Louisiana Governor Blanco has designated today, August 31st as a day of prayer for the tragic situation in New Orleans. If you pray, please do. If you don’t, please give up some good thoughts.

PLEASE DONATE TO THE RED CROSS.

WE NEED MONEY. LOTS AND LOTS OF MONEY.

This situation is unimaginable.
Don’t pay attention to all the sensational press about the looters, those people will get theirs. We’ve got to save people and save the city. Beyond the history and cultural significance of New Orleans, our entire national economy depends upon that port to get goods in and our of the US. I know that nearly all the grain that Iowa exports to the rest of the world goes down the Mississippi and out through the Port of New Orleans.

Please think about the really great people who have gotten out of New Orleans who have lost everything. If any of you have been to a Harry concert with me, you’ve seen some of the amazing musicians who have been affected by this: Mark, Craig, Leroy, Lucien, and Mark Braud.
Connick.com has set up a relief fund for “our” boys, please feel free to donate to that as well.

I don’t know what else to say except that please don’t let this turn into some big political event. We have to come together and SAVE our fellow citizens. Wouldn’t you want the rest of the country to do the same for you???

Please take 5 minutes and donate whatever you can spare to the Red Cross National Disaster Relief Fund.

The American Red Cross is saying that the disaster from Katrina will be the biggest relief effort they have ever mobilized. Bigger than 9/11 or any other hurricanes.

Last night I went to bed thinking New Orleans had escaped the worst, but now some levees have broken and the city is flooding. Up to 80% of it is underwater now.

I know musicians who are from areas of NOLA that are nearly completely wiped out. Its devestating.

MacGyver turns 17 today. I picked her out of a litter of kittens for my 12th birthday in 1988. I had wanted a tiger striped cat, which there were some in the litter, but when I saw her, I knew I had to have her. So I got my tortise-shell fluffy girl who I had already pre-named MacGyver, since that was my favorite show at the time.

She was diagnoised with the beginnings of kidney failure earlier this summer, but despite my thinking she’s dying on a daily basis, she’s still doing pretty well. She still sleeps with me and takes up 2/3rds of the bed every night. Besides sleeping, she enjoys quality time with my fish during the day.

And now, some more pictures of Mac: These first ones were from December of 1988 when she was still just a bitty kitty.

You can see her tail hadn’t yet gotten fluffy:

I was trying to take cute Christmas-time photos:

Here she is with our late cat, Scamper:

No date on this one, but she’s still young and you can see that her shoe fetish was with her at an early age:

Her tail got fluffy before the rest of her body did:

In her younger days, she was a climber. Here she is all the way up on the woodwork in my mom’s house. The ceiling is at least ten feet tall. We were never exactly sure how she got up there:

And finally, a more recent one from just over a week ago. She’s still fluffy and she still loves her shoes:

So Happy Birthday to my MacGyver. I’m so attached to her and hope we have several more years together.