[PW] ?what to send to soldiers

[S M Colowick]

I'm reading a memoir of a soldier's life in Afghanistan, Blood Makes
The Grass Grow Green by Johnny Rico. He has a chapter called "The
folly of well-meaning people from places with names like Ohio", in
which the soldiers make fun of the clueless people who send them
shampoo, toothpaste, Western novels, and "Dear Soldier" letters
written by children. All they really want, the book implies, is
cigarettes and porn (magazines like Penthouse and Hustler will do). At
the end of the day they end up throwing away just about everything
else. Still, when they don't get any packages in the next mail, they
take it "extremely personally and as indicative of a low type of
national character . . ." Of course, this is just one opinion, and
these were all men. Surely women would appreciate shampoo, even if, as
was the case in the book, they have no showers.

That said, there's this: http://www.anysoldier.com/

Susie

On Fri, May 9, 2008 at 8:41 AM, Mary Barna <mbarna at albright.org> wrote:
> One of our former pages is in Afghanistan and we would like to collect
>  items for packages to send to him and his unit.  I know there are some
>  things we can't send.  Does anyone have a list of what to send?
>
>
>  Mary Barna, Director
>  Valley Community Library
>  739 River Street
>  Peckville, PA  18452 - 2313
>  phone: 570.489.1765 ext. 3   fax:  570.383.9657
>  email: mbarna at albright.org
>  webpage: www.lclshome.org/valley
>
>  _______________________________________________
>  Project Wombat
>  list at project-wombat.org
>  http://www.project-wombat.org/
>