This Is Not A Democracy

Has anyone here ever been to Denny's and would therefore be able to tell me about what the places are like?

So, when we were in the US, Julie and I had this amazing, amazing bread in the Cheesecake Factory, which was dark, dark brown and had oats on top.

Does anyone know what kind of bread that is?

Hello Everyone,

I sincerely hope the New Year brings you all that you wish for and a good year for everyone.

Unfortunately, this will not be the case for a lot of Elders on the Pine Ridge Reservation, many struggling to bring up Grandchildren also. This is the case on other Lakota reservations too. I am being told of Elders sitting in the cold because they have no money for fuel for heating. I have just been told of one full blood Lakota man that collects soda cans just to try and get some money for fuel and food!! The Elder is not on his own, there are way too many that have to live this way and no help is ever given.

I am slowly accumulating a list of people that live in the remoter areas of the reservation lands, and are always struggling just to try and get through life, especially in the winter months, and I am putting this newsletter out to ask for help for these people.

You can help by sending a few dollars, or a food parcel etc, and also by writing to them and touching the hearts of these people, thus giving them some hope that someone, somewhere cares!!

If anyone would like more information about this project I am trying to build up, then please e-mail me at:- info@lakota-aid.co.uk

If you would like to make a difference to an Elders life, no matter how small a contribution, then please contact me and I will give you the relevant information for an Elder.

Also, I am going back to South Dakota in march of this year after a couple years gap due to personal circumstances. I am so looking forwards to seeing my friends on the reservation again, but this will also be a trip in which I intend to do a lot of research and gain more knowledge of conditions etc on the reservation.

Bearing in mind that I live in the UK, I am intending to do more talks after this trip about my work with the Lakota people and if anyone would like me to do a talk on this subject, then again please e-mail me at:-

info@lakota-aid.co.uk

Thank you for reading this newsletter and I hope that this appeal will touch the hearts of many people.

Best Wishes for 2008

Brenda – www.lakota-aid.co.uk

People who know more advanced HTML than I do: I need to create links in those little scroll boxes so people can copy the text and paste it to their own LJ/MySpaces. How do I do that?

Can anyone point me to an easy to use file conversion software? My phone generates .m4 files that I can't play anywhere.


:(

US kids - what month do you finish your penultimate year of high school? June or July?

Also, what when do you start sending applications to colleges?

Some of you might have seen the new community on the LJ Spotlight, payingitforward - a community where people ask for help for third parties, and others do what they can; or just talk about the nice things they've done, or people have done for them.

Well, here's mine - and it's not what you think:

Over the weekend, after the initial discovery was made about Brenda ceasing the in-take of donations for Lakota-Aid, I paid $20.00 (p+p) as a donation for the DVD about Pine Ridge. Then, the next day, I paid $25.00 to the Propane Fund from the Friends of Pine Ridge.

I spent hours emailing people and organisations and creating lakota_support - trying to rally supporters (even just people who can pass on word of what is going on - or indeed, what is not) and bring to light what is happening.

During the day, I received information about a little boy with leukaemia and made my first post at payingitforward.

Laying in bed, last night, I couldn't sleep for thinking about Pine Ridge and how I could raise money and awareness, and help poor little Marcus Ten Fingers. I came up with some ways and did a few calculations, and today I sent $100 cash (recorded, don't worry) direct to his family, with a card and some sweets/candy.

Walking to my psychic development group in the rain, in the middle of London, in the evening rush hour, I still wanted to do more. It's like eating, but never feeling full - no matter how much I gave, it felt insufficient.

And then, I stopped to buy something for dinner in a supermarket, and when I returned outside - still dark, still wet, still awash with commuters oblivious to the world around them, blanking the homeless man in the doorway, attempting to make a living from selling The Big Issue.

I stopped, and pulled out my wallet, asking how much it cost, these days.

"£1.50", he told me, and started to take a new copy out of his little plastic wallet.

And I realised something: I never read the actual magazine. I buy it to help the sellers out.

"Here," I said, giving him the money, "you may as well keep the copy and sell it to someone else, I never read it - just cut out the middle-man and take the money."

The grateful smile and the sincere 'thank you' that man gave me - for just £1.50 ($3.00) - was so rewarding. I finally felt like I'd done something to make someone's day just a little bit better. And I realised how hard I've been any time I've walked past the sellers in the street who are trying to make a living, even in their position, when they could be begging.

I'm not going to get to see the smiles on the faces of the Ten Fingers family, but if they're even a fraction as grateful as he was - and I'm confident they will be, for anything anyone can give - it'll be worth having to tighten the purse strings for the rest of the month.

After some discussion with friends, I have created this community: lakota_support.

Together, if we can't raise much in monetary terms, at least we can raise awareness.

I'd really appreciate your help, guys.

On an entirely separate note, would anyone be happy to competently translate some English into German for me, please?

I don't have the text right now, but I'll need it in the next week or two.

Pwease?