Help for Ukrainian friends

I have copied below a redacted-for-privacy message from my friend who works with Ukrainian refugees. A Ukrainian family is in desperate need of help; if you can help out, please email me and I will give you my friend's PayPal address.

The writer of the message is a close friend of mine - I actually lived with her for a while - and I vouch for her absolutely.

Here's her message:

"dearests, we need help for our ukrainian friends again. do you remember the place where I go volunteering? the de-facto leader, guardian angel, coordinator and brain of the entire base is a brave and unstoppable ukrainian lady who ferries everybody around, finagles documents, helps everybody with disabilities who's stationed there to communicate with doctors, social services, et cetera - in general she keeps this place running, and runs herself ragged in the process.

the day before yesterday, in ukraine, her niece Z--, gave birth prematurely and, following a string of accidents and shortage of timely help, normal for a country under siege, suffered severe eclampsia and stroke. the child lived, but Z-- is now in ICU and the doctors are trying frantically to save her.

it's a nightmare all around. the drugs the doctors are trying to work with are around 100$ per dose; everything else is also complicated, fucked up, and expensive. the family already pooled and gave more or less everything they have, which, given that half of them is in ukraine and half is refugees, was... not much.

so. if you trust me, personally, and have something to spare, could you help Z-- out?

(and, ugh. ghastly as it is; if you donate, specify, please, what do you want the family to do with the money if Z-- dies despite all they're trying to do. send back to you, use as general donation for the base, use for funeral, etc.)

the doctors are waking her from medical coma bit by bit, and she recognized people around her and talked a bit, which can mean nothing, can mean good things. cross your fingers and hope for a really good miracle with us.

(if there ever was a family who earned their miracles...)"

If you would like to help, please email me at Rphoenix2@gmail.com, and I will give you my friend's PayPal address.

Thank you!

ETA: Feel free to share this message.

Biggles Takes It Rough, by W. E. Johns

"The skunk who sank my boat must have scoffed my beer."

I regret to inform you that the title refers to sleeping rough. As opposed to any other meaning that I cannot imagine Johns was unaware of because come on.

Biggles, Ginger, Bertie, and Algy go to investigate possible airplane-related crimes on a supposedly deserted Scottish island, and proceed to have ALL the Scottish island-related experiences you could possibly want to read about, like camping, foraging and hunting, creating a little home in an abandoned house, exploring a castle, chasing criminals around the moors, etc.

One of the most enjoyable things about the Biggles series is how varied the tone, mood, and even genre is across books. The WWI short story collections are both dark and zany, much like MASH in tone and incident. Biggles Flies East is a tense spy thriller. Biggles Flies South is batshit 30s pulp adventure a la H. Rider Haggard. Biggles Buries a Hatchet is a quite dark story with a very grim setting, in which not everyone can be saved but one man hits bottom and climbs up from there. Biggles Looks Back is a Ruritanian adventure that's also a sweet, wistful look at love that begins when you're very young and remains when you're all much older and living very different lives.

Biggles Takes It Rough is Johns' take on a specific type of children's adventure book, the one where kids camp out and play house and cook over little fires and solve a mystery. It has all the charm and atmosphere and humor of such stories.

Bertie particularly shines. Everything involving him is comedy gold. Early on, he's complaining about having nothing to eat but what they can hunt and forage: "I mean to say, wild duck with nothing else is going to be pretty tough chewing."

Biggles turned to him. "What do you expect with it - gravy?"

And then there's the running thread of Bertie and crustaceans. Here he's been startled by a criminal when he's just retrieved a large crab from a trap.

"Unless you're as daft as you look, you won't try giving me any of your lip."

What Bertie's answer to this, if any, would have been will never be known, for at this juncture the scene turned to comedy - at least as far as Bertie was concerned - when the crab took a hand. Literally. Bertie's hand. Bertie may have forgotten what he was holding. Or in his resentment at the way he was being questioned he may have become careless. At all events, the struggling crustacean managed to get a claw round one of his fingers.

His reaction was natural and instantaneous. With a yell he swung out the arm concerned to get rid as quickly as possible of the creature that had fastened itself to the extreme end of it. In this he succeeded. The crab, suddenly subjected to centrifugal force beyond its experience, was flung off the hand. It flew through the air and, although this was purely accidental as far as Bertie was concerned, would have hit his questioner in the face had the man not ducked and taken a quick step backwards. Anyone would have done the same thing. But the rocks, wet from the recent rain and slippery with seaweed, were not the place for sudden ill-considered movements. His feet skidded, and after a vain attempt to recover his balance he sat down with a squelch in a pool of water. The crab ended its short flight in the sea.

It's a funny incident, but the way Johns tells it makes it so much funnier. Centrifugal force beyond the crab's experience! The short flight of the crab!

A delightful entry in the series.