It's raining, as I write

In my busy reading this week (code for: I can't find the article source), recent droughts in Russia may have been a contributing factor in the run-up of Arab Spring. Russia, more than EU countries, supplied grain to North Africa at reasonable prices, but when Russia's supply dwindled, they stopped exporting and sold grain to themselves; average Africans were depleted of free-market access to bread and dysfunctional government rations, greasing the democratic (since dashed) hopes of many in the region to self-actualize and rely less on the policies of hegemonic 'providers'.

Some personal associations are close at hand: most recently, 'Feed My Starving Children' was a definite highlight of our trip to America this summer; my Model United Nations trip to Cairo, October 2010 happened naively just a couple months before 'Arab Spring' activism; a controversial symposium at Concordia College, c. 1987, had Garret Harding argue 'Lifeboat Ethics' and the rationale to let the sinking world sink (as Western well-intended motives only add weight to the individual and collective rafts of self-survival).

Returning to Prague's Vaclav Havel airport is always a joy, especially in the glow of good trips: God has blessed us with many good homes. I was astonished, however, with the brown landscape. A long-term colleague here remarked that 'our Garden of Eden is no longer', inviting evangelical opportunities! In context, those assuredly happen!

Below is a poem I'm still scraping out. It's naturally about global warming/climate change but not in any way reacting to political discussions that frankly defy educational respect. Pope Francis will speak to Congress next month and invariably address our negligent stewardship to the neighbors we least associate with and the earth we exploit. In ways, he is ahead of his times, but lagging behind the times we could/should figure out for ourselves, with the balance of the Bible and common sense (devoid of self-interested political pragmatism). In the spirit of a symposium--including disparaging voices like Garret Harding--we have to do better than how we're doing, pleasant people that we are.

            Apollo, let us run

The sun is reason, qua-Apollo, as myths go,

and while I worship nothing of his brother,

I run a hellcat from this ball of fire and dive

(in not-so-feline fashion) into a sea of other:

a spangling envelope of simulated shade,

a lake or stream that flows my way, or, times

being what they are, into a pool man-made,

anything in sight to ward off what we know:

we’re burning up. Agent Orange is too select

a nightmare to assign as déjà vu, yet now we

lie exposed—the lab betrays our intellect,

as those who’ve been at either business-end

of hellfire can attest: what is heard or seen

must now be felt, faint hopes to comprehend.

Of all phenomena (here let definition grow:

Husserl and others render what exists, what

comes as an event, what we are in that mix)

I love a gentle sun-shower: rain at root, if

not exempt from quick evaporating force. One

falls against the other’s lift and full predicts

our lean relief, yet still will make Apollo run.