Nathalie Christie is THE tiny soprano. (She calls herself that.)

Natalie Christie - The Tiny Soprano

When presented with a tragedy on the scale of what’s happened in Haiti, or what happened in New Orleans after Katrina or any major disaster, it’s natural to want help. Many of us give money or volunteer our time to help in whatever way we can. This is a terrific thing to do. But some of us are moved to do more. Natalie was moved by what happened in Haiti and by what she saw other bloggers doing — offering something of themselves, of their own work, and donating the proceeds to relief in Haiti.

So Natalie turned to her gift, her art, her voice, and decided to share with us an amazing performance of a song cycle by Samuel Barber. I’d like to encourage every one of you that reads this to go to her blog and click the “buy now” button. Make the $10 donation and download this wonderful recording.

Now, if the term soprano sends chills up your spine, and conjures pictures of a very large woman wearing a horned helmet, let me ask you to set your prejudice aside, and let me assure you that Natalie is not anything like that. She has a truly lovely, lyric tone, and communicates beautifully in what she sings. So even if classical music or opera is not your thing, take a chance, you’ve probably never heard these songs before, sung by anyone, and I think it’s likely that you’ll never have a chance to hear them sung better.

And besides if you’re to make a donation to relief in Haiti, who do you trust more to deliver your $10: your cell phone company, or a professional musician and mother of three.

So do it now, just go to Natalie’s blog, click the “buy now” button, you make your donation through PayPal easily and securely, and be downloading the music in moments.

Thank you, all of you, for participating in this, and thank you Natalie for letting us make a difference through you!

PS — please excuse the somewhat hard-sell in this blog post, this is me, doing what I can do to help the people of Haiti.

Every three minutes there is a new diagnosis of invasive breast cancer.

Every 13 minutes someone dies from breast cancer.

More than 180,000 people, women and men, will be diagnosed with breast cancer in the US this year alone.

This has got to stop!

It’s time for all of us to step up, and do what ever we can to end breast cancer.

This whole train of thought was started a couple of days ago, when I got an e-mail from a dear friend by the name of Andrea Berman. We’ve been friends since college, and she’s a very cool person and a geek to boot. Andrea sent me an e-mail because she has committed to participate in this year’s Avon Walk for Breast  Cancer. She’s going to walk close to 40 miles in a weekend. It’s up to us to support her with our donations.

Please go to her Avon Walk for Breast Cancer personal site and donate whatever you can right now.

But there is more than not that we can do, as connected people on the Internet, we can blog and tweaked and Facebook and stumble and digg and whatever else you can think of to make sure that every one we are connected to knows about this challenge, and the commitment that we are making to help solve it.

Just to provide a little extra incentive, if you make a donation of any amount, and let me know in the comments of this post that you’ve done it, I’ll send you a link to a special meditation video that I’ve created. This 12 minute video uses my Binaural Journeys technology combining binaural beats, binaural drumming, natural sound and music to guide you effortlessly into a state of creative relaxation. The visuals in this program are amazing photographs of spectacular tropical flowers. As the imagery takes you into the miniature world of the flower, the binaural audio track guides you into yourself.

Just remember, the only way to get this video is to make a donation through Andrea’s page, and then let me know about it in the comments here. Of course, this is on the honor system, and there is no need to say how much you’ve given, what’s important is that every one of us give.