Dear Sweet Readers:

A couple months ago my mother came for a visit. She lived in America for thirty-six years and had moved back Thailand, her home, in 2004. During her visit, the earthquake in Haiti happened. The TV in her guestroom was tuned in constantly to the news; my mother watched wordlessly as the stats about how many found, how many dead, how many are still unaccounted for echoed from the TV. Katie and I couldn’t stand it. We retreated into our offices. We turned up the volume of our TV to drown out my mother’s. We are people who do not watch the news. We are people who never read newspapers. We are the ones who have to change the channel immediately when commercials about abused and abandoned dogs come on TV.

We are not unfeeling people. Quite the opposite. Katie and I feel too much. We would find ourselves unable to work, to do anything, if we allowed ourselves to watch the evening news, which is always tragic. My mother, however, has always been in front of the television. Columbine. Desert Storm. The Challenger explosion. The Oklahoma City Bombing. The assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. She has been witness to a great number of tragedies.

During the trip, I finally asked her why she doesn’t change the channel, why she insists on watching the news all day.

“I watch because I want to understand.” Then she handed Katie some money to donate to the Red Cross and said, “I wish I could do more.”

I thought about my mother’s answer for weeks. To understand. To do more. And it was my mother and the continued heartbreaking details of Haiti that made me do something in the only way I could.

On Friday, February 12, 2010, the MFA Program in Creative Writing at University of South Florida, Saw Palm, YellowJacket Press, and Sweet: A Literary Confection came together and co-hosted Words to Help, Words to Heal: A Benefit Reading for Haiti at Dishtopia The Anytime Tea Bar in South Tampa. The venue was packed with about eighty plus readers, writers, and lovers of words, and along with the sweet scent of tea in the air, there was a true feeling of camaraderie. The combined efforts raised over $500.00, which all went to The American Red Cross.

Like my mother said, I wish I could do more. I wish our words could repair the world, replace what is lost.