Books for Soldiers needs our help

I was introduced to Books for Soldiers, by my late friend Sgt Joel Murray. He told me about the website and I went there and put in a request and shortly after I had the exact book that I wanted. Your only allowed one request per month and you can get a video game, or book, or movie. What I got in the end was some awesome support. I actually had a couple volunteers call me their own basically. They would both send me packages on a regular basis and I got a Peanuts movie for every holiday!!! Which is really awesome since I'm a huge Peanuts fan.
When the unthinkable happened on Sept 04, 2006 the volunteers from this organization flocked to our sides and flooded us with letters of Sorrow, and Support it was really awesome. BFS does not only help out the Soldiers in the box but also those who are severely wounded in action and in one of the Army hospitals between here and Germany.
Through blogging I was able to get know a couple of my volunteers, and when I posted Blood Brothers one of my volunteers actually knew and sent packages to some of the soldiers from 1/26IN. These are just a few of the many great things this organization and its volunteers does for our Soldiers. I got an e-mail today from one of the volunteers that helped me out, I'm posting it below please take the time to read it. If you can help or you know of some corporations that might be able to or if you can just pass this on to ass many people as you can. This is definitely an organization that deserves the money. Thank you for your time and your support!

Books For Soldiers
2008 Fundraising Update Newsletter April 2008


___________________________
It Is A Bad Economy

Starting at the first of this year, BFS started a robust fundraising campaign here in North Carolina. We contacted small companies and some large companies you probably have heard of. To date, we have received a stack of letters that begin with "we deeply regret not being able to donate this year" and no cash. From our corporate donation campaign we have received a tad under thirty dollars from a philanthropy grants group in Winston Salem, NC. That was it, nothing else.

Times are tough for all non-profit groups, food banks from all around North Carolina and across the nation are suffering from a lack of donations and a sharp increase of those in need. The article below arrived in my email today about a women's shelter closing because of a lack of donations.

http://www.the-signal.com/news/article/1356/


___________________________
The Next Step

The BFS Board of Directors have discussed this problem for some time and have decided to have another go at fundraising. We are working on a different campaign aimed at companies in larger states - California for example. Every time we want to do fundraising in a state (cold call, direct mail, advertising) we need to file with that state's Secretary of State - filing in all states if prohibitively expensive so we have to pick and choose.

In our last newsletter, we reported on the hacker attacks that coincided with our 5th Anniversary. Those DNS attacks didn't help our balance sheet. Our final IT bill from the datacenter for that week was a tad over $11,000. If you recall, the hackers brought down the whole datacenter just to try to kill us.

The Board set a goal of $70,000 to raise by November 1st of this year. If that amount is not raised, the site will close on December 31st, 2008.

If we cannot make the fundraising target, the Board will seek to sell the site to another 501(c)(3) and any new owner will need to be qualified - have the IT talent to run the site, the funding to keep it going and the funding for the required upgrades, both software and hardware. We would also stop accepting new OVs on November 1st and stop accepting new books requests from soldiers on December 1st, 2008.


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What Does It Take?*

It takes a lot to run BFS on a monthly basis. The monthly funds required to run an operation like BFS are large. Here is a partial summary of where the donations go.

All figures are a monthly average for 2007.

Books, DVDs, other carepackage items	$1153
Postage	$812
Rent	$1600
Utilities	$277
IT Services (server farm, hosting, bandwidth)	$4258
IT Maintenance Contract	$1500
IT Security Software License Fees	$350

There are other things like broken computers, the occasional software purchase, insurance, pencils, toilet paper for the bathroom, etc. that we purchase.

No one at BFS receives a salary.

The BFS presence on MySpace, Flickr, YouTube are all free. Our presence in Second Life has also been donated.

We will be disabling the uploading of photos in the next few weeks to save bandwidth. Please post your photos to the Flickr BFS Group (http://www.flickr.com/groups/booksforsoldiers) and include the Flickr link to the photo in your forum post. If you want keep your photos on BFS, place them on Flickr and post the code in your post. Instructions can be found here: http://www.flickr.com/help/photos/#68

My hopes is that eventually we can raise more than the $70k survival goal. Last year our goal for 2008 was to move to a website design where the cumbersome OV process was performed online and searching and finding soldiers would be a breeze - subscribing to soldier requests is my favorite new BFS feature. Now we are just struggling to stay open.


