It is slightly over a year since the founder of this Committee of Correspondence, Col. W. Patrick Lang, passed away. TTG has done a yeoman’s job of maintaining this blog in the spirit of his friend and colleague Pat Lang, with some help from other former colleagues and friends of Pat, myself included. Pat in his final months made clear to me and others that his wish was for his books to be kept in circulation and for the blog to continue as a voice of sanity in an increasingly dangerous world.
We have reached a cross in the road, where the Lang estate can no longer maintain the minimal costs required to keep this website up and running. I have communicated with the webmaster and confirmed that as of the end of May, his contract is being terminated. He is more than anxious, as an old friend of Pat, to maintain the site, but he must be paid for those services. We are talking about a relatively small amount of money. Maintaining and servicing the site costs a bit more than $300 a month. Keeping our Committee intact via this website will cost approximately $4,000 a year at most.
I will be obtaining information on how contributions can be sent, likely via PayPal, which I will post in the coming days. This is a first call to deliver a vote of confidence in the value of this blog and our community of thinking patriots.
Urgent Note: Do not use the donate button on the upper right corner of the home page. It goes to a PayPal account for Colonel Lang. As far as I know, we do not have access to that account. I have tried to disable/remove the button, but I lack access to that level of administration. If we can fix it, we will. Until then, please await our instructions for making donations. Thank you.
I publicly pledge $US20.00 per month for a for at least 1 year to enable continuation of this site. Paypal is my preferred payment option.
I further recomment that a stipend be awarded to senior committee members as a reward for their hard work; thats you TTG and Harper.
robw
Rob,
We appreciate your pledge of support, but I certainly don’t want any stipend. I do what I can for this site out of love and respect for my friend and comrade in arms, Pat Lang. I also do it out of appreciation for the committee of correspondence he created. I enjoy the company… usually. I also appreciate the occasional words of appreciation. They mean a lot.
I pledge to contribute at last $120 per year.
At *least* $120 per year. More if we can get a edit button on our posts – I am getting old.
I’ll contribute whatever I can spare Harper and would prefer to donate occasional lump sums if possible. I’d very much prefer to see turcopolier.com to remain open to the world via voluntary contributions, but a subscriber model may be worth considering if security of income ever becomes an issue. I’ll also second the vote of thanks for the work TTG puts in. TTG, if I was in the neighborhood I’d most certainly insist on buying you a beer. I’m not entirely technically ignorant, so if my labor would be useful in any way let me know.
TTG,
I’ll send you a stipend, or a bottle of bourbon if you prefer. (ask Alan).
Fred,
The last time I heavily imbibed bourbon was the night before my first jump. Ended up low crawling up the barracks hallway yelling “Sat Cong!” I also fell asleep on the plane ride to Fryar drop zone the next morning. But I’m sure it was real cheap bourbon.
TTG,
Only the best sipping whiskey now. Though I could find some new batch of Tennessee’s finest in a mason jar if you want to relive the hangover.
“Urgent Note: Do not use the donate button on the upper right corner of the home page. It goes to a PayPal account for Colonel Lang. As far as I know, we do not have access to that account.”
So who does?
Keith Harbaugh,
It’s either dormant or Pat’s estate has access to it or can get access to it.
The background of Col Lang (DIA DHS/DCS founder) and the interesting backgrounds of some visitors makes this blog a potentially fertile watering hole (if not already). I’ve always had paranoia with WordPress and cross site scripting (XSS) vulnerabilities from injecting code into seemingly innocuous comments. Have you thought about changing platforms and/or hosts? Something cheaper? Something you have more control over?
https://secure.wphackedhelp.com/blog/wordpress-xss-attack/
Condottiere,
Colonel Lang moved the hosting to an Icelandic service to proof it against any possible USG attempts at censorship after the 2020 election. He worried about such things at the time. That’s when he moved from Typepad to WordPress. The Iceland service was paid for so we didn’t change it. Perhaps in the future.
Harper – count me in for a donation. It’s good to see this unique site kept going. And a vote of thanks to TTG for what must have been a great amount of time devoted to the work.
I add my thanks to TTG and the others contributing to this site and maintaining it in the Colonel’s memory. I look forward to receiving donation instructions.