Well the first bit of good news is that the We Are The World Blogfest #WATWB is back again for another month and has been running for years. As life changes for some of us it can be a slog, at times, to keep up the momentum. There are months where we struggle to find enough co-hosts. If you have been with us a while, and may be able to help, contact one of our co-hosts.

Speaking of co-hosts, this month our valiant leaders are:

Eric Lahti – https://ericlahti.wordpress.com

Susan Scott – http://www.gardenofedenblog.com/

Inderpreet Kaur Uppal – http://inderpreetuppal.com/

Shilpa Garg – https://shilpaagarg.com/

Peter Nena – https://drkillpatient01.wordpress.com/

Please hop on over to their pages and others on the #WATWB.

Now for a late edition of some other good news.

Dr Murad Jehangir Yusuf Tayebjee. Image from ABC Life, accessed 2 August 2020.

As the coronavirus aka COVID-19 hit, many schools, universities and other educational centres rapidly moved to a more online presence in all manner of operations. This can be very socially isolating for students and staff so…

Dr Murad Jehangir Yusuf Tayebjee wrote letters to his students. We pick up the report from ABC News Australia in its ‘Life’ team.

Dear students,

As I submit your final grades for this term, I wanted to take a moment to write you a note.

Maybe you made it to university after studying hard in year 12. Maybe this is part of a career change for you, or a return to study after having kids.

Whatever your story — and there are as many stories as there are of you — you certainly didn’t expect to undertake your 2020 undergraduate year in the middle of a global pandemic.

We didn’t expect it either.

He moved on to outline some of the things they may be doing, like getting their hands dirty and building small-scale solar powered cars.

Tayebjee even told them that they inspired him by staying with the course. What an encouraging teacher from the University of New South Wales (Sydney, Australia). You can read more of the story yourselves.

Lock-downs have been really tough for people. This fellow, who admitted that he too, “had to adapt fast”, adapted well. He not only engineered his courses, but innovated the communication needed in order to reach his students.

Those who follow this blog know that I love poetry and also try to share a poem with the story.

Poet, Michael Ryan, writes of letters in an institution. Just like lecturers use their imagination to reach students, so too do poets, like Ryan, explore the world of the imagination. An excerpt is below. Full text at Poetry Foundation.

Letters from an Institution

BY MICHAEL RYAN

The ward beds float like ghost ships

in the darkness, the nightlight

above my bed I pretend is a lighthouse

with a little man inside who wears

a sailor cap and tells good old stories

of the sea. The little man is me.

=+=+=+=+=+=+=

In loving respect for Australians and New Zealanders who served, or are serving, their country and are customarily remembered on Anzac Day, 25 April. Lest we forget.

Australian soldiers during a quiet moment while out on patrol in Afghanistan in 2011. Photo: Gary Ramage, Image courtesy of The Australian War Memorial.

Welcome to the We Are The World Blogfest #WATWB for April 2018. We have crested the wave and are now in our second year! Thanks so much to all our writers and followers.

Our valiant co-hosts for this month are Shilpa Garg, Michelle Wallace, Mary Giese, Dan Antion and yours truly.

img_0475-4

Gary Ramage admits he’s seen too much death. As a former soldier and one of Australia’s leading news photographers, Ramage has been in and out of war zones for more than 20 years.

From mass graves in Kosovo, to a young girl crying in Somalia, and a soldier and his dog sleeping together on the ground for warmth in Afghanistan, Ramage’s images capture confronting and moving moments in war as he returns again and again to the front line to tell the stories of the men and women who can’t speak for themselves.

“I have seen things that I can’t unsee,” Ramage said. “[But] I can get through by reminding myself of the simple rule I live by: in wars where nothing seems to matter, I can take pictures in which every person counts.”

The Australian War Memorial blog continues:

The collection of images is now being used by the Memorial to help tell the stories of Australian men and women serving in Afghanistan, and the archway picture will be used in commemorative brochures and booklets for Anzac Day.

“I’m very proud of what I achieved over there, but I wouldn’t have been able to do what I did photographically without the diggers on the ground or the soldiers from that unit,” Ramage said.

For Ramage, telling their stories is what it’s all about. “It’s part of our national history, and we need to cover what it is that the soldiers do on our behalf,” he said. “Obviously they volunteer, but they get sent out to these countries to try to make a difference. I believe that we should be telling their stories as part of our military history so that you can go into our Memorial and generations of younger and future Australians can look back and see what it was that these guys did in Afghanistan. It’s very humbling … [and] it’s a huge privilege for me.”

The veteran photographer remains positive in the face of horrors witnessed:

“If I get a bit sad or whatever, I go and do something, and I keep myself occupied. I have a lot of different hobbies, and that keeps me going without turning to the bottle or drugs or whatever to try and suppress the bad memories and the bad thoughts or whatever… But everybody’s different.

“I don’t dwell on it, because if you dwell on it, it will just eat you up from the inside out. You’ve got to live, so I just put it down to one of life’s experiences and move on to the next chapter. If you let it get on top of you, it will just eat you up.”

More of the blog on Gary Ramage can be found here.

As we each seek to serve the cause of peace in our own place we also know that every person counts.

For a taste of poetry as we depart, an extract from: