See comment at the end of this post – now I feel stupid…

Most of you know of or have heard of Liftport – the company that audaciously went into business to build a Space Elevator.  The company was composed of some occasionally paid people and many volunteers – people who worked on this project because they believed in the dream.

One of them is Brian Dunbar – the system administrator / webmaster / all around tech-guy for Liftport.  If you’ve ever had any dealings with Brian, you know that he is gracious, kind and a pleasure to work with.  In addition to his ‘day job’ and his work at Liftport, he also has a blog, a good one, one which is in my RSS reader so that I can always stay up to date with his musings and commentary.

Today I was shocked and saddened to learn on his blog that Brian’s wife has ALS (Lou Gehrig’s disease).  Melissa has been a huge supporter of all things Tolkien and has been waiting expectantly for the production and release of THE HOBBIT.

Brian has come up with the brilliant idea of petitioning New Line (the producers of THE HOBBIT) to cast Melissa as an extra in the movie.  As he puts it;

“We don’t know the course her disease will take, so she worries that she won’t be around to see the movies in theaters, so this was the next best thing. Even being a non-speaking crowd-hobbit in the background of one scene would still mean the world to her. It would be her reason to hang on.”

We all get unceasing mail appeals asking us to contribute money and we all see the emails circulated to support this and that.  Well I am asking all my readers to sign this petition; it will cost you no money and only a little of your time and it is for a great cause.  After all, this is one of our own.

If you have a blog or a way to further this information, do so – spread this as far and wide as you can.

I’m signature # 1,424.

12MAR08 – Update.  I totally misinterpreted Brian’s blog post – this is NOT his wife, but rather he was passing this project and petition along as a favor to a fellow fan.  When I found this out, I was conflicted – should I just pull this post as it is so obviously wrong, or should I just leave it to spread the word.  I’ve decided to leave it, but I sincerely apologize to my readers for my mistake.  I guess I should not be making blog posts at 2:30 am…