Thursday February 12th, from 7 - 9 PM, I will be speaking at the Urban Hive in Sacramento, the launch event for ReIMAGINE | Sacramento.  I will be speaking about some of my experiences, including Yemen, showing some images, and doing a little Q & A.

ReIMAGINE is a Sacramento network of ReIMAGINE San Francisco. They fuel initiatives integrating spiritual formation, community building, the arts and social action. As a collective of artists, activists, educators, tech professionals and social entrepreneurs they invite people into conversations, projects and community experiences that explore the question: “How can we cultivate a way of life together that leads to greater wholeness for ourselves and our world?”

The world is changing. Globalization, massive shifts in technology, trade and communications are giving birth to a new consciousness about what it means to be human. Some refer to this as a transition from a modern to a post-modern paradigm for life. Others suggest that what is emerging is a more ecological view of the world– in the sense that we are learning to pay more attention to how all aspects of our lives are related, connected and interdependent.

This shift in how we organized ourselves and how we perceive our lives has brought up new questions about the role of religion in the emerging culture. Many have concluded that traditional notions of God have little relevance to our lives in contemporary society. And yet at the same time, there is a tremendous hunger for a spiritually integrated way of life that acknowledges the sacred and empowers us to love.

ReIMAGINE began as a series of conversations and experiments among friends about how to connect our spiritual heritage with the realities of life in a progressive world city. The founders of ReIMAGINE were leaders in the evangelical “seeker church” movement of the 1990’s and came to live in San Francisco and Sacramento with a desire to help create new communities of faith in the emerging culture. Quickly they discovered that among neighbors and friends there was a great deal of misunderstanding and pain about organized religion and Christianity in particular.

If you are interested in attending or want more info, click here. If you live in the area, I’d love to see you there!

You can also find out more and register on Facebook.

In the latest issue of Sada al-Malahim, the Internet magazine of the Al Qaeda affiliate in Yemen, urged its followers to use small bombs “in airports in the western crusade countries that participated in the war against Muslims: or on their planes, or in their residential complexes or their subways.”

As you know, I’ve been following Yemen for the last few years (and traveled there last Spring) and if you’ve spent any time with me, I have talked a lot about its pivotal regional importance as well its downward spiraling trends of a failed state and I have drawn many comparisons to the tribal states of western Pakistan.

Can I just say, that I’ve been pitching these warnings and stressing the importance of Yemen to editors and why it matters to their readers for well over a year now, and find it very ironic and disheartening that it took a near disaster to get Yemen into the current news cycle. Does it have to go that far for editors to listen to others and me? Apparently it does.

Unfortunately, it took the Christmas Day bombing attempt of a Nigerian man with Al Qaeda links in Yemen to wake up the West and finally highlight the significance of the country and what it means for the World and us. Not to mention the radical American-born cleric in Yemen, Anwar al-Awlaki and his links to Nidal Hasan, the American Army major who faces murder charges in the shooting deaths of 13 people at Fort Hood, last month.

At this moment, the US has opened a third, largely covert front against Al Qaeda in Yemen. Months ago, the Central Intelligence Agency sent several field operatives with counterterrorism experience into the country.

The Pentagon is spending more than $70 million over the next 18 months to equip Yemeni military.

Joseph I. Lieberman, independent of Conn and chairman of the Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee, who visited the country in August, stated in an interview on Sunday that “Yemen now becomes one of the centers of the fight” with Iraq and Afghanistan.

In a relatively quiet trip a few months ago, Gen. David Petraeus, the American regional commander and John Brennan, Obama’s counterterrorism advisor, visited Yemen.

It seems that our intelligence, political and military authorities seem to get that Yemen’s security problems won’t just stay in Yemen. I just would have expected the journalism community to catch on much earlier.

Special thanks to David Anelman at the World Policy Journal and Forbes for listening to me early on!

I’ve told many people that 30, has been the best year of my life. 8 1/2 countries, 8,000 + images, 39,000 air miles, much more grey hair, and one gorgeous daughter & wife; this truly has been the most amazing year.

As we wrap up 2009 and turning 31 is just a few days away, I both look back at the richness and adventure of the year and look forward with so much excitement as 2010 and 31 begins.

These photos aren’t necessarily the best images photographically but the ones that have such richness and abundant memories attached to them. Experience and relationship is such an important thing to me and this year will stand out as the best.

