X-Tra, Miscellany and Admin: November 2008 Archives

(This will remain on top through Thanksgiving. Scroll Down for newer entries.)

This cause means a lot to me. It seems the absolute minimum I can do for these wonderful people who are essential to this country.

Project Valour IT helps injured service people reconnect with the internet by furnishing voice activated laptops to wounded service folk who have lost the use of one or more limbs. This is critical because it allows them to do things everyone else has come to take for granted while they're going through treatment for their wounds, and afterwards.

These folks stepped up to the line to defend you, me, our friends, family, and even that jerk who runs this website that everyone hates, and it cost them one or more limbs. Seems an awfully small measure of appreciation to help them be able to surf the internet and send email while undergoing treatment and afterwards, because I've yet to meet any of them who really got their hands back.

Please, give what you can if you can. These men and women deserve a lot more than this, but this is what I'm asking you to help with. I know it's rough; I understand if you're not in a position to do so. But please help if you can

(PS the manufacturer sells these laptops at cost or even a bit below. They don't make a penny)

Here's the Soldier's Angels page that tracks the overall progress. (if you have a website, join there!)

Prevent this shame from happening to us. Please.

There were thirty million English who talked of England's might,
There were twenty broken troopers who lacked a bed for the night.
They had neither food nor money, they had neither service nor trade;
They were only shiftless soldiers, the last of the Light Brigade.

They felt that life was fleeting; they knew not that art was long,
That though they were dying of famine, they lived in deathless song.
They asked for a little money to keep the wolf from the door;
And the thirty million English sent twenty pounds and four!

They laid their heads together that were scarred and lined and grey;
Keen were the Russian sabres, but want was keener than they;
And an old Troop-Sergeant muttered, "Let us go to the man who writes
The things on Balaclava the kiddies at school recites."

They went without bands or colours, a regiment ten-file strong,
To look for the Master-singer who had crowned them all in his song;
And, waiting his servant's order, by the garden gate they stayed,
A desolate little cluster, the last of the Light Brigade.

They strove to stand to attention, to straighten the toil-bowed back;
They drilled on an empty stomach, the loose-knit files fell slack;
With stooping of weary shoulders, in garments tattered and frayed,
They shambled into his presence, the last of the Light Brigade.

The old Troop-Sergeant was spokesman, and "Beggin' your pardon," he said,
"You wrote o' the Light Brigade, sir. Here's all that isn't dead.
An' it's all come true what you wrote, sir, regardin' the mouth of hell;
For we're all of us nigh to the workhouse, an, we thought we'd call an' tell.

"No, thank you, we don't want food, sir; but couldn't you take an' write
A sort of 'to be continued' and 'see next page' o' the fight?
We think that someone has blundered, an' couldn't you tell 'em how?
You wrote we were heroes once, sir. Please, write we are starving now."

The poor little army departed, limping and lean and forlorn.
And the heart of the Master-singer grew hot with "the scorn of scorn."
And he wrote for them wonderful verses that swept the land like flame,
Till the fatted souls of the English were scourged with the thing called Shame.

O thirty million English that babble of England's might,
Behold there are twenty heroes who lack their food to-night;
Our children's children are lisping to "honour the charge they made-"
And we leave to the streets and the workhouse the charge of the Light Brigade!

Rudyard Kipling

Please help if you can.