Patience.org

We were back down in Florida last week, on Longboat Key with Grandma & Grandpa. The kids had a whale of a time, as did I with my new camera. It’s a huge improvement on the old one.

Anyway, lots of pictures of them here playing bocce ball, T-ball, biking & swimming. And in the little one’s casem following her big brother around and getting involved wherever possible, regardless of how dangerous that might be. But that’s her.
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So at 5.35pm we called Aiello’s Pizza a few doors up on 3rd Ave to order a pizza for the kids. Normally we either go and collect it or eat it there. We were planning to do the latter, but this time we decided to have it delivered as we the kds weren’t ready. As it turned out we probably made the last call to place an order at Aiello’s. Five minutes later we noticed smoke coming up from a building close to a Chinese restuarant that caught fire on Friday, which is next to Aiello’s. This time it was Aiello’s turn to mysteriousy catch fire.

I have quite a few pictures from above and around the fire as it developed, here.

It took about 90 mins before it was put out but the place is gutted.

The other side of Aiello’s is a sound stage called Farkas Films. After years of little drama other than that which might be filmed inside, it received a notice that the place had to close and the building was being demolished. Coincidence? Well this is Manhattan real estate and people will do almost anything when chasing a buck, especially in a market we’ve been experiencing over the past few years.

Aiello’s pizza was by far the best round here, but I fear we may have seen the last of it, for whatever reason.

Whatever else happens today, it will still be the day we beat the mob from the Walham Green Dog Track for the first time at home since 1977, when we won 3-1 in the Second Division. Historic stuff & great for Mum & Dad to have witnessed it.

When searching around for ideas for charitable donations last year we came across Donors Choose, a website that enables you to choose exactly to which project at which schools mostly your donation will go to. They make the admin costs of each project explicit and you can choose part of the project, all of it, or al of it plus the minimal admin cost (to cover the website hosting & admin stuff).

As we’re fortunate enough to be able to give a little here and there, we gave a modest amount to an elementary (primary for those outside the US) school in Brooklyn via this website. We got an initial email in return saying thanks with a promise for more details as to how the kids were using the stuff we paid for, including letters from the kids.

And boy, what more we got! This week we received a letter from the teacher plus 15+ handwritten letters from the 8-9 year-old children plus a bunch of photos of them at work using the stuff we helped them get. It’s truly uplifting stuff.

It is both heart-breaking and scandalous that these kids have to rely on donations in a city as rich as New York and a country with such abundance as America. But it’s also heartening that you can make a direct difference to some kids lives.

It also supports schools in places such as Louisiana, Los Angeles, San Francisco, North Carolina and others and I make no apologies for banging on about it. It’s not a panacea, but it’s a great example of how the web can cut out intermediary costs and get money to where real problems exist, and quickly.