one photo from Baghdad

That’s Steve in the front row with the yellow tie. This is apparently a shot from his Baghdad trip. Nothing at all sinister-looking about the scene, just people working hard on a normal day to reform the curriculum as they were asked to do.

Another colleague wrote an hour ago to say he was in denial, and I’m afraid I’m still there myself. Bad things can happen by chance to anyone, of course. But there are certain people who somehow feel destined for tragedy, and Steve was not in any sense one of those. It was quite easy to imagine the next 15-20 years of his career, in fact.

Naturally, I won’t post any of the photos where he’s with his two youngest kids, which are of course the hardest ones to look at.