Helping Michael Czarnecki and Foothills Publishing

(The following text is from a  an email from Michael Czarnecki a couple of weeks back following the news that his family's house had burned down while the family was away, causing them to lose both their home and nearly everything related to Foothills Publishing including archives and production equipment.  Just to update, a later email related that they have been able to repurchase their production equipment.  Still, there is much to be done.  I urge all writing buddies (both tagged and untagged) to donate via the addresses below and pass this note on to anyone else who can help.)

First of all, many thanks and heartfelt gratefulness to all of you who have been responding with offers of help, good thoughts and prayers. We are humbled by the response.

First of all, we'll be arriving back home (ah, the hill is still home, whether a house is there or not) Sunday, mid- afternoon.  I'll go over briefly a bit of where we are at with needs etc.

Temporary housing - three different people have made available to us a small travel trailer and two campers. We should be getting those to the hill starting Monday. One fortunate thing is that this fire happened in summer. That certainly makes temporary living quarters a lot easier to work out.

Long Range Housing - Peter, a neighbor and the bishop of our Amish community neighbors, called and said the community would do a house raising for us (the house that is no longer was built by them) when we are ready. I told him the only problem with that will be the funds to buy the material. Long range plans here.

Clothing Donations - Again, being summer, clothing is a lot easier to deal with in the short term. Grayson lost most of his clothes, Carolyn, Chapin and I have the clothes we came to Acadia with. Most of our clothes come from Salvation Army stores and we prefer it that way. I think we'll be ok in the short term, so clothing donations aren't a strong necessity at the moment.

Financial Help - Being money poor, this is a big need. Once we return we have so many things we need to purchase to get back up and running. We'll need a new electrical system - generator, deep cycle batteries, inverter, etc. and also purchasing all new equipment to get FootHills back up and running. Also chainsaw, other tools. The list goes on and on. This doesn't even take into account what will be needed for more permanent housing. The campers will only be useful for a few months. The financial needs will be great. I'll be working hard on booking more work out as a poet, and we'll get FootHills going again, but even then, before all this, it was a continual struggle.

Many of you have asked how you can help with this, where to send etc..
mail: Michael Czarnecki, PO Box 68, kanona, NY 14856

or Paypal. Go to Send Money and then put in my email address:
poetguy@foothillspublishing.com

then amount, click on personal tab and then make sure gift is checked.
That's it.

Ok, this is enough for now.

Again, it is beyond words the way we feel about all of the support you have expressed for our situation. When we get through to the other side, we'll have an unprecedented gathering on Wheeler Hill of all you wonderful people,
Michael