HOLIDAY MAIL FOR HEROES!!

Calling all Girl Scouts, Boy Scouts, schools, Bible & Sunday school classes, churches... well, calling EVERYONE!!!

Holiday Mail for Heroes Program Overview

It’s that time of year again! The American Red Cross and Pitney Bowes have teamed up for the fourth annual Holiday Mail for Heroes program.

From now until December 10th you are invited to send holiday cards to our American service members, their families, and veterans all over the world. Anyone can send a card and you can send as many as you would like! Please send all cards to

Holiday Mail for Heroes
PO Box 5456
Capitol Heights, MD
20791-5456

The deadline for this year is December 10th. Unfortunately, if your cards are not postmarked by December 10th they cannot be delivered. After Pitney Bowes collects and screens the mail received in the PO Box, Red Cross workers deliver holiday greetings to service men and women in their communities. Check out how our uniformed men and women and their families expressed their gratitude for the Holiday Mail program when it delivered cards to Walter Reed Army Medical Center.

Read more and see a great video HERE.

Please share... repost, email... let's get this done!!!

SEND CHRISTMAS & HOLIDAY CARDS TO SOLDIERS, MARINES, MILITARY

A FRIENDLY REMINDER: TODAY'S THE DAY -- CHRISTMAS CARDS TO MILITARY PERSONNEL M/B POSTMARKED NO LATER THAN TODAY!!!

This holiday season, Americans can send soldiers and wounded troops greeting cards — even if they don't know their names.

After the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and the anthrax attacks, the Pentagon required that mail addressed to "any soldier" be returned to the sender, leaving Americans without a way to send mail to soldiers whose names they didn't know.

But for a second year, an American Red Cross program is allowing the public to send holiday greeting cards that aren't addressed to a particular soldier. The cards will be screened, sorted and distributed to military hospitals and bases nationally and overseas in time for the holidays.

<...>

From Tuesday through Dec. 10, the public can send their greeting cards, with adequate postage and a return address, to Holiday Mail for Heroes, P.O. Box 5456, Capitol Heights, Md. 20791-5456. To speed delivery, mailers should not send care packages, money or any inserts, including glitter.

They can also download cards from the American Red Cross Web site to print out and send to the program's address. This year, a Facebook Web page allows Internet users to post greetings online so the Red Cross can print the messages on cards and distribute them to troops.

HERE is the story from the AP.

(ps if you're wondering about the weird post titles, I'm trying to include as many search terms as possible based on what my site meter says people are using to find this information)

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and it seems by blog son Doc has tagged me...

The rules are: Pass it on to five other bloggers, and tell them to open the nearest book to page 56. Write out the fifth sentence on that page, and also the next two to five sentences. The CLOSEST BOOK, NOT YOUR FAVORITE, OR MOST INTELLECTUAL!

So, the closest book to me is Touching History by Lynn Spencer. (I actually finished this excellent and riveting book some time ago but was just getting ready to send it to a friend...)

"The traffic and radio chatter were normal until they got in the vicinity of New York."

And I know I'm supposed to tag 5 other bloggers, but I don't like to intrude... Most Certainly Not, Trying to Grok, Mrs. G at Mudville Gazette, Dave at ThirdWaveDave and Chuck at From My Position... on the Way. Not that I think they'll respond, but it would be interesting to see what's close at hand...

Mister Can You Spare a "Dime"??

If you read military blogs regularly, you are probably familiar with our wild and wonderful friend Chuck Z -- a US Army Major (well, he was a lowly Captain back then) who was seriously wounded in Iraq just weeks before Noah was wounded. I have lost count of the number of Chuck's surgeries -- I think his 35th was in January. Chuck has a blog "From My Position... on the way" which was the venue through which I am privileged to know him and his beautiful and wonderful wife, Carren. When Chuck lost the use of his hands as a result of his wounding, he inspired one of his blog readers to begin the Soldiers' Angels Project Valour IT which has provided and continues to provide voice-activated laptops for wounded soldiers (many hundreds... or maybe over a thousand now??) and for which he helps raise significant sums of money.

Well, now Chuck has added another personal test and goal for himself -- to ride in the 2008 Face of America Bike Ride, a two-day inclusive bike ride from Bethesda, MD to historic Gettysburg, PA the National Naval Medical Center to honor and assist our disabled veterans returning from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. READ THE DETAILS FROM CHUCK (below) or go to his blog entry for April 6, 2008 to read more.

Please consider making a donation of any amount to Chuck's endeavor and PLEASE forward this to all your friends and family. If you have a corporate donations program, please consider nominating this ride. There is no worthier cause... please do it today.

THANK YOU!!
Carla, Some Soldier's Mom

From: Chuck Ziegenfuss
Subject: From My Position... hell on wheels 2008

I am participating in this, and am trying to raise between $5K (personal goal) and $10K (team goal). I am $3k short of my personal goal right now, and the event is only a scant 3 weeks away.

I am writing to not only ask for your contributions, but to also as for you to spread this information through your address books, word of mouth, web pages, and any other means at your disposal.

ANY amount, even a single dollar is appreciated. This is my personal achievement after being wounded. Completing this ride will mark almost three years or rehabilitation, over 30 reconstructive surgeries, and healing from being wounded in 2005. It is my honor to ride along with other wounded warriors. Please donate what you can, and ask others to do likewise.

Link for donations: GO HERE

More information from the website:

On May 3rd & 4th 2008 World Team Sports, working with The Walter Reed Army Medical Center, The National Naval Medical Center, The Brooke Army Medical Center, The Soldiers Angel Fund, The Severly Injured Semper Fi Fund, and others will be hosting our 2008 Face of America Bike Ride, a two-day inclusive bike ride from Bethesda, MD to historic Gettysburg, PA the National Naval Medical Center to honor and assist our disabled veterans returning from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

This ride is an opportunity to welcome these disabled servicemen and women ,and able-bodied servicemen and women, as teammates and show them how much we appreciate their efforts. We will also have the opportunity to show them that they can still be a part of the TEAM.

There is no charge for any active duty servicemen or women, both able-bodied and disabled, to participate. There is a $ 400 minimum fund raising goal for all other participants. The money raised will pay for all the costs of the active duty participants, including accommodations, food, outreach, providing usage of bikes, cycling clinics,and all other costs associated with the ride.

--
Chuck Z

Foxes, Chicken Coops... & Moms

So I posted yesterday that I was extremely disappointed that the Walter Reed "Blue Ribbon Panel" did not include at least one mother of a wounded soldier or marine... but then a friend brought to my attention the most recent Joe Galloway article on this HERE

which concludes

One reader e-mailed me this week to suggest that if we really want to get to the bottom of this scandal, we should appoint an investigative commission made up of 10 mothers of wounded soldiers instead of the usual suspects who sit on blue-ribbon commissions and find no one responsible for problems.

The mothers, the reader wrote, would sort out who was to blame in short order and find the problems that need fixing even faster. I second her motion.

and to that I might add that they would spend half the money to fix what's wrong than the guys wearing those blue ribbons...

I haven't always agreed with Galloway in some of his more recent tirades and pronouncements, but I think his outrage this time is warranted... but again, lots of finger pointing and breast beating by the press without a lot of tangible suggestions for change...

You know we'll all be watching this closely.

x-posted at Milblogs

Copyright 2007 Some Soldier's Mom. All rights reserved.