measi's Diaryland Diary ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- United We Stand I came home this evening to find a lumpy Priorty Mail envelope in my mailbox. I immediately recognized my dad's quite-good-for-a-doctor handwriting, with the return address being titled "A Proud American". I immediately thought that he'd sent me some sort of American flag, since I'd mentioned how it was impossible to find them up here right now. But in it, I found a white T-shirt... with a quite cool crackled-print USA, flag, and "United We Stand" design, with my hometown (Billings, Montana) underneath, and in smaller, black letters, 09/11/01. Along with the shirt was a note from my father, which I wanted to share... because it makes me so proud of the people in my hometown: "God Bless America Dear "M"-- Here's a little piece of history and hometown patriotism. These shirts were designed and printed locally by Sutton's to help raise money for the Red Cross efforts in New York-- they initially thought 2,000 shirts would be sold. Actually, 25,000 and counting have been sold in one week, which means a check of $200,000 is going to the Red Cross. Think it might even be on the Oprah show on 9/27/01. Love you, Dad and Anne Articles from the Billings Gazette can be found here, here, and here. I didn't find any info on the Oprah site about showing Billings, and if anyone watched last Thursday's show, please let me know if something was shown. With all of the bad press about the freaks who find their way to Montana (the Unabomber, the Freemen, etc), it's nice to find something good coming from home. Something small that when people ask me "Oh, you're from Montana... that state with all of the freaks?" I can say "Yes... I'm from the one where a small silk screening company managed to sell enough shirts to send over $200,000 to the Red Cross within a week of the disaster. I'm from that state of patriotic Americans willing to help strangers out on the other side of the country... help people who generally don't even know where Montana is." This is grassroots patriotism. And it's one I can proudly get behind. Gods Bless America. --mel. 7:01 p.m. - 1 October 2001 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
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