Monday, March 14, 2011

Natural Destruction

Last night I sat watching the Dateline coverage of the disaster in Japan. It took my mind to this waterfall which, like large areas of the Japanese coast that were obliterated in the tsunami, no longer exists due to a natural disaster albeit of minuscule scale compared to the disaster in Japan. Several days after the landslide I went through the mountain pass where this waterfall had been before Hurricane Floyd. The photo below was taken on that hike.



Prior to the landslide there was stand of mature Yellow Birch in the pass and ferns growing beneath. No lives were lost in that landslide and it was only a minor inconvenience to hikers who had been camping on the other side but walking through, or rather over, the 30' deep debris I got a real sense of the immense power of nature and the fragility of humanity. 

I will be sending money to aid the Japanese recovery but I would like to do more. To that end I am offering up 10 signed prints to people who send me scans of evidence of donations of $50 or more to relief efforts within the next 30 days. It will be on the basis of a drawing from those that respond. I'd love to make it open ended and send one to everyone who donates but I can't afford that. At least I hope enough are encouraged to donate that it would bankrupt me if I did make such an offer and if you were assured of getting a print for the donation the IRS won't let you deduct it. The print area will be approximately 8½x6½ matted to 11x14 and it will be signed. You'll have to buy your own frame. I hope I will get dozens if not hundreds of replies. My Gmail name is jim.bullard. Put "Japan relief " in the subject line.

P.S. If you can't give $50 please do what you can. Here is a link to places that are taking donations via text message. (they add it to your cell phone bill). If the link doesn't work, copy and paste the following to the address line of your browser:

http://technolog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2011/03/11/6246445-japans-earthquake-how-to-help

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