A Personal Thank You

Click the link for the video.

We have been inundated with kindness and generosity from the folks back home recently. Last week I received nearly twenty care packages from my collegues at Noblestar, my family and from strangers through the AnySoldier.com program. I wanted to do something to show everyone back home who has been sending toys, school supplies and candy that their generosity is bringing smiles to the faces of the children of Afghanistan and directly impacting the lives of others. Thank you all, but especially my "Memaw", Ann and "The Happy Meal Lady", for your generosity...and I can't forget my mom and my wife.

If you feel like sending more, please do. We'll put it to good use. We're adopting a 1000-student girl's school down the road soon. We should have no problem giving away toys and school supplies! And don't forget Operation Flintstone. It's supposed to be a hard winter this year. We can use all the health and medical supplies you can spare.

Supporting the Provincial Elections

The Afghan people are on the verge of yet another unprecedented and historic election on 18 September where they will elect their provincial leadership (think: Senators and Congressmen). Our team has been out in the streets of Nangarhar province polling the locals and handing out a paper called "Peace Radio" which promotes rule of law, Afghan nationalism and contains information about the elections.The paper has a list of frequencies and times that people can listen in on the radio to informational broadcast about the upcoming elections as well as equal airtime that is given to the candidates (a good idea stateside, if you ask me).

Since illiteracy is still as high as 80% in some districts, our team, with the help of the Marines have distributed nearly seven-thousand radios in the last two months, mostly to outlying rural areas.Enthusiasm is high and literally everyone within voting age that we've talked to has told us they are planning to vote. The only problem we have here is that, as men, we've not been allowed to poll the women as Nangarhar is a very conservative province. Still, UN figures suggest an even higher turnout for women than last time, which is encouraging. There are some female candidates as well and we're wishing them the best of luck.

Subscribe to Fortunate Son

Good news for all the web-savvy folks that want to keep up with what's going on with my adventures in Civil Affairs in Afghanistan. I've added the Atom, XML-based subscription service for those who use newsreaders.

The subscription URL is: Here. Its also listed on the right-side of the page under the heading "Subscribe".

For those interested, newsreaders (a.k.a. aggregators) are a good way to scrub the web for your favorite news, sports, entertainment, blog, etc...interests without having to visit each site individually.

I had this one, BottomFeeder, recommended to me. If anyone has other suggestions on good newsreader applications, please leave a comment.

I highly recommend the use of newsreaders if you spend a lot of time doing your daily online-reading (or don't want to anymore). Its so easy to setup and you don't have to go to each site to find out if they have new content every day.

New Recommended Readings Entries

It's been a while since I've made any entries into my Recommended Readings sub-blog...mainly because I'm pretty picky about what I put in there. Nevertheless, I've added two entries that I hope you'll find as compelling as I do:

The End of Poverty, by Jeffrey Sachs.

Waging Peace, by Rob Schultheis.

Yes, I know that all my reviews are "Coming Soon", but I don't want to wait to write a detailed opinion/synopsis of the dang thing before I post it or it might never get out there. Suffice it to say that because its there, its had an influence on me and I think its worth your time provided you're interested in the subject of global rehabilition or U.S. Army Civil Affairs.

I've been working on a new journal entry for quite a while now. To be honest, I've written it, thrown it away and rewritten a couple times now trying to strike a balance between the ups and downs of this "adventure" or whatever you call it. I don't want to come off too "Pollyanna" about my experiences - there's no Hollywood script here, and I want that to be clear anyone who might be considering this line of work. At the same time what I'm learning is that the real challenge, no matter what you do, is to transcend the obstacles that you face and maintain your focus.

Just FYI, our team got hit by an IED on 9 August. Noone was injured, but it was a sobering reminder that this mission is no joke. I'll write more about my insights on mortality and overcoming fear, etc. later if I can ever get that freakin' journal entry done!

Operation Flintstone Gets its Own Page

There's been so much interest shown in Operation Flintstone, that I gave it its own page to help keep track of everything. I've created a new email address as well:
Operation.Flintstone@fortunateson.org

Please go there for updates and information.

Civil Affairs Solider Killed in Iraq

We lost a fellow soldier in Iraq a couple days ago to an IED. We were hit ourselves on 9 August, but we were fortunate not to have any casualties.

The official press release.

Rest in peace, Major Fester.