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How You Can Help

The ONLY reason we are open today is because of the OVs that have donated so far this year, but now I need to ask more of everyone.

1) Office party fundraiser - Coordinate a "Save BFS Day" at work and urge, beg, cajole your co-workers into coughing up something for BFS.

2) Have your company cough up some cash. We will send your company a formal donation request, just send us the company name, contact name and address and we will get it out right away. Send these requests to me personally (storm@booksforsoldiers.com)

3) Have your place of worship pass the plate (hat, kippah, whatever) for BFS. Consult with your church's leader about holding a "Save BFS Offering" one day this month. Checks should be made out to "Books For Soldiers." If they have any questions or concerns, please contact me directly to set up a call.

4) Visit our donation page and give what you can.

http://booksforsoldiers.com/donate.php

or by check

Books For Soldiers
2008 Fund Drive
353 Jonestown Rd #123
Winston Salem, NC 27104


___________________________
In Closing

I started BFS five years ago and fully expected it to be online for only six weeks, that is the length of time I thought it would take for our troops to finish up in Baghdad and come back home. I am also terrible at predicting who is going to win the next NASCAR race.

If worse come to worse, it has been a good run - a great run in fact. In the first 6 months of operation, we collectively shipped over 400 tons of packages to the Middle East, that is when I stopped counting. We also built the largest English library in the Middle East - together with US soldiers at the Baghdad International Airport in the months following the fall of Baghdad.

We have done a lot of tremendous work, made a lot of great friends and even a wedding or two! We have also lost a lot of friends and we have received way too many memorial flags. Either way, you can all be proud of what we have achieved.

I promise that we will do everything in our power to meet our fundraising goals and will appreciate any help from you.

Thank-you for your support, patience and hard work over the last 5 years.

And most of all thank-you for your support of our troops.

Storm Williams
Founder
Books For Soldiers



*Legalese: BFS is exempt from filing IRS Form 990. Any financial information found here should not be considered as a replacement for IRS Form 990 or a supplement to an IRS Form 990.




(posted for Stormbear by nyndnpa)

« Last Edit: May 03, 2008, 06:12:50 PM by nyndnpa »

TWOTS

Blessed are the days that we are released at noon. By the way which is like everyday so far. It sure is nice too let me tell you. Today we did PT for the first time as a squad (which is a bit of a fluke cuz were not supposed to do organized PT until after block leave). I've been running and biking a little on my own to try to get back into shape. Apparently humping around all sorts of heavy shit is a lot different then running in short shorts and a PT shirt. I took the guys on a slow run around the hill. As we neared one of the motor pools and explosion went off which for a split second had us ducking our heads a little. "Thats fucked up!" was the consensus. It was pretty funny though.
Block leave is getting closer to becoming a reality and I very much so plan to set up a slide show on here if anybody still reads. Not much to write about as my secret identity life is pretty mundane. We spend most of our time with just Soldier maintenance trying to get everyones affairs in order and such. This weekend Setz is trying to organize a Squad sky diving session so we will see how that works out.
Another thing I have noticed is that at times I find myself extremely fucking bored. I watched the show DEA the other night and those guys are out doing raids and what not and I was there on my couch routing them on like it was some kind of Superbowl of sorts. I haven't held a weapon in weeks and I miss it.
My children keep me thoroughly entertained though for the most part. My oldest daughter was discussing a business venture that her and her BFF were planning. They were planning to make bracelets and sell them at school. I was pretty impressed, she even had a name for these bracelets. She says "We even have a name for them." "Whats that I asked." "TWOTS." she simply replied. Hmmmmmm. I thought to myself my ears ring pretty loudly and I'm not quite sure she said what I think she just did. "What was that baby? What are you calling them?" "Twots you know its a twist with a knot at the end." she said obviously annoyed by my lack of hearing. At this point my wife has hit the floor laughing and the look on my daughters face is utter confusion, she doesn't understand what is so funny about her business idea. "Indeed. Well thats great." I said. "So your going to be selling twots at school then?" My daughter looked at me and shook her head then looked down at her mother on the floor with a puzzled look on her face.
Through gasps of air between gut rolling laughter my wife explained to my eldest daughter what a twot was. We all had a good laugh at her embarrassed expense. The next day when she got home I asked her if she had sold any bracelets at school, and she gave me a false laugh and a smirk.
DEUCE DEUCE OUT!!!!

