Mayhem

One of the side-effects of traveling a lot in my job is that I find myself much more interested in what happens in places after I've been there. It takes me longer than before to read the newspaper or The Economist because I find myself reading articles about places like Hong Kong, Thailand, Egypt, Spain, Senegal, etc, that I once would have skipped right past. So, having been to Beirut a couple of years ago, it has been especially frightening to see what has been happening in Lebanon (and Israel) over the past several days.

I really have nothing intelligent--or certainly nothing that would fit in a blog post--about why this is happening or what should be done about it. Even at peace, Lebanon struck me as an incredibly complicated place in an even more complicated region, with a complicated history and a complicated social/political/religious environment. The people suffered greatly through the civil war, but seemed to have made tremendous progress in rebuilding. I can't claim to know it, but I'm nevertheless more saddened than I might have been before.

On top of that, we have close friends who are currently on holiday in Beirut (he's American and she's Lebanese with family there). While she and their children had planned to be there for most of the summer, he was supposed to fly home this weekend, but with the airport bombed and roads to Syria closed (and Syria probably not being the most welcome place for Americans to travel in any event), we have no idea when or how he'll be able to get back. I'm actually not as worried about their safety as I probably should be, but I would nevertheless imagine that they've got plenty of anxiety and uncertainty right now.

I wish I had something more cogent or witty or deep to say, but that's all my addled brain can come up with at the moment...