Hope for Haiti

We just watched the Hope for Haiti Now celebrity concert that we had taped.  I'm not going to get too much into the Haiti tragedy as I know all of you already know plenty about it and have done what each of you are able to do.  We gave money to Doctors without Borders and Oxfam.  We've given to them in the past and they both have had a consistent presence in Haiti.  I've always been partial to Oxfam because of its connection to Into the Wild.  Chris McCandless gave his life savings ($24K) to Oxfam prior to starting on his fateful journey.

As we were watching the concert, Alex immediately decided he wanted to give money too (of his own).  He's good at saving money and has his own bank account.  So, he scraped up about $20 that he had in his room and I went online and donated in his name to the charity associated with the concert, hopeforhaitinow.org, which passes on the donations to Red Cross, Oxfam, etc.  Alex has a goodness of heart and an activist nature at age 8.  I didn't really have such a worldview until I was in college.  I'm sure some of it has to do with the fact that Michelle and I are more involved politically than my parents were but I also think Alex just has it more in his nature because that's how he is.

The concert was really good.  Some highlights:



Yes ... Justin Timberlake. As my friend Brad said, Leonard Cohen's Hallelujah (and really Jeff Buckley's) is unruinable. And JT does a good job with this.



Springsteen doing We Shall Overcome



And Sting singing Driven to Tears