A Letter to the President from Dr. Friedberg

[GettysbergII]

Dear Mr. Bush,

It's been a while since I've written--I apologize, I've been busy looking
working on the very hard work of preserving democracy at home. But it's good
to see that you're staying on top of the march for freedom in Iraq and the
tsunami relief efforts. I was extremely moved by the way you dug deep into
the bulge region of your own pockets and sent a whole 10 grand over there to
help those people. What a wonderful thing to do.

I've been making a lot of contributions to other causes these days: I sent
some phone cards to the wounded soldiers at Walter Reed and a bunch of
winter coats to some very needy people on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation
in South Dakota. Since our state university no longer has the funds to do
it, I'm picking up the tab for lunch at an educational event later this
much. Then of course I've sent a few hundred to some of the efforts to help
straighten out this election mess. What a debacle, huh? We really need to
get a handle on that.

The bulge in my pants will never come as close to the one you've got, so I
haven't even hit the 4-digit mark in my contributions--but I've been doing
what I can to help keep our people stay afloat while you concentrate your
efforts on freedom for Iraq and tsunami victims in Asia--and I know
thousands of Americans who are doing the same.


It sure is unfortunate that I didn't get this message until after I'd sent
so much money to all these other causes because I got a call for help today
that just about floored me: I found myself wishing I hadn't made all those
contributions, because, well, these people REALLY need our help. Anyway, I
got to thinking: that Mr. Bush, he's a generous man, and he sure has a lot
of money. Maybe he'd be willing to help. So I decided to break my long
silence and drop you another line, just to see if you might be willing and
able to help me out here. You know God will love you for it, and we sure
would be grateful--forever and ever, we would pray for you and pray and pray
that all the blessings and burdens you have worked all these years so hard
to earn should rain down upon you -- like justice in a sea of infamy.

What the heck, Mr. Bush, I'm just going to cut to the chase: I got this
message today and I don't know what else to do with it but to pass it on to
you in the hope that you may be able to do something about it. I hope so
because frankly, I'm just tapped:


Can you help?

A true emergency is confronting the Indian People on the Sioux
Reservations of the Northern Plains in South Dakota. Sarah Swift Hawk, a
Grandmother living in the village of Spring Creek on the Rosebud
Reservation, froze to death in her own home (meaning a shack) because
she couldn't afford to pay for fuel. The cost of propane fuel, which
is used by most of the people on the reservations who have any capacity
for heat at all in their homes has become so inflated that record
numbers of families are in grave danger again this year. The federal low
income home energy assistance program (LIHEAP) in South Dakota recently
lost $300 million in energy assistance funds. The Pine Ridge Reservation
by the way is the most poverty-stricken community in the United States.
To meet this critical need the American Indian Relief Council has
established a Winter Fuel Emergency Fund to subsidize Propane purchases
for those most at risk on the Sioux Reservations -- THE ELDERS. Since
you will not see this emergency crisis dramatized on TV or in the
newspapers it is all the more important that contributions of any amount
be sent to:

Winter Fuel Emergency Fund American Indian Relief Council
PO Box 6200
Rapid City, SD 57709-6200
http://www.airc.org

Thank you so much for your time and attention.

God bless,

Lilian Friedberg

[Pam-Moby]

1. Such a sad letter. I hope that they get the funds needed. n/t