Thank you every one who helped make it such an amazing year! Especially Lindsey for giving me such an amazing daughter and being such a great mom, our family, my Dad for an especially adventure-filled year, our Baltimore family (the Sebeniecher’s), Bridget for a great time in Paris, and many, many more!

RIP Mixer

Day we found out Lindsey was pregnant!

A book published last week, Inside Insurgency, features a photo of mine taken while with the SPLA in Sudan during a 2006 trip.

Once considered nationalists, many insurgent groups are now labeled as terrorists and thought to endanger not just their own people, but the world. As the unprecedented trends in political violence among insurgents have taken shape, and as hundreds of thousands of civilians continue to be displaced, brutalized, and killed, Inside Insurgency provides startling insights that help to explain the nature of insurgent behavior.

Claire Metelits draws from over 100 interviews with insurgent soldiers, commanders, government officials, scholars, and civilians in Sudan, Kenya, Colombia, Turkey, and Iraq, offering a new understanding of insurgent group behavior and providing compelling and intimate portraits of the SPLA, FARC, and PKK. The engaging narratives that emerge from her on-the-ground fieldwork provide incredibly valuable and accurate first-hand documentation of the tactics of some of the world’s most notorious insurgent groups. Inside Insurgency offers the reader a timely and intimate understanding of these movements, and explains the changing behavior of insurgent groups toward the civilians they claim to represent.

Thanks NYU Press for using the photo and sending me the copy hot off the press!

We had some friends from the Middle East over for dinner last week and we had a really good time reminiscing about our time together in Syria. If you have spent any time with me, you know very well that I go on and on about Syria; especially Aleppo. That place blew every expectation I ever had about a place. I was way wrong. I entered Syria via a late flight from Amman to Aleppo, and as soon as we were left the airport, my misconceptions about the pariah of the West, began to fade away. I felt almost guilty that my minds eye about the place was that off.

Along with Fez in Morocco and Sana’a in Yemen, Aleppo is considered among the best-preserved cities in the Arab world and it is the longest inhabited city in the World. I’m lucky enough to visit two of these places.

While most Arab historic souq’s are largely a tourist trap, Aleppo is a largely intact historic city of 15,000 limestone buildings linked by labyrinthine streets and peaked-roof tunnels. Aleppo’s enormous traditional souq boasts more than seven miles of passageways topped by vaulted stone ceilings with natural skylights. Selling everything from spices and freshly slaughtered lamb to carpets and hardware, the souq remains the heart of the city’s commerce; only a tiny section caters to tourists.

Today, it is hemmed in on three sides by modern, straight, multilane streets, many of them lined with high-rise apartments and office buildings. But a few steps from the high-rises, the historic fabric remains intact.

The walk from the straight streets, jammed with taxicabs, into the Bab al-Nasr neighborhood is unbelivable. It is a journey from a world of automobiles to a world of donkey carts; from a world of inert rectilinear forms to a world of alleyways, curving arches, and latticework windows; from garish, commercially produced signs hawking mobile phones and soft drinks to the simple black-and-green stenciled image of the Ka’ba in Mecca, Islam’s holiest site, atop wooden doorways. Even more powerful than the visual impact of the transition is the auditory one. Just a few paces into the labyrinth, the din of vehicular traffic is replaced by the banter of conversation in the marketplace. A brief stroll deeper, and the voices of men are replaced by the voices of boys chasing after a soccer ball in a courtyard as a hijab-clad mother looks on from the window above.

My lesson learned? Even if you think you know a place by being well-read, think again. I prejudged this place before I ever visited it and I was dead wrong. I am someone who feels like I have a pretty strong grasp of history and I tend to read a lot, so I just thought my early assumption of Syria was going to be fairly accurate. Not until I visit a place, will I form an opinion about it.

In no particular order, these amazing multimedia projects are really worth checking out. Enjoy the highly creative web work and photojournalism!

1. Waterlife

2. Frozen Land, Forgotten People

3. Kroo Bay

4. Operation Critical: Voices from the war in East Congo

5. Aim Vitale, Mirages

6: Battle for Hearts and Minds

7. NY Times: One in 8 Million

8. Reuters: Bearing Witness

9: The Global Fund: Access to Life

10. CRF: Crisis Guide - The Global Economy

I spent a cold and foggy Saturday morning shooting some of our best friends, the Aubin’s, in Sacramento. They are some of our favorite people and I have had the pleasure of doing their family photos a few times now.

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I had the chance to shoot Sacramento-based established poet and friend, Ryan Burnett the other week at one of our favorite pubs, Bonn Lair. Had a good time and got some great photos.