Just released: Curt Smith’s new single “All Is Love (featuring Zoë Keating)”

In case you don’t follow me on Twitter (and why on earth not???), here’s a tip: The new single from Tears for Fears co-founder Curt Smith, “All Is Love (featuring Zoë Keating),” is available for the next few days as a free MP3 download from AmazonMP3 (U.S. only – it’s an Amazon U.S. thing). It’s awfully good. Click below to grab it.

Shagadelic, baby

My favorite new iPhone app is PhotoTropedelic by Larry Weinberg ($1.99). I’ll say upfront that v1.0 auto-adds a credit to your photos – BOO for a paid app –  but the developer  heard the cries of his public and has submitted a 1.1 revision which he promises will eiminate this annoyance.

Here are a few originals and the PhotoTropedelic versions I created of them. Click  each one for a larger image. For a one-button photo modifying app, it’s pretty sweet, don’t you think?

How the International Medical Alliance is Assisting the Haiti Relief Effort

… and how you can, too.

I received this email late on Saturday from Lee Kagan, our personal physician and longtime friend:

Dear Friends:

The photo below was taken today (Saturday, Jan. 16) at the hospital in Jimani, Dominican Republic, where a medical team from the International Medical Alliance (www.imaonline.org) is now working. The town sits an hour east of Port-au-Prince, Haiti, right on the frontier. Refugees fleeing the chaos in the Haitian capital are streaming over the border into Jimani. Doctors with the IMA who are there describe Haitians with crush injuries arriving at the hospital in the backs of dump trucks. The hospital and medical personnel are overwhelmed. This poor rural community where IMA has operated clinics for the past twelve years is now at the epicenter of an emerging refugee crisis. The situation is becoming desperate.

Patty and I have worked with the IMA in Jimani annually for the past two years. The people who run the IMA are the same folks we worked with in NOLA after Katrina. They have operated ongoing clinics for years in Kenya, the Dominican Republic, New Orleans, and elsewhere. There dedication is inspiring. Every dime donated to IMA goes straight to patient care. There is essentially no overhead, no paid staff.

You all look at the news. I don’t have to tell you how desperate the situation in Haiti is. Please consider making a donation to the International Medical Alliance to support the work they do. If you’re looking for an organization that will put your charitable dollars directly to work helping those in need we can tell you that this one does just that. You can donate right on line at their website. (www.imaonline.org) or send a check to the address posted at the site. The website also has some moving photos and written accounts of what they are up against in Jimani.

We are going back to the DR/Haiti frontier next month with an IMA team including students and faculty from the Mayo Clinic Medical School. We are also strongly considering making an additional, earlier trip (in about a week) to join our friends and colleagues who are already there hard at work. We’ll let you know our plans.

Thank you for your support. Our best to you all.

Lee and Patty

Heartbreak

A dear friend, who’s three years my junior, learned yesterday that the breast cancer she’s fought fearlessly for a dozen years will soon have the last laugh. She sent a typically wry email around to announce this news to her “Best Beloveds.”

In it, she muses about how best to use her remaining time. “Does one keep moisturizing,” she wonders, “even if future wrinkles may no longer be an issue? Which books should I read: old favorites or nifty sounding new ones?”

I’m devastated.