THE OWL'S EYE

I have to pause from my many flights around Limestone County. It is important to remember we don't live on a separate planet. In fact, like the rallies our ancestors attended held to help those in faraway lands during the second World War, we are seeing the same today all across North Alabama. Join in. Read on.

Now for new horrors. The Russian dictator Putin's unprovoked invasion of peaceful, democratic Ukraine has taken a new, even more cynical turn. After Ukrainians delivered a recent massive, victorious counter-attack against the Russians, Putin wanted naked revenge. Putin fired missiles into a vast dam, which held back the waters of a mammoth reservoir. Now, thousands of Ukrainian civilians are driven from their homes and have no access to drinking water. This blatant, wretched Russian attack on a non-military target will be remembered by peaceful people around the world. Ukraine's liberation of areas occupied by Russians for six months revealed more of Russia's bloody torture and murder. Ukrainian women and men were tortured and electrocuted in chambers of horror for something as simple as owning a Ukrainian flag. A vast pit of some 440 bodies of murdered Ukrainians was discovered where the Russians had been.

To see how we here in Limestone County, miles and miles away, are affected is powerful, indeed.

Ukrainian- Americans are gathering and inviting neighbors to join them to raise money to help that beleaguered land. They host events with songs of freedom and celebrate foods commonly made so far away. Just as most of us celebrate and share our own heritage in this way, so too the Ukrainians. We have Greek festivals, Italian, Indian, and German restaurants. Turkish Americans sponsor banquets, and Cajun food, a mélange of French and African specialties by way of coastal Louisiana, recall ancestral delicacies. The Ukrainians raise money at such dinners and gatherings to save lives. The money goes to buy medicines, buy life sustaining food and water, and provide living accommodation requirements for those ejected from their homes by this brutal, evil war. A free nation, under attack by a dictatorship, needs us.

There's more. Global Ties Alabama, a nonprofit which implements U.S. State Department exchange programs, sponsored a delegation to Alabama from that war torn region. Much of what is happening on the ground, to real people, was revealed by these remarkably brave and valiant visitors. Americans have started to rally to help Ukrainians displaced by such horrors inflicted on them. American citizens call our Congress to accept more than 100,000 Ukrainian refugees. This sounds so abstract, but Poland, a land of only 30 million, has accepted five million guests. Alabamians were shown candid, personal videos filmed in places of refuge in Poland. One displayed a sea of frame beds and cots that filled a repurposed mall. Lying there were hundreds and hundreds of mothers and children, who fled for their very lives. This place processed five thousand refugees a day, sending them on to places of safety from murder. Their men are at war. One mother who showed these videos couldn't continue. She just learned her brother was killed a week earlier at the front, shot by a Russian who probably wasn't even told what the war was about. Murder, slaughter, and mayhem. That's what Putin has wrought upon a peaceful Europe, only because a neighboring land chose freedom over slavery under his Russian toadies. Now too, drowning. Putin blew up a mighty dam in Ukraine. I still choke up when I think of one little boy, on a cot in faraway Poland, who held onto a stuffed teddy bear, his only reminder of a peaceful childhood.

We must look past the headlines and see the real people affected by this arrogant war. There's much we can do. For example, recent historical events in Afghanistan moved one veteran of that war to action. He and his colleagues began "Rocket City Refugees." They've already moved mountains to help Afghans who supported us find a new home in Alabama. Their mission is: "Helping our Afghan Allies transition from the hostile environment they once lived in, into our beautiful country that is the United States of America. Our Afghan Allies are currently making that same resettlement that every single one of our families have made in the past, and we aim to make it as comfortable as possible for them and their families. In these trying times, we will make every effort to assist them in any way possible during their resettlement and beyond." Help them at Rocket City Refugees.

Ukrainians are organizing to do the same. They want to save whomever of their countrymen they can. You can help. Send aid to the Polish or Ukrainian Red Cross, or Doctors Without Borders. "As of July 1, 2022, there are approximately 147 international Doctors Without Borders/ Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) staff and 494 Ukrainian staff working across Ukraine, with more joining the team every day. They work as medical staff (surgeons, doctors, nurses); psychologists; logistics and administration; and management." Reach them at Doctors Without Borders.

Find a Ukrainian neighbor and ask what you can do. Global Ties Alabama has links to send aid at: GlobalTies Alabama. One Limestone Countian helped a distraught Ukrainian sister to bring her mother, sister, and little brother to Birmingham, to safety in America.

Act now. While we prepare for Christmas, they have no heat, no food, no medicine, no water. One Ukrainian mother, a living Pieta, begged the mothers of the world to act, as she beheld her son, murdered.