An Idea Worth Living—Jeremy Courtney’s TED Talk

I re-watched Jeremy’s TEDxAustin talk the other day and felt compelled to share it with you. I’ve tried to stick to an every-Friday posting schedule—and even then my writing here is marked by brevity—but here I’m deviating (though this will still be brief).

This video simultaneously explains what we do and reminds why we do it, and, since several of you are recent subscribers, I thought it’d be good to share a little more about our work in Iraq.

Within the organization, I’m the resident blogger (thus the brevity), social media maven nerd, PR handler, photographer, etc. etc.

Nutshell therein: I get to use words and images to make people care. It’s a sweet job.

And the man in the video is the jefe, a good friend, and one of the most awesome people I know (and I don’t “awesome” easily these days). So if you’re still reading this, WTFrag? Go watch the video already!

(And then pass it on!)

VIDEO: “His Surgery Would Be Five Years Away”—A Father Shares His Story!

I had the privilege of interviewing one of the Iraqi fathers at PLC’s most recent Remedy Mission. You can read a lot more stories from the mission on the PLC blog.

Stayin’ Busy

Summer’s here are hot.

So rather than sitting around and letting the heat drive her crazy, Cayla has taken on a few projects to help distract from the heat.

The plus side of the heat and a bone-dry climate is being able to dehydrate things. So Cayla and her Kurdish friend spent several hours one day setting okra, tomatoes and peppers out on our front porch and in practically no time at all they were moisture-free and the result was delicious!

Can you tell what was dehydrated in the photo below?

Cayla also decided to add a little pizzaz to our house by painting stenciled designs on our bathroom and bedroom walls:

Isn’t she great? Her doing stuff like this makes our house feel so much more homey than it would otherwise.

Newroz! | Photos From Our 1st Kurdish New Years

This week is Newroz (now-rose) for the Kurdish people, and it’s been quite the occasion. I’m glad our friends here encouraged us to move over here in time for the beginning of spring and Newroz.

I think the beginning of spring is a beautiful time to have a new years celebration since everything actually feels new. Logical points to the Kurds for not putting their new years in the middle of winter.

So I decided to wander the city with a borrowed telephoto lens to take a few shots of the festivities. I was surprised at how politically-charged a lot of the protests were, but with all the protests that are going on across the Muslim world I guess I shouldn’t be surprised at a celebration/protestation fusion. Here’s a brief look at my tour around the city:

I started my walk on the main road near our house. People were saying there’d be a big ‘parade’ happening on the road, but I was surprised at how small the crowds actually were.

Kurdish men doing a traditional dance for Newroz

So I hopped a cab and headed for the bazaar in hopes of finding a larger crowd. I succeeded.

I elbowed my way to the roof of a nearby hotel to snap a few shots of the masses.

This father stopped me and requested that I take a picture of his son. The kid was really cute.

Pretty sure they thought this picture would end up on the cover of some newspaper, cuz they begged me to take it.

I finally got sick of people accosting me for pictures and ducked down a nearby side street. I walked for awhile before finding a little boy building his own personal bonfire in the middle of a busy intersection. This is what I mean by celebration/protestation. To an outsider like me, a fire like this seems pretty far removed from anything resembling a celebration. Sometimes protests and celebrations really do seem indistinguishable (though certainly extinguishable, har har!).

Friendly fire?

A little further down the road and I found a severely eccentric man building a fire, giggling to himself and smoking cigarettes while jumping through the flames.

He held his cigarettes in his hand the entire time.

Not sure what compelled him to do this, but the pictures turned out pretty cool.

The last picture I took on my walk. She was so cute in her traditional Kurdish "Gili Kurdi!"

For more pictures from our first Newroz, check out our Flickr stream here.

Photos From the March 5th Protests in Sulaymaniyah, Iraq.

Boy w/ a Kurdish flag hat

The podium

Protests from a hotel rooftop

Also from the hotel rooftop

My Kurdish friend, Saman