2005 - 09-01-05

Just as a personal note, I didn't fly back from
Baltimore until Monday and Miami was, I would guess 85% back
to normal then.

Anyway, some of my well meaning, good hearted
friends in marketing are organizing various hurricane relief
efforts. I, myself, am not. At least, not yet.

Back when Hurricane Andrew demolished the southern
tip of Florida in August, 1992, the devastation was unbelievable.
Homestead and Florida City (hardest hit areas just south of
Miami) were completed ravaged by Andrew. Hurricane Andrew virtually
flattened that region. A couple of days after Andrew went through,
I hired a pilot in a single engine airplane to fly me over these
areas. I hung out of the airplane with a friend hanging onto
my legs so I wouldn't fall to earth, and I took hundreds of
photos with my trusty Leica M6 camera.

Those photos were used by the government to help
document the extent of the hurricane damage. They were also
shown on television while I was being interviewed describing
the damage. The most dramatic of the photos appeared in the
newspaper, "The Key West Citizen" and they eventually
hung for weeks in a Key West art gallery.

But the most important thing those photographs
helped me to do was... raise money for Hurricane Andrew
Relief.

What I did was, I held a hurricane relief seminar
in Key West, Florida at the Holiday Inn. I didn't charge one
single penny for the attendees to come. All I asked is that
each of them make a donation to the Red Cross to be used to
help the victims of Hurricane Andrew.

I also said no one could make a donation until
the end of the seminar. The reason I did that was I wanted to
put on the best seminar humanly possible... so that... people
would be encouraged to donate in a very generous manner.