2015-09-05 My Working Birthday

Know how you know you love what you are doing? One sign: You don’t stop doing it simply because it is your birthday!
I celebrated my birthday by holding three different orientation sessions. So many wonderful things from today:

Refugees:

* A refugee calling me a “superman for North Korean refugees.”
* Celebrating my birthday with the refugees entering our project.
* Three of the refugees who were Grace’s students the last few weeks joining the program clearly more confident than they were a few weeks ago.

* The refugees were curious about me, they wanted to know why I do what I do. The same with the last group of tutors at the last orientation.
* One refugee mentioned that it is amazing what we do without real infrastructure. We have held our orientations and matching sessions at TOZ, Mulmangcho, Freedom Factory, the Bitcoin Center.

Tutors
* Tutors coming from around the country to join TNKR, including one teacher who wants to fly in from Jeju twice a month to tutor. We definitely need a gofundme account for her…
* We had only two orientations scheduled, but three of the tutors coming from far away, and unfamiliar with Seoul, arrived really late. So Eunkoo Lee and I met them from 7 pm for a third unexpected orientation.

* Special thanks to Christian Kim and Sareena Tanlines for talking us up to TaLK teachers. We have so many outstanding young people signing up to join TNKR.

Website:
* Orlandy Godines and Worth Stokes teaming up to completely revamp the TNKR website.

Fundraising

* An unexpected $100 donation from one of the refugees in the project.
* An unexpected donation from a Bitcoin user.

Birthday messages
* And I checked, I have 195 birthday messages on my Facebook timelines. I have more than 2,900 Facebook friends, so I guess I need to delete the other 2,700 who did not post a message. 🙂* Years ago, I had to work on my birthday. I remember grumbling all day. But this September 5. I loved it.

Park Jin welcoming remarks to FSI (and Casey Lartigue)

National Assembly member Park Jin makes the welcoming remarks at FSI's conference featuring North Korean diplomats. Park Jin | Greeting message to FSI and Casey Lartigue mention - YouTube

Back in America, 4 days and counting

I got back a few days ago, I'm still unpacking... Some of the highlights so far: * Friday morning I was in the audience for a CNN/The Root discussion about being Young and Black in America . As a veteran of so many of these Washington talking events I am less than enthusiastic about them these days. Still, I bumped into a few friends, some of whom are neither young nor black. The discussion seemed so 1980s, with the panelists trying to figure out how to politically empower young black people. I guess it was appropriate then that the head of the NAACP was there. His most irrelevant concern was about hate talk radio...or I guess Rush Limbaugh being on the air all these years explains the high level of black-on-black crime. 20 years later, how is the Stop the Violence movement working out? The highlight of this particular panel was running into old friend David Plotz, who is now editor of Salon Magazine. I don't think I've seen him since college but he recognized me. I forgot...

Still writing (Korea Times, 2023-12-19)

Still writing by Casey Lartigue Jr. The Korea Times December 19, 2023 https://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/opinion/2023/12/626_365284.html

2020-09-24 Still a Little Big Hero?

A former cable TV staff member dropped by TNKR's office today. This is TNKR's second office. When we first moved into our first office in 2016, he donated some items, mainly a microwave office that we still have. His gift today: A testimonial about how difficult I was for the TvN staff to deal with. Apparently everyone (other than Casey Lartigue) featured by TvN has opened up their lives and homes for the cameras. I said "no thank you." Not only that, but I didn't want them to feature me. As I said: "It would be better to highlight the organization instead of me." That was in 2016, when TNKR's future was uncertain, and needed a boost more than my ego does. They tried to convince me, but I said no. I would prefer to stick my head in a lion's mouth. I mention this because I have heard grumbling in recent years about how much I get featured in media, with some people complaining that I don't give Eunkoo or others a "chance." People w...

Michael Vick ain't got nuthin on me!!!

After football player Michael Vick admitted that he had been running a dog-fighting business I wrote that he was an idiot. If he was going to engage in such activity he should have gone to Indonesia or somewhere else. He certainly had the money to do so at that time. If he knew then what he knows now then he would have spent $10 million to run his dogfighting ring in Manila. Today I did something that probably not even Michael Vick ever did: I ate dog meat. I never expected that I would do so. It is a bit scandalous because Koreans don't just kill the dogs and eat them. Rather, they will beat them to death while they are still alive. That allegedly is to get the adrenaline flowing which allegedly makes the meat more tender which allegedly improves a man's stamina. I had told a friend that I wanted to give it a try. But as we sat down to eat I said: "I want to try this but don't give me any details until after we are finished eating." It just looked like regular me...

The Casey Lartigue Show!

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