Flat Daddies

Free full-size printed posters of parents who are serving overseas in the military.

Check it out at: http://flatdaddies.com/about

I would be happy to provide any of my pictures to be used for this for free.

American children raising money for Iraqi children

Last night I spoke to a group of about 50 motivated elementary school students and their parents in Shakopee Minnesota. I talked about my experiences in Iraq and showed them pictures I have taken of Iraqi children. These Minnesota kids are working to raise money to buy playground equipement to send to a community in Iraq, and the Army has agreed to deal with setting it up.

Last night the kids were drawing pictures and writing poems about peace that will be included in a book that will be given to people that donate to the project. I have also offered to let them use some of my pictures of Iraqi children for their book.

Speaking to kids about war is an interesting challenge to say the least. The best question I've gotten so far is: "Why don't they just bring all the kids in Iraq here to live with us until the war is over?"

Please email me if you are interested in donating to this effort, or would like to contact the organizers directly.

Talks and slideshows

UPDATED March 15th

I'm planning to do a series of slide shows and talks about my Iraq trip for interested readers and families. The plan is for a very informal slide and video presentations followed by a Question & Answer session.

Currently planned dates and locations:

Wednesday, March 7th 6:00pm at Digineer in Plymouth. This is primarily intended for my Digineer co-workers, but I'm sure we can make room for a few extras. Email me for details.

Saturday, March 10th 5:00pm in Grand Marais, Minnesota. 4-H Building. Earlier start time planned to avoid conflicts with other community events that day.

Thursday, March 22nd 7:00pm in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Linden Hills Community Center. This is the come one, come all, open to the public show in Minneapolis. Please send me an email if you plan on attending, so we have some idea how many chairs to setup.

Saturday, March 31st 12:oopm in Alexadria, Minnesota. We will be in the lower level of the Eagles on North Nokomis in Alexandria. A luncheon will be served promptly at 11:30 with Eric’s presentation starting at noon. We will have a donation box to help defray the cost of the luncheon which is suggested at $5 per adult and $2 for the kids that come along.

Sunday, April 1st 1:00pm in Minneapolis. Twin Cities Bravo Family Readiness Group meeting. This is for family members of soldiers, I'm not sure if it's going to be open to the public or not.

Saturday, May 5th Fergus Falls. Afternoon. Location TBD.

Sunday, May 6th Crookston, Minnesota. 11:00 AM (Rescheduled from Saturday, March 31st)

Sunday, May 6th Thief River Falls. 3:00pm Location TBD.

New video: SSG Chris Johnson Red Lake High School teacher

Here is a short interview with SSG Chris Johnson a Redlake High School teacher who volunteered to come out of retirement to serve in Iraq.

Valentines Day Videos

Here is a collection of Video Valentine Messages from Bravo Company soldiers (and one Minnesota Marine). All of these messages were shot on February 13th and 14th in Camp Fallujah Iraq. Many of them were aired on KSTP Channel 5 TV on the 10pm news on February 14th.

Bradley Live Fire Video

I'm slowly working my way through all the video I shot in Iraq... Here are some highlights of an afternoon and evening of live fire training with Bradley Fighting Vehicles on a fire range outside Camp Falluja.

The firing range was built by Bravo Company, and the targets on the range are old Russian tanks and armored personnel carriers from the Iraqi Army.

English (mis)spellings of Arabic names

Richard over at the Alphabet City blog has a lot of great content about the Anbar "awakening", and has a post with more background linking back to my post with interviews with Shiek Ahmed B. Abureesha, and General Zilmer.

Richard's post brings up an interesting issue, which is the wide variety of English spellings of Arabic names. My spelling of the shiekh's name (Shiekh Ahmed B. Abureeshah) in the interview is from the English side of his business card (see below), while Richard's spelling (Shaykh Ahmed Abu Rishah) and his brother's name (Shaykh Abdul Sattar Abu Rishah) are commonly seen in other media reports.