The Donate Button

I've put a donate button up on the blog.

So why should you send me money?

Good question.

At first, I put up a post about paying off the debt that I have been carrying for the Vieques witness here

but that is ancient history now.. and no one forced me to go into debt for it. There were lots of folks ready to perform at a concert for me in Asheville but my Quaker Meeting had not consensed on a pass through fund so I declined.

Now the subject of donations came on up the local list serv here in the DR after I published the stuff on Narcotrafficing.. about how one guy was going to put a tip jar to buy my guitar.. which was on my Amazon wish list that I had posted.

My Taylor, which was the best guitar that I had ever owned, was stolen from me in a confrontation against the crack dealers in Las Terrenas seven years ago. I had felt compelled to hurl a rock through the plate glass window of the Belgian realtor who had first started the cocaine trade into Las Terrenas. I spent New Year's Eve in the police station. The Belgians refused to press charges after they interviewed me extensively in French and found me sober-- and I just kept asking them "why would I do that?" .. They have left town now.

Then there was the $6000 that I spent over the last six months in feeding the Haitians here in the DR. Three thousand for the food and another three for the gas and the rental car.. the only rental car that we had for the organizing of the 5000 Haitians.

But how am I, who has lived off a family trust all my life, going to accept money from someone who has, for instance, punched a clock all their lives?

Well, ok. That is a big one. Will I accept money, no. Can you buy me a beer? Absolutely! But I am not a big beer drinker so can I just put it towards the guitar?

Now when I was imbedded with the Interpol guys there were lots of folks who PROMISED to buy me a beer. So you guys owe me.

And I am reasonably sure that the Embassy or someone with deep pockets and a black budget promised to pick up the tab for all that driving around that I did == showing you what I knew about Pedernales and Constanza. So I believe that $6000 is on you.

And since Quakers are meticulous about money.. some would say cheap .. some would say hung up ,. but we will not labor the point.. let me tell you what I would do should the absolute best outcome happen

if I receive donations of #27,000, I can retire my debt entirely

I now pay $486 on this debt, with no hope of reducing the principal since I have friends who do not have enough to eat.

Now if I had $486 a month, I would hire Manu Emmeleat, a Frenchman who lives in Las Terrenas, who is a local construction expert,here

This would only be part time for him but Manu would be able to ORGANIZE the Quiskeya Corps, get the guys their references and papers, talk to various builders, help us get things rolling on the ground. Since he is French and knows all of the builders in town and lots in Santiago and Santo Domingo.. has a completely LEGAL business in the DR.. he would be invaluable in both making contacts with Dominicans and helping us get aid from France.

I already have an apartment up there that we can use for an office. Ditto my big computer that I can take up there.

So...

can I use your money well?

I believe that I can.

Please Donate.

RE: Last post

HI gentle readers.... looking over my last post, I do not see a by line but I ASSURE you that I did not write that piece and it was supossed to be credited to the very fine journalist who did write it..


I am, as of last week, preparing for a three month teaching assignment in Haiti, on the southern border, in natural medicine and healing.


visitors welcome

find your way through the Baltimore Friends Meeting

Meet you there.

e

Christmas sounds

It is Christmas, even here in the tropics. I tried to send out e-cards but all the scenes were of snow and ice. Bethlehem has a climate much more like this one, no? But we have fake fir trees in the stores.....Just can't escape that Euro-centrism.

But the darkness, the solstice-- the orginal Christmas that was usurped - that we do not have. Except perhaps the celebration of the end of the rainy season, which took over 100 lives this year and most of next year's plantains.

I hope that it was really really raining very hard in Bali. And that the lights went out. And that the bridges were flooded.

However, we do have large woven straw Christmas llamas for sale on the streets.

All hail, the Christmas llama... I think it is really a camel. Just seems a bit small.

I was going to Haiti. Nervous and excited. But the Haitian American friend who was coming to talk to me about his jatropha ( a plant which grows in arid soil and yields a burnable fuel) project could not come. We have postponed the encounter.

I will fly to DC instead, dressed as some sort of refugee in layers of summer clothing-- to hold my great-great nephew on his first Christmas.

Next year, I will hear the "Messiah" performed in Port au Prince......... I hope.

Here in my apartment building, I am the only foreigner. But someone nearby is learning Beethoven's Ninth on the recorder.

I picked up mine and played back at them. We will meet soon, I think, over Ludwig.

Digital memory is amazing. Back at Friends Seminary, we were so small (350 students, k-12) that we had only one music teacher, and only one instrument - The recorder. As we got older and taller, we could advance to the tenor and alto and bass recorders, if we wished......

But even though the pictures of Christmas are all in white and snow, and Jesus looks more like a goyim than a Jew, there are many sounds of the Christ that reverberate only in drums.

Me, I am a vodousant in training.