05-03-2008, 05:36 PM
First: Read my lips! I'm posting this for informational purposes, not to generate any controversy.
I read the suggestion about donations to PAWS, but I realized I didn't know much about them, so I Googled. I thought it was a little strange that the hit at the very top of the page happened to be for an organization within a hundred miles of me. I did more looking and found that "PAWS" is a widely used acronym, which explains a lot. Here's a link to the page on which a number of organizations with similar goals are listed, and all are known in their particular areas as "PAWS."
http://www.paws.org/about/wrongpaws/
We might want to reconsider a couple of aspects of this. We could 1) choose an organization with a geographic connection to Mint, chosen in terms of either where he was born and raised (Chicago) or where he lived (California), or 2) we could pick a national organization that would reflect the diversity of our little family, or 3) we could simply choose a group to which we feel some kind of personal connection and make our donations privately.
Since it's clear there are some members of our group who will be making private donations in memory of Mint, I am going to see if there is some way to get that information passed along to his family. I'm thinking it would be an arrangement in which naming the donor would be optional, with the organization receiving the donation the primary identifier passed along. This is a recent brainstorm, so I don't have a plan and may not be able to come up with one, either.
I read the suggestion about donations to PAWS, but I realized I didn't know much about them, so I Googled. I thought it was a little strange that the hit at the very top of the page happened to be for an organization within a hundred miles of me. I did more looking and found that "PAWS" is a widely used acronym, which explains a lot. Here's a link to the page on which a number of organizations with similar goals are listed, and all are known in their particular areas as "PAWS."
http://www.paws.org/about/wrongpaws/
We might want to reconsider a couple of aspects of this. We could 1) choose an organization with a geographic connection to Mint, chosen in terms of either where he was born and raised (Chicago) or where he lived (California), or 2) we could pick a national organization that would reflect the diversity of our little family, or 3) we could simply choose a group to which we feel some kind of personal connection and make our donations privately.
Since it's clear there are some members of our group who will be making private donations in memory of Mint, I am going to see if there is some way to get that information passed along to his family. I'm thinking it would be an arrangement in which naming the donor would be optional, with the organization receiving the donation the primary identifier passed along. This is a recent brainstorm, so I don't have a plan and may not be able to come up with one, either.