Tag: charity

The House Is On Fire

Jerked awake with the fire alarm blaring. You tumble out of bed, grab your family, your pets, and head for the nearest exit. You escape the fire with your loved ones, then you call the fire department and hope they can save your house. That’s what you’re supposed to do, right? What if instead you and your family are running from the fire and you stop with the door insight, but you all start arguing with each other on what started the fire. Was it an electrical short, did someone leave a candle burning, was the stove left on, and your family begins to accuse each other of starting the fire while you’re still inside the burning house? Instead of escaping with your lives, you stay inside the fire and fight about whose fault the fire is instead of escaping.

You’re probably reading this and thinking, “Who would do that? No one would do that?”

Australia is on fire, literally(https://www.cbsnews.com/pictures/australia-fires-deadly-wildfire-photos-2019-2020/). This is after California was on fire (https://www.nbcnews.com/news/california-wildfires). The Amazon was on fire (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_Amazon_rainforest_wildfires). Our house is on fire and we’re arguing whose caused the fire. We’re so busy pointing fingers and shouting at each other that it’s your fault, their fault, that we aren’t putting out the fire and saving as many lives as we can. Priorities, my fellow earthlings, priorities. Let’s put out the fires, lets figure out how to save the polar bears as the ice melts, lets save the bees and all the other insects. They’re food for birds as well as the major pollinators for our food crops. If we lose our insects, we are next, for so many reasons. But I’m not here to be all doom and gloom, I’m here to share some hope. We can do this. We can put out the fires both real and metaphorical. We can turn around or come up with new solutions for what’s happening to our planet, our home. I don’t believe that we have these great big brains for nothing, or that we have compassionate hearts for no purpose.

I’d planned on writing this blog last night, because the Australian government didn’t seem to be supporting their rural firefighters or rescuing the animals trapped in the fires. This morning the Prime Minister of Australia has promised two billion to support fire relief efforts (https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/australia-commits-billions-dollars-wildfire-recovery-n1111021), so I thought I would skip this blog where I was going to list charities to send your money and mine to today, and then I realized that money promised isn’t money in the pockets of charities today. It’s a promise and eventually they will get the money, but no government gives out that kind of cash quickly. They want to be sure it goes to the right place, or where they think is the right place. The charities will have to jump through some bureaucratic hoops to get some of the funds, that’s just the way it works, so … here’s a list of charities. If you give a dollar today it will get to them quicker than the billions promised. If everyone who reads this blog gives a dollar, or five dollars, or whatever they can afford it will help.

See, there’s the hope to share. We can help each other. We can grab each other by the hand even if we are thousands of miles away and give hope and real help to each other. Give a dollar, send the donations that people are asking for, we are not helpless in the face of all this, if we work together to save each other and the other riders on this big, beautiful planet.

If we stop arguing about how we got here and start working to come up with solutions, we can all get out of the fire, and we can save our home, this planet at the same time.

These are Charites related to the fire that have been vetted by news sources, (CBS affiliated News) and the links are reputable.

These are vetted links to the fire fighters

https://www.rfs.nsw.gov.au/volunteer/support-your-local-brigade

https://www.cfa.vic.gov.au/about/supporting-cfa

https://cfsfoundation.org.au/donate

https://www.rfbaq.org/donate-to-rfbaq

Charities helping General

https://au.gofundme.com/f/fire-relief-fund-for-first-nations-communities

https://www.redcross.org.au/campaigns/disaster-relief-and-recovery-donate#donate

https://www.communityenterprisefoundation.com.au/make-a-donation/bushfire-disaster-appeal/

https://donate.vinnies.org.au/appeals-nsw/vinnies-nsw-bushfire-appeal-nsw

https://frrr.org.au/cb_pages/supporting_bushfire-affected_communities.php

https://www.globalgiving.org/projects/australian-wildfire-relief-fund/?rf=pr

Animal Charites

https://www.rspcansw.org.au/bushfire-appeal/

https://donate.wwf.org.au/donate/2019-trees-appeal-koala-crisis#gs.qwx2wb

https://donate.zoo.org.au/donation

https://www.gofundme.com/f/help-thirsty-koalas-devastated-by-recent-fires

https://www.gofundme.com/f/help-save-kangaroo-islands-koalas-and-wildlife

https://www.wires.org.au/donate/ways-to-help

Strength and Your Amazing Generosity

I’ve been under the weather for a couple of days, nothing major, but enough to distract me, so imagine my surprise when I saw how much above and beyond you guys had donated to our charity from Giving Tuesday, Mary’s House of Hope at A Safe Place. Thank you for donating on Tuesday and for continuing to donate. You guys are the best! In fact you’ve been so amazing that we’re going to keep the fundraising going. I’ve signed so many books and we will continue to give away signed books as long as you guys keep giving so generously to this wonderful charity.

I’ve chosen to do a couple of very personal blogs recently. One with the video from my Pikes Peak Writer’s Conference keynote speech where I talked publicly for the first time about what has happened in my life when fans became obsessed, and/or turned into haters, or worse. Then I followed up with an equally personal blog explaining why I chose the charity that I did. Your reaction to both blogs has been overwhelmingly positive and supportive, thank you all so much. In fact, you’ve been so lovely about it all that I’ve decided to continue to share.

