15.10.04

When I got to work this morning I found in my mailbox a bright yellow flyer from our wonderful friends at Human Resources. Our City is putting together a care package drive for the military in Iraq. They provided a nice long list of most requested items on the back of the flyer. One of the items listed was reading material and next to it the human resource person put “be careful what’s in it!”. I was very taken aback by this. What exactly am I supposed to be careful about? Our soldiers have the right to read whatever they want. I stood completely baffled for a moment trying to figure out if there was some sort of security issue that I hadn’t thought about, but I couldn’t come up with anything. As a student of library science one of the first things I would want to send a soldier is a book. But I refuse to participate in this drive if my human resource department is going to thumb through the book I choose to make sure I was “careful” enough.
After doing some surfing I discovered that the military doesn’t really want communities to send large bulks of care packages because it creates the nuisance of extra security precautions. Instead, they suggest donating money to services like the USO or the Red Cross. If your like me and would prefer to donate “care packages for the mind” then try Books for Soldiers or Books for Baghdad.