:: meanders ::
souvenirs from the space-time continuum

Following a link from the jaw-droppingly prolific Glenn Reynolds'Instapundit, I went today to Michael Yon's Online Magazine. His writing reads like entries from a soldier's journal, details of daily routine interspersed with glimpses of soldiers and civilians, more matter of fact rather than queroulous about the on-going events of a war-front less visible since the close of the political campaigns last year.

Writing from assignment in Iraq, his latest entry chronicles a peer-to-peer effort between medical officers in the military and Iraqi doctors to modernize Iraq's sadly inadequate medical references.

Doctors Gifford (Ret. Army) and Garza (4th ID) began a small internet campaign where they sent emails and posted notices on websites for their alma maters, asking for donations of medical text books. Almost immediately, the response outraced their expectations. Although the donations began arriving through simple channels (mostly by mail or personal delivery), as groups of students and teachers in the US learned of the program, and began to work collectively, the size of the deliveries began to be measured in tons.

There is a regulation prohibiting soldiers from directly soliciting donations, which goes a way to explain why civilian support groups, such as the one that evolved from this project, are so important in getting the word out. The internet again proves that the world is small and that uptapped wealth can be put to wonderfully powerful uses. Please read Michael Yon's dispatch for more information on donating medical textbooks and journals.