When I was first being interviewed about the Anita Blake novels, almost every journalist asked me some variation of this, “Why did you decide to write a strong female character?”

My reply was a variation of, “Growing up I learned, that you were either strong, or a victim. It never occurred to me to have a main character that was anything else but strong.”

My grandmother fought back against my grandfather and never let his abuse turn her into a victim. She was a fighter and she helped make me one, too. She’s a big part of why Anita Blake is so strong, stubborn, and unflinching. Her telling me that Rawhead and Bloody Bones would get me if I was a bad little girl, instead of the boogeyman, would give me a plot for the fifth Anita Blake novel, Bloody Bones, and send me researching Celtic mythology, which led me to write the Meredith Gentry series. My grandmother probably helped me give strength to Merry in the face of the abuse of her own family. Helping turn her from helpless princess to Los Angeles Private Detective and Queen. You, the fans, have told me that Anita’s strength, Merry’s strength, have helped you be strong in your real lives. Strength shared is strength multiplied, let’s keep sharing the best of ourselves, and thank you again for your generosity to Mary’s House of Hope, at a Safe Place.

Wreaths Across America

  
The rows of white stones march out and out across the neatly clipped grass, each stone marks a grave, each grave marks a soldier, or family member, who has passed. I’ve stood at Arlington National Cemetery and wept at the endless rows of headstones, but I didn’t know that there was another cemetery much closer to home where the uniform white stones march out and out. Jefferson Barracks Cemetery was established in about 1827 and made a National Cemetery in 1866, when the National Cemetery Administration was established. It’s just down the road here in St. Louis.  
I’ve seen it twice this year, the first at the funeral of my sister’s father of record, and the second on the day when Wreaths Across America invites people to join them at cemeteries like Arlington and Jefferson Barracks to honor those who have paid the ultimate price for our country. Wreaths Across America is a charity that receives no money from the government, it’s all donations from people like you and me. Jonathon, Genevieve, Spike, and myself went expecting we’d be there for hours helping lay wreaths, but unfortunately there were so few wreaths that everyone in attendance was asked to only take one, or two, so that everyone there could lay at least one wreath on a grave. 

  
A news story on CNN about Arlington National Cemetery not having enough wreaths to cover all the graves this year was what first brought Wreaths Across America to our attention. We even donated to the cause, as did many others, and it was enough so that Arlington was able to put a wreath on every grave this year. They said in the interview that most cemeteries were embraced by their local town, because so many local military were buried there, but Arlington was made up of soldiers that weren’t local, so the surrounding area didn’t feel connected enough to contribute. The interview made us think that here in St. Louis there would be enough wreaths to go around, but there was not.
In fact, there were only about 1,100 wreathes to go on the 180,000 graves. It was upsetting to see all the bare white tombstones, and the few evergreen wreaths. I guess a few was better than none, but it still seemed sad, and left all of us feeling like we need to do better next year. I’ll say it here and now, that we plan to contribute more next year and would like to have a goal of honoring many more of our fallen soldiers next year by helping our local Wreaths Across America.  

  
The other interesting thing about the ceremony was that it was full of speeches where people talked about this country with unabashed patriotism and pride. There was no apologizing, or over explaining, or any of the language that has crept into so many politicians and citizen’s speeches lately. It harkened back to when I was a child. I was taught to be proud to be American and that it was the best country in the world to call home. You know what, I still believe that. I’ve visited several other countries and they are all wonderful in their own right, but they aren’t home. I don’t believe our country is perfect, but then the same is true of every other country. I sat there and thought, here is an entire group of people of diverse race, religion, economics, and age, but we were all there to honor the ideal that we are still the home of the brave, and the land of the free, and that last part, freedom, came with a price that the men and women lying dead around us had paid. I will not apologize for honoring the dead of my country and it was wonderfully freeing to be in such a large group of people that felt the same way.  
Let me say, that if you disagree with me, that’s okay, because something else I was taught as a child was this, America is about being free to believe, to worship, to vote, to have an opinion that is your own. I may not agree with you, or you with me, but I will fight for your right to have your own opinion and beliefs, as you are supposed to fight for my right. We are supposed to fight for each other, not against each other. We can disagree vehemently, and it’s okay if our opinions anger each other, but we are still supposed to honor each other’s right to those opinions. That is what it means to be free in America. We are free to believe, to speak, to worship, to study, to work, to create as we will, and the government will not stop us, or arrest us for it. I don’t think most Americans realize how rare that is in the world.  
Spike walked out among the white lines of graves in his uniform. He had been thanked for his service by several people, and thanked others in return. He still doesn’t like being too visible in the blog, but as a combat vet himself, he felt it was important to show his respect. We missed the opportunity for donating enough to Wreaths Across America to cover the graves at Jefferson Barracks, but there is always next year. The dead are patient and they’ll wait, but for the living veterans and their families it’s harder to wait. The dead have all the shelter they will ever need, they do not know hunger or thirst, sorrow or terror, the cold does not move them, illness and injury are things of the past for the dead, but there are living veterans and their families that need shelter, food, medical care, and just to know that their sacrifices aren’t in vain. Here are just a few charities that try to help the men and women who served in our armed forces, and their famili 

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Hope for the Warriors

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Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America

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USO

https://www.uso.org/