Chillin

Well I've been home for a week and some change now. Nothing really going on to much, just getting rid of the jet lag and spending time with my family. Coming home this time was different than the first time, I'm not checking the sides of the roads for IED's or anything. I catch myself more just taking in the scenery (my wife hates when I drive). Kansas has some nice scenery to take in thats for sure. I haven't ate out as much as I thought though you know I had to hit up the Flame Broiled Mecca for a beastly steak burger. I can definitely understand why the dude in the commercial powered his way to the window.
Our week has just been filled with in processing stuff or reverse SRP if you will. Making sure that our admin stuff is squared away and doing some medical check ups, a lot of briefs about reintegrating into real life. We are pretty much out at noon every day which is really nice. Nobody I know so far has gotten into any trouble. I'm proud of those guys before we left I would at least get one phone call on the weekend but since we've been back they have stayed pretty low key.
With getting out of "work" early I had the opportunity to go to my kids school and have lunch with them which is very interesting. I had lunch with my youngest and listened to a heated discussion between 2 boys and a girl. The one boy was saying how he wished he could get bitten by a spider like in Spiderman so that he could have Spiderman powers. The other boy he was talking to was like ya that would be cool. A young lady who over heard their conversation butted in (like women do sometimes) and made an attempt to squash their hopes (also another trait of women) of being bitten by a radioactive Spider. They went on back and forth until it was almost time to go to recess. I told them if they eat their peaches that it would give them the ability to run faster. Since this privy knowledge came from an adult soon the whole table had wolfed down their peaches and were prepared to go outside and try out their new power.
That situation in itself was very different since I was able to communicate with the children and there was no language barrier. The kids in Iraq loved us and would surround us for hand outs and be talking a mile a minute in their native language and through broken Arabic and English we could communicate a little bit.
I did find that I have a few quirks and one being I cannot stand the sound of dogs barking. I have a dog and she is the sweetest but her barking drives me in-fuckingsane. The quiet is another thing, after the kids go to bed it is so quiet. In Iraq there usually is a generator somewhere in the back round or dogs, or birds or some thing. Since it is so quiet the ringing in my ears is amplified, or I guess noticeable now and it is so loud that it irritates me.
My final bitch for now, we had a brief at the wee hours of the morning and it was over quickly so we decided to hit the chow hall for some breakfast. We waited an hour for it to open when we noticed people going into the front door. Taking the cue and thinking that they had opened fifteen minutes early we mozied on up to the door and went inside. Pretty much the whole DFAC staff which are civilians and Soldiers started bitching that they weren't open yet and being pretty rude about it. Well we didn't unlock the fucking door, so we waited in the breeze way for them to "Open". They opened and we got in line. At the DFAC in Iraq its ran by KBR and all of the people that serve the food are foreigners, from all sorts of different countries. Here the servers are Soldiers. I got in line to get my omelet, and the women making it was an E-4 a pregnant E-4 and she complained the whole time, did a shitty job making my omelet and took for fucking ever. In the box at least the dude though we didn't speak the same language understood ham, cheese, and mushroom, and could cook more than one omelet at a time, and moved down the line for some scrumptious bacon, and there was a male E-4 behind the counter. "Bacon." I said. I watched this high speed individual serve me up some scrambled eggs, you know of course I have an omelet and I really want so more fucking eggs? I tell him bacon again but this time a little louder. Fuck me I thought to myself at least the dude in Iraq could understand me. Well I ended up with a shit ton of eggs and some bacon.
Thats an update of my now boring but blessed life I apologize for stealing precious moments of your day. Once I become not so lazy I'm going to try and set up a slide show and probably in the future go over things that happened in Iraq that I forgot about or ready to talk about.
Thats it for now. Once again thank you for all of your support.
DEUCE DEUCE OUT!!

