A friend, this one, is on her way to California to provide support and food for the firefighters and/or displaced persons.

Also, my cousin, this one, deployed to Afghanistan last month. He told me when I saw him over the summer that the air force had recently changed the regs on ground crew carrying their M-16s–they are now required to carry them, whereas before they weren’t supposed to. I didn’t know whether to cheer or cry–I don’t want my cousin in the badlands without his gun, but they must consider the danger to the ground crews greater, or they wouldn’t have changed the regs.

Godspeed and good work.