’ radio guy, told Murph and Mac one morning when the Giants faced elimination that he couldn’t hear them because a garbage truck was making noise.
27 I wrote about this in several DN’s. That was the beginning of the Giants’ torching everyone to win the World Series. It became an inside joke that seeing a garbage truck was now a part of the magic.
28 On the day of the parade, I took off to Round Table to watch the celebration during my long lunch.
29 When I got there, I saw this:
30 Listen. Here is a pint-sized summary of the Heidi story:
31 Students during my second year teaching claimed they found a ghost named Heidi by using a Ouija board. I ridiculed them. Shortly thereafter amazing coincidences began occurring, year round, but especially when I would begin my ghost unit, usually in mid-October. It always culminates in going into a theater and allowing the students to tell ghost stories to each other as part of the California Department of Education English Language Arts’ Standards of Listening and Speaking. It definitely fits right in. The students also told me that my numerological numbers were one and nine. Since then, ones and nines have turned up in very many coincidental circumstances.
32 They tell stories from their own countries, or stories that are local, or stories that happened to them, or to their family or friends.
33 I do a simple light design, but I keep the Theatre pretty dark. The temperature often goes down during these stories. I could control the temperature in neither of the two theatres.
34 I used to do the stories in one day, but because my personal story continues to this day, it now takes two days to get it all done, and it is moving towards three.
35 One year I wrote a very short play called Titanic. It pre-dated James Cameron by a few years. Every time we rehearsed it, the Theatre temperature would drop ridiculously, to the point of causing shivering. The seats in the back would begin clicking, first slowly, then faster and faster. I put together Jefferson Starship‘s experimental oddity called Titanic, and edited it with ocean sounds. The students came out with white masks and candles and said brief lines of poetry, and many lines that were direct quotes from the survivors. The sounds, the seats clicking, students voicing lines of people who had seen the Titanic sink, along with the intense cold made it extremely strange, almost as though the people who died in that tragedy were watching.
26 Every time that mini-play ended, everything stopped; it got warm again, and the seats would stop clicking.
27 One year, a student who had heard this story went to a psychic convention and talked to Sylvia Browne.
28 She told him that we had “activity.” I realize Sylvia Browne is a little controversial, but I must admit I smiled. If I have a ghost, she’s a really nice one, and pretty supportive. She clicks, for example, if I am on stage alone in the Theatre and playing guitar and singing really well. When I do, she clicks different seats. If I am sucking, she doesn’t click. I always give a bit of a “Thank you” during those fun moments.
29 One year I called Sylvia Browne’s Nirvana Institute, which I believe at the time was in Los Altos. I called in the middle of one of my drama classes. My students coaxed me to do it, so I got up, went into the office, and called.
30 Sylvia wasn’t in, but I talked to an assistant, and explained the clickings, the cold, the lights that would fade on me when I would be talking about lights fading (this happened on a number of occasions), the Heidi things. She said we probably have “activity” and would I like for them to come in and get rid of it. I assume “activity” is a euphemism for “ghost.” But did I want to get rid of it? It?
31 I told her no, that Heidi is really friendly, and almost a spirit guide.
32 She said that might be the case, so I thanked her and asked her what her name was.
33 I took out a post-it.
34 She said, “My name is Audi.”
35 See number 11, above.
36 I did post these stories on a website that I no longer have, and have never really taken the time to write the entire story, but it is pretty fascinating.
37 It is filled with startling coincidences, and little moments.
38 I like Heidi. I always have to say “If there is indeed a Heidi, then I like her.”
39 I never chose this. I told those students years ago that they were nuts. I was even a bit rude about it, completely didn’t believe it was anything but their imaginations coupled perhaps with the wish we all have of proof that there is life after life.
40 This year the story ran side-by-side with the miracle of the Giants’ road to the Series.
41 I was born in San Francisco, and raised in South San Francisco for the first ten years of my life.
42 These people believe, and believe strongly in good vibes, particles, and believing that anything can happen.
43 You talk to any Giants’ fan and they will tell you that they repeated rituals, wore the same clothes, put on the same shoes and socks, and threw all their thoughts and actions into getting that trophy.
44 It rolled beautifully with my Heidi stories, and a lot of stuff crossed over.
45 Yesterday morning I was just finishing up my story, when I asked the students what time it was.
46 The girl sitting next to me had her cell out, and she said, “Nine.” Then she showed me that it was nine. Then she smiled and said, “9:01.” The class laughed. I continued my story, and stopped after a brief stint, and asked, “Is it 9:09?”
47 The girl said, “Yes.” She showed me her cell.
48 The text to help Hurricane Sandy is Red Cross to 90999.
49 I’m asking everybody to send everything you can to the Red Cross.
50 These coincidences usually subside after Halloween, but they do get active in times of stress or in times of elation and powerful emotions.
51 Right now, I need a rest from all of it. I often ignore the coincidences, even though they happen frequently.
52 It is into the 4 a.m. and I need to get a little sleep before we enjoy our last day of this year’s Heidi Chronz.
53 I hope this gives a little insight into this amazing unit that I have done each year since I was a student teacher.
54 I hope you all have a safe and restful weekend.
55 Peace.
~H~
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