Minneapolis

I returned from Bishkek a week ago today. It's been good, great even. The feeling of not being one's self is starting to fade away as I spend evenings with friends and family. I am commited morally and financially to UW next semester for Central Asian Studies. I never realized how much stuff I have until I collected it all in one room for sorting. Gross.

So I think right now is very much about getting my feet back underneath me. Not to say that Kyrgyzstan was somehow some sort of a traumatic exerience that requires recovery but making up for all that lost time in terms of paying attention to (and receiving attention from) friends and family, dealing with stuff (literally all of the accumulated things with attendant memories), trying to get back in shape, and plan the excursion to Alaska are all sort of things that require time but don't really qualify me as busy or working. It is good to take a moment to prepare for the future in every nebulous and concrete way.

I certainly feel that Minneapolis is where I am from but it is not where I live. The anchorless feeling is liberating and daunting. But I will be moving out of my parent's place officially (no stuff in storage).

On the international events front, protests in Kyrgyzstan are going to result in some sort of lurch away from the status quo. It is unclear how that is going to end up though, it is fairly unimportant until some leader comes along with the will and the influence to govern well (and honestly).

Somalia is sliding back to chaos. The US was foolish to think that an Islamic movement can be decisively defeated on the battlefield. If the Islamists come to power again the US should recognize the government and offer aid. Then you can have leverage and less hate. As long as we posture like their ideology can only be dealt with by eradication, they will behave accordingly. Both China and Russia only changed significantly after detente, and the changes (including less hostility to the US) came only after internal upheaval.

The US would also do well to ease up on the rhetoric vis-a-vis Iran (recognize the regime, denounce regime change) and do more under the radar.

I sat next to what I consider to be a fundamentalist for the final leg of the journey home. He believed that the Bible was the supreme source of truth, thus the world is 6,000 years old and all the so-call scientists are out there just to keep the Word of Christ down. Ironically, he claimed to love science and said that science upheld his world-view. All of his "scientists" seemed to amount to one guy in Pensacola Florida with a talk show. I gave a couple of attempts to question his logic, but when he considers the Bible and the Pensacola Creationist to be legitimate sources of information and I do not, it was hard to have a discussion. The lack of a discussion did not prevent the preacher from Nebraska from doing what he knows how to do, preach.

All and all he seemed like a great guy. If only completely irrational belief systems had no effect on people's politics and we did not live in a democracy...

Thanks to everyone that wrote to me while I was abroad. It means more than I can say. I'll keep writing on this page, but probably less frequently for a while.