My Mom did not roll bandages. Rolling bandages was for girly-girls, which my Mom, a champion skiier and outdoors enthusiast certainly was not. But during WWII, all women and girls did something -- many things, in fact -- and she was no exception.
Here:
My Mom grew up in a small town in Vermont in the 1930s and 1940s. (How small? The school she went to from kindergarten through the twelfth grade had four rooms; and she was the entire top 14 percent of her graduating class.) Four days before her twelfth birthday, she was baking her first cake with her best friend in the kitchen of her home in Wells River, Vermont when she heard on the radio that Pearl Harbor had been attacked. Her Dad, my beloved grandfather, walked in several minutes later and she said, "The Japanese have attacked Pearl Harbor." And she remembers that she saw him turn as white as snow.
This is a radio broadcast:
This is what President Franklin Delano Roosevelt said the next day:
The small town in Vermont that my Mom called home had not been hit particularly hard by the Depression (most people there were fairly self-sufficient), but the war was a different matter.
As she has told me: "Everyone was involved."
My Mom drove her mother, my Nana, crazy. People say that certain characteristics skip generations -- that was certainly true in our family. I love to cook and knit and do crafts and gather fruit and make jam. I learned how to do all of this from my Nana, who was so relieved (I think) to have a dainty granddaughter after raising my Mom. She had no interest in any of it.
Here’s one of my favorite stories about her:
My college roommate (a woman after my Mom’s own heart) had a boyfriend in Burlington when we were at Middlebury College and decided to hitchhike back to Middlebury after a weekend at his dorm. She got picked up somewhere on Route 7 and engaged in conversation, which turned to Vermont. She asked her driver where he was from and he said he was from a small town no one had ever heard of and she pressed on and it turned out to be the small town where my Mom had grown up. My roommate said she knew someone from that town; she said her roommate’s mother was from that town. She mentioned her name.
"Yes," her driver said. "I tried to kiss her one night and she chased me though a corn field and hit me over the head with a bottle."
His mother never got over it; he did.
But I digress.
My Mom did not roll bandages. Her mother, my Nana, rolled bandages. But my Mom joined a claque of friends (mostly boys -- including one who would later serve as the Commander of the Pacific Fleet) in collecting scrap iron and tires and anything else of potential use out of the Connecticut River.
They bundled newspapers and gathered bits and pieces of cast-off stuff, and rolled abandoned tires and did everything they could for the war effort. She lived in a small town in Vermont, but "everyone was involved."
And the point is: Everyone was "involved."
Today, almost no one is. Except for the families for whom the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are their whole lives.
Even on our military bases -- and I live near one and shop there -- it’s as though we have our world here, and they have theirs there. There are few yellow ribbons; there is no sense of urgency. But there are collection barrels for food donations for our military families. And these make me ill.
At the VERY LEAST, can we not pay our soldiers, sailors, Marines, Airmen and National Guard enough to feed their families? Have we gone that much astray?
Today, as I write this. we have two wars continuing; we have young men and women on their third, fourth, fifth or even sixth deployments. There is precious little about them in the news, even when they pay the ultimate price.
And this is wrong.
It is irrelevant to me, tonight, whether you think the United States should have engaged in these wars or whether you think it should not have done so. That is beside the point.
Because what's important is that young (and not so young) American men and women are in Iraq and Afghanistan and are wearing the uniform of our country and that, at the very least, we need to let them know that we are thinking about them and care about them. That’s what a care package to them does.
We OWE them this. We do not need to roll bandages. But we still need to remind them that we care.
Please donate tonight. Thank you.
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Our goal for Netroots For The Troops 2010 is $100,000.00 (cash or in-kind donations). Donate here!
We realize that you would like to donate something tangible to go inside the packages that will be mailed to the troops. Unfortunately, accepting in-kind donations from individuals is not practical in terms of storage and handling of the items. Instead, we will only be accepting corporate donations or cash from YOU to purchase items for the care packages this year. We are accepting hand-written or
typed letters. See Lusty's diary for details. Mail hand-written letters to Lusty, email typed letters to jlms qkw, at jlms_qkwATxmissionDOTcom
Here’s how YOU can help:
- Please contact TexDem or VeloVixen if you know someone who might be helpful in securing the corporate in-kind donations. To help you think of companies who could donate products, see below* for a list of potential items. Put your thinking caps on and let us hear from you. It takes time to get through the corporate processes so we need to hear from you ASAP!
- We are accepting cash from individuals and
beg ask that you donate here to contribute to this worthy cause. Your donation will enable us to purchase the things that we are unable to obtain through corporate donations, and will
help to pay the costs of shipping them to our troops. Netroots For The Troops is a project of Netroots Arts and Education Initiative (NAEI), a 501(c)3 organization. Donations are tax deductible to the extent permitted by law.
- $10 donors to Patric Juliett's team receive an ebook of
Tales from the Larder.
- Netroots For The Troops is introducing NFTT 2010 Personal/Team Fundraising Pages.. It will empower each of you to multiply your personal donations by creating a Personal NFTT 2010 Fundraising Page. Through this page you will be able to approach your friends, relatives, neighbors, co-workers and colleagues etc to donate to NFTT via your page. We're asking you to sign up to personally raise $1000.00. If you were a small donor last year but wanted to do more, this is a way for you to increase your donation via your contacts.
- Sign up for a diary! Our goal is to post two diaries per day until NN10. That’s a lot of diaries! Don’t worry---we’ve made it easy for you. We’ve got a template set up, and all you need to do is add a small introduction telling us why you are donating, sharing a story of someone you know who has served or is serving, or any other thing you want to share that might help motivate others to donate. Please contact jlms qkw if you are interested in posting a diary.
- Do you know a service member who would like to receive a care package? Email your request to: info@netrootsforthetroops.com before June 25, 2010.
Please include all of the following information. Unfortunately we will not be able to process any incomplete requests: Rank: Last name: First name:APO Address Line 1:APO Address Line 2:
APO Address Zip: - Help us assemble the packages in Vegas. It's fun! More information will be forthcoming for those of you who are going to be in Vegas and would like to help there.
- Please consider joining the NFTT FaceBook Group.
Invite your FaceBook and non-FaceBook friends.
_________The following list contains some of the things we would like to include in the packages. Please let us know if you know someone who might be helpful in securing these corporate in-kind donations. (Please DO NOT send these items yourself! We have no way to accept them. Instead, your cash donation is the very best way to help make this happen on the ground in Vegas.) * Baby wipes * Mechanix gloves * LED flashlights * Gel shoe insoles * Goop Cleaning Gel * Powdered energy drinks * Gel energy food packets * DVDs and CDs * Letters to the soldiers * Sand scarves & cool ties * More suggestions coming soon
Books for Soldiers Soldiers love to receive books, but due once again to the logistics of collecting and storing them prior to NN10, books will not be included in the packages that NFTT will put together this year. Other organizations are more specialized in the collection and distribution of books to Iraq and Afghanistan . If you are interested in sending books, please consider checking out the Books For Soldiers website. It is run by DKos's very own StormBear and is a great resource for giving.
Netroots For The Troops mission is two-fold: annual shipment of CARE packages to US soldiers and Marines serving in hostile regions of Iraq and Afghanistan for the duration of their deployment, and on-going financial assistance for veterans and their families upon their return to the states.
Netroots for the Troops is a project of Netroots Arts and Education Initiative (NAEI), a 501(c)3 organization. Donations are tax deductible to the extent permitted by law.
As of March 1, 2010, monthly donations are no longer being deducted. Please consider donating the difference here.