Making Sure that Most Proceeds go to Where They are Supposed to

In the mist of all of the fund-raising and events pertaining to Superstorm Sandy I forgot to thank a couple of special people who helped me with the October 31, 2012 issue. Shortly after the hurricane passed over I ran into a brother and sister, Bill and Mary Ellen Pavlovsky. They were standing on the corner of Gordon and Rector Streets and we decided we would try and go down to Front Street by the Barge Restaurant. There was a Police Car and barricades there because of the severe damage that occurred to that part of the Waterfront.

I told the officer that I was the owner of the Amboy Guardian and if I would be allowed to take pictures. The officer told me that there were photographers there with a police escort. When the police officer brings them back up then we would be escorted down.

Bill, Mary Ellen and myself were escorted down to Front Street to take photos. Afterwards Bill and Mary Ellen invited me to their house to take pictures from their backyard looking down at the Yacht Club.

Because of their kindness I was able to take some great shots of the wreckage of the boats at the Yacht Club Boat Basin.

The next day I took the paper down to the printer on a flash drive. That drive contained 32 pages. As I was talking to the printer I remembered the pictures that I took with my little android cell phone camera.

I asked the printer, “Is it possible that you can do a 4 page special section for me with the pictures off of my cell phone. They said, “Sure, no problem.”

Quite a few people remarked about that four page special section showing the damage on Front Street in Perth Amboy.

There was one mistake that Bill pointed out after that section was already out. Instead of saying, “The Wrath of Hurricane Sandy,” I left off the “W” and had “Rath.” So I decided to Google “Rath” and it did come up that it could be loosely interchanged with “Wrath” but technically it should be, “Wrath.” I’ll give Bill that one.

To Bill, Mary Ellen, and Webcographics, I say thank you for making that issue very special.

Now onto my next subject matter. This has to do with the benefit concerts to aid the Hurricane Sandy victims. The concerts I am talking about have to do with multimillion dollar entertainers.

No matter what you think about Lady Gaga, there is one thing I give her credit for. She wrote out a generous check out of her own personal account to contribute to the hurricane victims. I think that most entertainers who are very wealthy should do the same.

A lot of times when you have these benefit concerts, a lot of the tickets fall into the hands of scalpers. How much of the proceeds actually go to where they are supposed to go?

Many of these multimillion dollar performers should just write out a personal check out to a reputable organization The Salvation Army or American Red Cross are examples to disburse the funds during emergencies or natural disasters.

$5 million is pocket change to many of these performers.

One examples of funds being misused would be the terrible earthquake in Haiti a few years ago. If you go to Haiti now, there are still people living in horrible conditions. Where did that donated money go to? A lot went to the corrupt government officials in Haiti.

If you are a star and want to shine brightly, just dip into your deep pockets and give. C.M.