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Free Text Messaging for Deployed Personnel Thanks to New Partnership of eMailOurMilitary and Tatango

Here's today's news of free text messaging for deployed troops thanks to eMailOurMilitary and Tatango:

Tatango, the Seattle-based SMS service firm, has partnered with Miami-based eMail Our Military (eMOM) to connect deployed military service members with their loved ones back home through text messaging.

Tatango has created an interface exclusively for military personnel, which easily allows any service member to instantly update all their loved ones on events of the day, advancements and most importantly, their safety.

Read the rest of this article at http://snipurl.com/textmessaging

Easy Way to Support Our Troops: Introduce Trish, Nancy and Me to a Company Interested in a Social Media Promotion

I’m taking my own advice and networking through this blog to find a possible connection for a fundraising project that I want to do to help www.emailourmilitary.com. 

Here’s the story: Trish Forant of eMailOurMilitary and Nancy Sutherland, sales director of May Kay, and I conducted a successful fundraising campaign for Operation Soldier Care (see http://snipurl.com/oscsuccess) using primarily social media such as Twitter and Facebook and our own blogs.

Now eMailOurMilitary is getting ready for its holiday project for deployed troops. How to help raise funds for this project? 

Why not have Trish, Nancy and me recreate our successful Operation Soldier Care social media fundraising campaign for a company that wants a promotion to help expand awareness of its products or brand?  In fact, I’ve just written a proposal as to how this would work for a cable tv network. But the overall promotion plan could work for any type of company. 

If you’re reading this blog post, I’d appreciate it if you would put on your thinking cap. Let me know if you can make an introduction for us to someone at a company who might be interested in this proposal. For example, it could be a military-related insurance company such as USAA or a new magazine or new website that wants exposure in social media and on blogs.

And if your introduction is the one that succeeds in getting a promotion partner for us, I’ll be happy to send you an autographed copy of MRS. LIEUTENANT: A SHARON GOLD NOVEL. 

Helping to find a company interested in this fundraising project is an easy way to support our troops. (And, of course, we’ll thank you in all our blogs.) 

You can email me through my website www.mrslieutenant.com. 

Syndicated from www.mrslieutenant.blogspot.com

U.S. Army Introduces Interactive DVD to Help Prevent Suicides

Thanks to Trish Forant (www.emailourmilitary.com) for her tweet on Twitter I learned about the U.S. Army’s new efforts to prevent suicides.

Col. Elspeth C. Ritchie, director of the Army Medical Department’s Strategic Communications and formerly psychiatry consultant to the army’s surgeon general, said that soldiers might be aware of risk signs of suicide in other soldiers but not know how to approach those soldiers. 

The army is now rolling out a new interactive DVD that features realistic video vignettes about two soldiers who have problems. And this DVD will allow soldiers to practice how to aid potential suicide victims.

According to the September 3rd article in www.army.mil/-news by Gary Sheftick titled “Interactive DVD among new tools to prevent suicides”: 

The video, or “virtual experience immersive learning simulation,” also known as VEILS, follows the problems of the two soldiers and their stories change based on input from the viewer. 

If the viewer says the wrong thing and gets bad results, Ritchie said the DVD will allow the trainee to re-do the vignette until the outcome is more favorable. 

Thousands of copies of the DVD, developed by Lincoln University in Missouri, will be distributed this fall. And the vignettes can be seen on the web page of the Army Center for Health Promotion and Preventive Medicine at http://snipurl.com/armyprevention.

Read the full article at http://snurl.com/3mykk.

All This Vietnam Veteran Wanted Was a Welcome Home

Today two movers came to my house to move furniture to my younger daughter’s apartment. One man noticed my husband’s military history books. 

“I was in the army for 10 years,” he said. “Four tours in Vietnam.”

I told him that I had just written a novel about that time and I asked if he’d like a copy. He said yes and asked if I’d sign it.

And he wanted the book signed to 1LT (first lieutenant) and his full name. And then he asked if I’d add that this was from the wife of 1LT Mitch Miller (my husband) and the words “Welcome Home.” 

“I didn’t get a ‘welcome home,’” he said. “I got called a babykiller by a Hare Krishna. I pulled off his hair tail and got thrown in jail only three hours after I arrived back in the U.S. Only time I was ever in jail.”

After the man moved another piece of furniture, he told me he became a sheriff in LA County after that. But he decided to leave the sheriff’s department after the following incident: 

He had his gun out as he passed down the side of a house looking for someone. An eight-year-old boy pointed a .357 Magnum at him. “And the only reason I didn’t shoot and kill that little boy was because I’d been in Vietnam. I’d learned to use my peripheral vision. And I saw that the gun’s bullet chamber wasn’t in alignment.

“That’s why I got out. When I realized I could have killed that boy who didn’t know any better. Just doing what his parents had taught him.” 

As the mover departed he said, “Tell you husband ‘welcome home’ from one vet to another.” 

Fighting back the tears, I turned to my daughter and said, “Those feelings never die. It’s been so many years and yet all he wanted was someone to say ‘welcome home.’”

Syndicated from www.mrslieutenant.blogspot.com

 

Looking Back at Katrina as New Orleans Braces for Gustav

Tonight while monitoring the tweets on Twitter about Gustav -- including the helpful communication info from a representative of Sprint -- I also read one of Big Tobacco’s older posts describing his experiences when his National Guard unit was in New Orleans after Katrina.

As you may recall, Big Tobacco is a National Guard infantryman currently deployed somewhere in Kuwait. Apparently he’s on the move from one FOB (Forward Operating Base) to another and he’s going to be away from internet access. So he kindly provided a list of some of his past blog posts for his fans to read while he’s offline.

That’s how I came across his Katrina post, which I highly recommend you read. There are some very funny moments (the military mind at work) and some very ugly moments (the boots-on-the-ground situation patrolling the streets of New Orleans). Taken together, the post is a very interesting first-hand look at New Orleans in the aftermath of Katrina.

And at this point, all we can hope is that history doesn’t repeat itself in New Orleans only three years after Katrina.

Here’s the link to Big Tobacco’s Katrina post: http://tinyurl.com/6h59vq 

And here’s the link to my PZ the Do-Gooder Scrooge blog post about an online central information point for news of Gustav: http://tinyurl.com/6pkccj 

(Just saw a warning on Twitter not to shoot video of Gustav from cell phones while driving. This is dangerous!)

 Syndicated from www.mrslieutenant.blogspot.com