ShelterBox
Dearest friends,
It is indeed my birthday. As some of you know, way back I used to be just a regular blogger here trying to be anonymous and express my opinions. My writing and my real life were separate. Why?
Cause I was a Texas Democrat and I was living in Conservative Alberta. My spouse was at the time a university president at a time when Ralph Klein was premier of Alberta. So I had to hobb nobb in fancy clothes with the movers and shakers in Edmonton sometimes. Canadian oil men, progressive conservatives, First Nations chiefs. I became a Rotarian to meet more people in our community. It was then I learned about ShelterBox.
When the Haitian earthquake happened in 2010, I wrote a diary about ShelterBox. You, the Daily Kos community embraced it and I kept writing. You spread my writing to other sites. Other bloggers here also wrote diaries to keep it going! I didn’t own writing about the website. I think I work like for a month and we counted donations reported in the comments. It was wonderful to be able to really help in bad times. ShelterBox provided the first tents that doctors could do surgery. So many people shared it that the ShelterBox website almost went down their donation software couldn’t handle it. They wanted to know, what is the Daily Kos? Who is TexMex? ShelterBox got many donations that I never will know about.
I got outed in the Orlando Sentinel. Fortunately, our university communications office managed the news announcement to leave out the “Democratic” part of the Daily Kos. But now there was a new problem. How did I raise a ton of money for the American ShelterBox all the way from Lethbridge, Alberta? So when the news was released, the local Rotarians began to raise more money for ShelterBox Canada. A teacher was taped to the local school gym wall by selling strips of masking tape to students. I received a citation from the Rotary District Governor and was given a Paul Harris Medal. I got all of this because of you and your great generosity. If you click on my diaries you will see I have written many about ShelterBox.
There is so much bad going on, I have been listening to music more. I am happy about the hostages being freed and love Joe Biden for all he had done.
I just felt I needed to spend some time just writing about an organization with great people that can take small donates to help in disaster areas.
www.shelterboxusa.org
I have drunk dark beer in Tolkien’s favorite bar. I have stayed in Bloemfontein. If you really know me, you know I am fairly tiny.
Arthur Tolkien emigrated from Birmingham to South Africa in 1889 to gain promotion at work. John Ronald Reuel Tolkien, author of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, was born in Bloemfontein, an Afrikaans-speaking area of South Africa, on 3 January 1892. His father had become a bank manager there.
Dan Otte, Bill and Me.
The roaches of Swandini