Hi there,

Greetings from the East Coast of New England. As an organization who has a personal or professional interest in Veteran's Groups or post traumatic stress disorder, I am contacting you regarding my latest novel, THE LAST SURGEON and its Fundraiser launch party, on February 16th, 2010, to benefit the Massachusetts General Hospital Home Base Project.

The party will be held at the Paradise Rock Club in Boston -- an evening full of books, auctions, music, great food, and appearances by some of the country's best writers, including Lee Child, Tess Gerritsen, Gary Braver, Lisa Gardner, Joseph Finder, Andre Dubus III, Mark Vonnegut, William Martin, Sandra Lee, and Hank Phillippi Ryan.

If you are from the New England area, I would be thrilled if you could attend. All ticket proceeds and a portion of the book sales will benefit the Home Base PTSD Program. It's a great event for a great cause. You can purchase tickets by visiting the LiveNation website.

For those who can't make it, I encourage you to help spread the word.

Between today and February 16th, 2010, I'll be conducting a little fundraiser of my own via social media. It's free to participate and a great way to help out.

Here's how it works:

1. I'll donate $1 to the Mass General Hospital Red Sox Homebase PTSD Foundation for every additional Facebook fan I acquire until book launch on February 16th, 2010. I encourage you to spread the word and to suggest for your friends to become fans -- it's an easy way to help a great cause.

2. For you Twitter users, I'll also be donating an additional $1 for all followers who adopt THE LAST SURGEON Twibbon. If you have a Twitter profile, simply click HERE to get started.

I would love it if you could help out in some way to support this event. If you cannot attend, I'd appreciate it very much if you could help pass along this message to contacts who might be of interest.

Warm Regards,

Michael Palmer

It is important for all of us — citizens who truly support the troops and who honor our veterans — to become active and remain engaged in protecting the warrior legacy. As we head into a new year, I implore everyone in the military, veterans, their families and the general public to learn about proposed and pending legislation and to be energetic in communicating their opinions to their Senators and Representatives. This is important not just at the federal level, but at the state levels as well. 

As state and federal legislators look to reduce spending or find funding for pet (read: pork) projects, military and veterans programs will be looked at as likely sources for cuts, because of their relative size to other budget commitments. Our watchfulness will be vitally important to the roughly 1.4 million personnel on active duty, the additional 900,000 members of the Reserve and National Guard and the 23.2 million military veterans in the United States.

Over at PBS.org I have written a post about the meaningful bonds that are forged during military service... among soldiers... among wives... among parents...

Throughout the course of our lifetimes, we make and break bonds with people. Some bonds are formed in friendship: schoolmates, neighbors, fellow workers. I have close friends from each of those groups. I maintain, however, that the bonds forged in military service are perhaps the strongest of all bonds. Stronger than steel. Stronger than adversity. Stronger than time.

We all know the story of veterans sittin' around and one says, "No shit!! There I was..." followed by a story of improbability or hilarity, typically punctuated with profanity, irreverent phrases and sordid images. It will end with much backslapping and hearty handshakes. The circle might contain members of a single unit or a single war, or it might contain an assortment of veterans from many of this nation's conflicts. But they are bonded and tied to each other by the commonality of their service. Some are bonded by the mettle and the blood of battle. You need look no further than the Illiad or the St. Crispen's Day speech from Shakespeare's Henry V for evidence of the emotional connection these men share.

[snip]

Some of my closest friends today are people I didn't know before my son deployed. We met via military blogs (including my own) and private online Internet forums established by parents of soldiers — one by a Third Infantry Division parent, another established by military moms for military moms. These were places to share information, to share worry, to celebrate good news and to commiserate when the news was bad. These were places that let us share this bond, hammered and shaped by our worry for our sons and daughters.

These relationships are equal parts ethereal and practical; as much emotional as they are physical. It involves both the spiritual and the material worlds — prayers and novena candles as well as care packages and cookie recipes. It is an inclusive sisterhood for which we did not volunteer, but in which we are now forever members.