George has been teasing me lately. I’ve been so concentrated on what’s been going on in Iran ever since the farce of an election that I talk about it regularly, I frequently have at least three relevant tabs open in my browser to news coverage, and I’ve gotten a little overly passionate about it. He likes to bug me by saying that if the RCMP shows up because I’ve incited riots he’s going to step aside while they escort me out the door and he’ll tell them to take my “soap box” of a laptop with them – “It’s all in there, guys, thanks!”

(He’s kidding. I think.)

Anyway. But yes, when I blog here about my life it’s easy to get all caught up with me, me, me, and the people around me. I do have certain causes that get me riled up though so just for something different, here you go.

In the past couple of years I have read many books – some fiction with historical fact, others memoirs – about the Middle East. I have become so interested in the Middle East, particularly WOMEN in the Middle East. It’s to the point where, honestly, if I could change the past without changing the important things of the present (meaning George, Hayley, and Breanna) I would go back in time and tell my aimless younger self to get a double major in Middle Eastern Studies and Women’s Studies and DO SOMETHING dammit.

As an offshoot of this interest of mine, I have been all over the Iran election and the subsequent Iran protests. While I am disgusted by the deaths that have occurred with the regime shooting into crowds (not to mention all the arrests that we will never know in full detail, such as the students who were arrested from their own dorms in the University of Tehran), I am all but breathless with the awe of seeing so many Iranians take to the streets to protest and to stand up and say, “HEY! This is not what we want and you can’t keep silencing us!”

Whether Ahmadinejad manages to hold on to his false win or not, history is happening right now and Iran will never be the same country that it was this time a month ago.

(Yes, that is indeed a “support Iran” image link over in the upper left corner of my site.)

The photos in this article are incredible.

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Championing human rights in oppressed countries isn’t my only interest thought. I’ve also been fascinated by the work that the UNHCR does for years now. They made a great choice when they made Angelina Jolie their Goodwill Ambassador because it was through her that I learned about the organization in the first place. I’m so passionate about the UNHCR that I raised funds for them twice now during the (almost) yearly Blogathon. The last time I did it, I was already writing for PittWatch and told my readers there about what I was doing. I ended up raising about $2000 to help refugees.

Right now I’m reading Angelina Jolie’s: Notes from My Travels which is not a formal book really, it’s actually her journal notes during her first missions with the UNHCR when she went to Sierra Leone, Tanzania, Pakistan, Cambodia, and Ecuador. Because of that, the writing is occasionally scattered, but not necessarily in a bad way – just that, because she was writing a few sentences here and there throughout her day what you get instead of flowery prose is raw emotion and blunt honesty about what the refugees are facing day after day after day. It’s a stunning read. I’m only about 45 pages in, but I only started it last night. I don’t think it will take me long to finish because it’s just fascinating.

Tomorrow (June 20th) is World Refugee Day. The UNHCR has organized an amazing live stream that you can watch from your computer. The stream comes through from various refugee camps around the world where you can look in and see what life in a camp is like. What’s amazing to me about what I’ve seen is the same thing that Angelina said in interviews yesterday with Anderson Cooper (here) and Ann Curry (here), that there are people there who have gone through hardships that we can barely even imagine but they smile, they laugh, and they have an incredible spirit. It’s so inspiring. Please do check out the live stream over here today and tomorrow.

Okay. Enough of my “soap box laptop”! Here, enjoy a totally un-related and non-political picture of Hayley with a dandelion almost as big as her head.

Whew.