Over the weekend while visiting Austin, I met the illustrious John Pierson. Since we connected through blogging, it made sense that it came up in conversation. He mentioned how the coverage of the Telluride Film Festival was draining the event of the “mystique” it once held for all but those who attended the exclusive event. Never having been to it myself, the festival seemed more like a sneak peak for a select few of films that would hit the well-covered Toronto and New York festivals in the coming months, but heavy blogging from the event made it unusually accessible this year. And certainly the lead up to Toronto has been overwhelming at minimum, so it was with a bit of melancholy that I scrolled through my blog reader this morning. I marked as read a bunch of posts I didn’t read – mostly reviews and predictions that I’m not sure warrant attention but instead serve to drive site traffic (compulsively checking new blog content is fed by frequent posts, which is why anyone talking about making money from a blog suggests frequent posts, but I digress…).

I was grateful to stumble on Chuck Tryon’s post about Riverbend. She is Iraqi and has been blogging for some time about her experience there. I’ve read it a few times and then been sucked back into movies, forgetting to check in and see how she is doing. She had to leave Iraq, as a refugee, for Syria.

There was one point, during the final days of June, where I simply sat on my packed suitcase and cried. By early July, I was convinced we would never leave. I was sure the Iraqi border was as far away, for me, as the borders of Alaska. It had taken us well over two months to decide to leave by car instead of by plane. It had taken us yet another month to settle on Syria as opposed to Jordan. How long would it take us to reschedule leaving? It happened almost overnight. Read Leaving Home>>

Her post caught the attention of the NY Times today as well>>