Finally

I sit here posting this one from the comfort and safety of my own home. Hanging out with my wife and she finishes up some homework she has due on Monday. It felt like forever from Rusty, to BIAP, to Kuwait and then to here. I stay in Kuwait was nice and short and they have the Customs portion down to an exact science it seems. With customs knocked out we were herded into the waiting area until our plane was ready for us. The weight of 15 months slowly started to drift away as the pilots roared away from Kuwait. We ate a light meal on the plane watched a movie and before we knew it we were in Germany. A quick pit stop and much needed smoke break for all the smokers and we were back on the bird for the long leg of the flight. I sat next to Doc so I had access to the best sleeping aides. When I woke up I saw the green hills, and forests of Maine. We were almost home, we were finally in the good ol' U, S, of A. We landed in Bangor Maine and were greeted by veterans of WWII and Vietnam and several other volunteers. They had free cell phones for us to use and also took a bunch of pictures which they posted seethepics, check out you might even see me in a couple of those.
We landed in Kansas and had to take care of some admin type things before we would head down to the ceremony. We mustered into the building and they formed us up. Everyone was thinking the same thing, "Hurry the fuck up." We've been waiting around for days now lets do this. We filed off one rank at a time into the main area where the families were waiting. I was one of the last people to come out and as the first entered the building you could here the cheering from the families watching to see which hero was theirs. They played the National Anthem, a quick prayer, and an even quicker speech from some Colonel I didn't even now and with a dismiss from the 1SG the families poured out of the bleachers. I saw mine, made my way to them, my daughters jumped in my arms. My son was a bit more hesitant but it was 3am after all. He came to me and I picked them all up. Tears welled up and in my eyes and spilled over it felt so good to embrace them instead of just their pictures. All the times that I spent wondering if I would ever get to this day all that emotion surfaced. My son spoke to me and it was so weird hearing his tiny voice in person I laughed.
We went home and settled down for essentially what was left of the night. I dozed off for about 2 hours when I opened my eyes my sons head was level with the bed and he was staring at me. He took off running and I woke up and went down stairs and made him breakfast. We didn't do to much that day. My daughter had soccer practice and before that I wanted to go see my friend. We drove to the Fort Riley cemetery and I walked among the rows of fallen heroes until I came across a newer looking marker. I knelt next to my friend and set a flag down for him and some other things. I thanked him for watching over us, and once again assured him that he will never be forgotten.
Today was great as my son woke me up early and told me "Daddy you need to come down and make me breakfast." No one can resist such an offer and I picked him up and treated him to some Trix. (Hey thats what he wanted!)
Home finally and it feels so good to be here. It was great when Setz came over and brought his family. His little girl played with my kids and I could tell by the look in his eyes that he was happy to be home and was completely in love with his lil lady. Everything is pretty surreal. Sleeping in a nice comfy bed next to my lovely wife. Raiding my own fridge, not having to walk 30m to the shitter, having my own private personal shitter, channel surfing.
When you are gone its like stepping into a time warp and when you come home you are hurled into ever day life. Apparently from what I understand the K-State students are excited to have the battle hardened Soldier's home apparently one lucky student was escorted out of a window by one of the returning Soldier's.
I know this post is pretty random but there is a lot of things going on right now. The jist of it is that I'm home. Finally, this time I really never felt like these days would get here. Thank you once again to all of you that have came here to read about what goes on over there and for all of your support. All of our friends at Soldier's Angel's, Books For Soldiers, and our friends from 15 minute Lunch. To everyone that stopped by. I really do appreciate all of your support.
I'll keep posting as I continue to sort things out and get my thoughts and feelings and everything in order. I did eat at AppleBees today and that was great not the best but its a 5 star compared to the KBR DFAC. Alright folks thank you again, and to all my brothers still out there stay safe and godbless.
DEUCE DEUCE OUT!!!!!

Pitcher's

Coming back from the DAK and these guys were looking all tough until the bullets started flying.This is a busy street and nobody was out and they parted a set this NP truck ablaze seconds after this pic was taken we started receiving heavy gun fire from all sides and found ourselves in a fire fight until we got back to the COP.
Back at the COP shooting militia pidgeons.
The cooks had left us to fend for our selves. Here Davis and Setz are grilling frozen lasagna and they used diesel fuel for extra flavoring.Chilling in BIAP waiting for the bird to take us to Kuwait.
Me on the bird going to Kuwait.
America land ho!The good and true Red White and Blue!!!!
D-Roll and Naughton Keep occupied at Bangor.
HOw do you keep grunts well behaved at the airport? Put one of those whirly quarter things in the Airport.

