the story on Eric

Here’s the full story on Lance Cpl Eric Valdepenas, my brother’s girlfriend’s brother, who died in Iraq at age 21 this past weekend.

I thought he was the youngest of 9, but i believe he was the youngest of 8. My mom said that the local TV station interviewed the family on their front lawn this morning and it was “a heartache to watch”.

As my friend Mark, whom i respect very much, said in response to this, “This war is getting more and more personal for more people I know. A little over a year ago a young man who had been my student in 6th grade was killed. It is so time to swallow our damned pride and end this thing!”. Tough to argue with those sentiments right now.

your prayers for the Valdepenas family would still be appreciated…thanks.

Here’s some other stuff I was going to post about yesterday, although to be quite honest none of it seems to matter very much right now. consider it a very trivial post-script…