Long Island Relief Project

Some of you have been following my adventures over the past week, and many of you have asked how you can help. For those of you who don't know my mission, here's the story: Last week, Hurricane Joaquin took up residence just off the coast of my beautiful Long Island, home to Dean's Blue Hole and soooo many of our wonderful friends who, after weathering this experience together, are now family. For 36 hours, Joaquin rained down destruction and devastation, and thousands of people lost absolutely everything. When we finally began to receive the first few words from our loved ones on the island via those blessed, desperate, broken one-minute satellite phone conversations, they were saying "We're alive, but we need food, water, medical supplies, and we need to get the babies off the island. So I got to work immediately to arrange relief supplies and evac. Our beautiful friend Sarah Allard offered her plane and found us a pilot willing to fly this madcap mission. I hit up WalMart in Lake Mary, Florida, and, with the help of a few of their employees, including the amazing Chris pictured here, I collected over $1200 worth of nutritious, calorie dense food, simple medical supplies, basic personal care items and paper goods, diapers and baby food. I then made a mad dash for Fort Lauderdale to meet up with Dost Boray, a.k.a. Dost the Calm and Cheerful, who provided 72 gallons of water (that's 600 pounds) to add to my 400 pounds of dry goods and food to round out the 1000 pounds of available cargo weight on Sarah's plane. He also provided the perfect balance for my mania and frustration and was an invaluable collaborator in this massive effort. We have met with setback after setback, from impassable roads and misinformation to impossible communication lags and closed airports, but we have finally overcome all the odds. 1000 pounds of relief supplies were dropped off yesterday at Stella Maris airport on Long Island, our good friend and her precious babies are safely in Nassau, and Shiv and Appa will finally be safe and back with me here in Florida. Thanks to Sarah and Chris Allard, pilot Kevin Klost, and all of the tireless efforts of the brave souls on Long Island, we have succeeded. Sarah and Chris have donated the plane and have offered to pay the pilot for his heroic efforts and patience through all of the zillion plan changes and confusion. The remainder of the cost, minus what Shiv and I are contributing, is what's here: the goods, the water, the gas for the plane, the costs for flying the plane, and all of the associated incidental costs add up to well over $6000.00 at last count. If you'd like to support our efforts here, please do. And if you can make a small contribution here and still afford to do more via other avenues or would like to lend your hands and skills rather than money, please contact me so that I can put you in touch with some of the larger relief efforts going on in Fort Lauderdale, Nassau or directly on Long Island. Our beautiful island will recover over the coming months, and the incredible people there are hearty and resilient. But they need our help. They need all the help they can get, and they will continue to need help for a long time to come. This is just the first step, but it's a big one and every penny is a blessing. Thanks for reading, and thanks for giving. Love and Light to you all!