This Wednesday, we’re not featuring as many links as we normally do so we can focus on providing disaster relief resources for Puerto Rico. If you have any additional suggestions on how to help Puerto Rico, please tell us in the comments.
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Redheadedgirl: Puerto Rico has been completely devastated by Hurricanes Irma and Maria- Maria especially. The island is almost completely without power, there’s limited water and food and medical supplies, and they need pretty much everything. The links in our post about Hurricane Irma are still good, but we’ve found more places to help Puerto Rico. And they need so much help.
Lin Manuel Miranda has been requesting that people give to the Hispanic Federation.
The Huffington Post has a roundup of charities.
UNICEF USA is another option.
Los Ambulantes has a list of trusted organizations, and includes links to find out if there are fundraising or volunteer opportunities in your area.
Finally, and this is so important- Puerto Rico is a US territory. They don’t have a voting member of Congress that can advocate for them. There’s a lot the federal government could do for Puerto Rico if they were so moved. Please, please, add your voice to move them. Diasporicans has a script for calling your member of Congress to ask them to help. Please, call.
Sarah: Jezebel has a list of resources as well.
The newsletter My Civic Workout also has several suggestions to help the people of Puerto Rico.
(And if you haven’t subscribed to My Civic Workout, I very much recommend it.)
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Thanks to Elizabeth S. for finding this great sewing resource:
Many have fond memories of visiting the local fabric store with their mothers to sift through clothing patterns and remember when the sewing machine was just as much of a staple in the household as a computer is now. If you long to recreate those moments and sew your own clothes, the Vintage Patterns Wiki website has a massive selection of vintage sewing patterns available for you, none of which came after the year 1992.
Searching through these 83,500 vintage sewing patterns may sound like a daunting task, but it is actually much easier than you might think. For instance, if you hanker after a particular era of clothing and a style worn by specific people like Elizabeth Taylor or Audrey Hepburn, for example, you can search the database of vintage sewing patterns by decade.
To head straight to the sewing database, click here!
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USB Wall Outlet Adaptors!
What do we want? More USB ports! Where do we want them? EVERYWHERE!
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Lastly, check out Fernanda Suarez’s artwork on Instagram. My favorite pieces of hers are the modern day Disney Princesses:
Buzzfeed has a round up, if you want to see them all in one place.
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Don’t forget to share what super cool things you’ve seen, read, or listened to this week! And if you have anything you think we’d like to post on a future Wednesday Links, send it my way!
Thank you so much for the links to help those suffering in Puerto Rico!
Fernanda Suarez’s work is amazing! I particularly like the inclusion of freckles and moles–it makes these princesses seem much more real. And the expressions–holy cow! Very imaginative and well-executed. I look forward to more of her work.
Any fellow residents of NYC: a few of the fire stations are taking donations of critically needed goods:
http://www1.nyc.gov/nyc-resources/service/7104/donate-critically-needed-items-for-hurricane-relief-in-puerto-rico
Speaking of Disney Princesses, AMC theaters are showing Disney Princess movies for the next few weeks. Last week was Beauty and the Beast (1991). Here are the others:
Mulan (Sept 22-28)
Tangled (Sept 29-Oct 5)
The Princess and the Frog (Oct6-12)
Brave (Oct 13-19)
I hope to take my niece to some of these that she hasn’t seen. And I’m excited to see them on the big screen too.
If you don’t have a lot of money and want to help, check out the Planetary Response Network & Rescue Global: Caribbean Storms 2017 project at Zooniverse. The site uploads images for human volunteers to annotate, so they can be processed to help rescue workers direct their efforts. Sounds like they’ve done most of their Irma processing but expect to start Maria data soon.
I haven’t been online when there was live data to process for this project, but I’ve participated in other Zooniverse projects, and if you have a web browser, you probably have the necessary tools/skills.
https://www.zooniverse.org/projects/vrooje/planetary-response-network-and-rescue-global-caribbean-storms-2017
thank you so much for talking about Puerto Rico!!
Also, for those in or around Chicago, Casa Puertorriqueña is taking donations. You can call them at (773) 342-8023 and they’re located at 1237 N California Ave in Chicago.
Thanks for the pattern link. It’s a time suck in the making, but I’m going in any way. If I don’t post for a week or so, you know where I’ll be. 😉
Also, Vogue Patterns has been re-releasing vintage patterns for a while. They are full a fine dressmaker techniques and make up beautifully.
Also, the US Virgin Islands desperately need help and are getting very little in the way of donations. St. John and St. Thomas are effectively unlivable and St. Croix, which had been staging the relief efforts after Irma, was devastated by Maria.
Charity Navigator rates charities and have a special section for Hurricane Maria. The website is https://www.charitynavigator.org/ and they are recommended by Consumer Reports.