Ok I was really gonna try to make whitty comments for all the pics but the format for this shit is really kicking my ass and pissing me off.
Deuce Deuce Out!!!!!

HOME!!!!

We're HOOOOOOMMMMMMEEEE!!!!!!!
Stay tuned for pics and a post.
DEUCE DEUCE OUT!!!!

Half Way There

Just making a pit stop about 11 teen hours to go...................
deuce deuce alviederzein...!!!!!!

Purgatory

Well, I'm in Can'tWait now fucking finally got in here this morning at 3am tried to throw myself into a medicated slumber until somebody decided to wake me from it. As if I needed anymore time awake in the nightmare that I'm already living. We were stuck in limbo in Iraq for awhile waiting for a flight out. Finally got the word to go and boarded a big Chair Force plane. Nothing like sitting elbow to elbow with all your gear, bag, body armor, and weapons. The plane roared to life and we were off. We all cheered and breathed a sigh of relief to be the fuck off the ground and headed south. The pilots pulled into a steep climb which produced more cheers, hands went up into the air like some kinda psychotic roller coaster ride. The cheers from the Grunts in the back motivated the pilots for more gut wrenching maneuvers in a giant airplane. I'm sure the pilots were having a grand ol' time, and I was too I'm not gonna lie. Then they did one more and instead of cheers there was mostly grounds. I smiled happy to be making distance between Iraq and me. Not out yet but close enough to smile.
We touched down in Kuwait and were hurried on to bus after bus, some not having time to pee after the big plane ride, and took the opportunity to hang the wang out the window of the bus and piss on the go. I'm wondering what the bus driver in the bus behind us was thinking when both sides of our bus sprung a leak.
Kuwait is nice, I like it its find sand, its a little humid and your most positively out in the middle of no where. Nothing as you drive from camp to camp. Pitch black emptiness, and its quiet. We arrived at the camp and down loaded the gear. Unfortunately I was a man short because do to a serious fucking miscount they told us the plane was full and we had to drop 2 people. Sorry if your last name starts with Z, and Y. Then we get here and they tell us that a small portion will have to stay behind for the next flight. Most of us were pretty pissed and WTF was thrown out at will. The boyz of Charlie lucked out as we all made it on. We have a good portion of Charlie on the way home as I write these words. We were broken up a little bit, but shit as long as everyone makes it home I'm cool with that.
Honestly I can't even believe I'm here and its so close to going home. Granted I was here about 6 months ago for RnR but that was a lot different, I was going back to the shit hole and was uncertain whether or not I would get to be on the trip home. I find myself thinking of Joel and things we would be talking about, about how the pad in BIAP had changed and the deployment and all. I can't help but feel a little empty because I know that we did not bring everyone home. It kinda feels as though we left them there in Iraq. I know in my heart though that they are at peace on American soil in a better place, together watching over us. How else really could you explain everything that happened during the uprising and none of us being hurt or killed.
I'll be here for a few more hours, not gonna give you any times cuz that would just be really stupid of me but I will let you know when we are all kissing American soil, and our families. In the meanwhile I've to make a pit stop to get rid of the pizza thats seeping its way through my colon. Kuwait is great! They have a McDonalds here of all things. The internet is kinda pricey 5 bucks for an hour and considerably slower. Riddle me that one. Thats all the update I have for now. To all my brothers still in the shit keep your heads down and your trigger fingers itchy! To everyone else no shit, I'll catcha you on the flip side!
DEUCE DEUCE OUT!!!!!!!!!!!
PS
If anyone from 2/16 is reading this trying to get info on when we we are coming back keep contacting your FRG rep or go to the website. I understand that some FRG's really don't have a clue about whats going on right now (I know from talking to my friends who are married and my wife) but just keep contacting them if you haven't got an answer as of yet. I apologize for not putting anymore than I already now but unfortunately I cannot do that on a public website. I apologize for the inconvenience but we will be home soon.