Odd 'N' Ends From Cyberrealspace

"When all the world is a hopeless jumble / And the raindrops tumble all around / Heaven opens a magic lane." 

There they are: first lines from the classic, "Somewhere Over the Rainbow".

You have your wisdom.

I have mine.

:)

(To my music folkies: I'm still workin' on it).

* * *

What a day this has been.

I thought I had left Somalia (in my mind and via my browser), an enthusiasm taken up in 2006 and quite exciting for my first looks at contemporary conflict -- any conflict -- as gleaned online from English-language editions of local press, videos posted to the then still new YouTube, and photographs appearing here and there in more primary media.  Now, of course, anyone may catch AMISOM's "photostream" on Flickr -- Canon EOS-1D Mark III: http://www.flickr.com/photos/amisom/6020846329/ -- but back then (those ancient days  between 2006 and 2008), I suppose we really were just starting to Google, and that's where I started.

Things have changed.  Although one camera or photographer doth not create an accurate, clear, and complete impression of place and time, what a fine start in producing information resources for those elsewhere in the world brimming with helpful ideas and programs developing around the amelioration of the suffering brought about by confict, the will to take the energy out of conflict drivers, and the love that has in it the want of making things a little better for humanity out to the most remote corners of our planet.

Thank you, AMISOM, for the new visual memories.

So how did it happen here at my customary second row seat to history that Somalia, long set aside in this blogger's toybox, found an open channel and popped up on my screen to shout, "I'm still here!"

The path, probably:

-->Facebook chat threat on the latest having to do with famine, conflict, and development in this most challenging state

--> lively participation in the same

--> (here the the strange part) a post by a post by an expatriot Pakistani Christian (thanks, Ruby) on a gent faking it as gentry in order to impregnate (really, have sex with) 300 women

--> my view: weird news is not necessarily political news, and to prove it

---> News of the Weird (http://www.newsoftheweird.com/), which web site a level down featured a "weird" story (http://www.weirduniverse.net/) about a New York State Department of Transportation manager who had just completed a stint at as Somalia's Prime Minister (http://www.buffalonews.com/city/article514533.ece) with the customary but web search engine-unfriendly name of Mohamed A. Mohamed (Mohamed, if you happen to read this, please feel welcome to "friend me" on Facebook because

--> not one to give up easily, I had better luck reaching out to the successor and current -- and more uniquely searchable -- Prime Minister, Abdiweli M. Ali, whom I have welcomed to my Facebook community).

It has probably taken me longer to whip through this note to this typed point than it had to set sail on curiosity, ambition, and, for motivation, a little love of the wise-old-man sort, to travel from the chattering classes to the Very Man Who Can and Will (one way or another) Make a Difference.

Should it have surprised me? 

We had already one Facebook friend in common.

* * *

Those few minutes of political gyrations online over the morning's still hot coffee were much aided by my familiar virtual down-the-hall (by-the-water-cooler) associate in Texas: former Baylor ER nurse cum blogger and frequent, regular guest columnist for the Daily Times in Pakistan, Tammy Swofford (http://tammyswofford.blogspot.com/ & http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=2011%5C07%5C22%5Cstory_22-7-2011_pg3_6. 

Tammy and I have been chatting for years about "Intellectual Battlespace (IB)" -- her coin -- and the "Islamic Small Wars (ISW)" -- my coin -- and the roles in both played by culture, language, and psychology.  I don't know about me, but she's been pretty good at expressing her views (I must have liked one of her posts and commented on it by way of first contact) and has through hours of eclectic study and chit-chat with imam developed a good sense, so one might put it, for those most opposed to the development of good sense, especially as the same might apply to the pursuit of absolute and equally heartbreaking and altogether mindless power.

Today, we traded book titles.  I have wanted her to read John le Carré's A Most Wanted Man; she now wants me to read Ahmed Sakr's Reflections from a Flying Falcon.

I hesitate to list for Tammy the unreads among arrivals to my library, a pleasantly titled The Ayatollah Begs to Differ among them, but a library should be about having at hand the books one might most enjoy already on the shelves and waiting for karma, God, nature, and social and psychological forces to make the relationship with one of them perfectly plain and pressing: I suppose just one  more volume won't send my apartment crashing through my neighbor's ceiling, at least not right away.

* * *

With various lifestyle routines in mind, including, "if I don't get out of here today, I won't get out at all, probably, for two more days" (not completely true, but close), I was off to the Post Office and the in-town restaurant Bulls and Bears (http://www.bullsandbears.biz/), thinking perhaps they will let me sing there one day.  On this one, however, I was just seriously starving (for, so it turns out, a most not Kosher ham-and-crab melt sandwich and two glasses of a Bogle white wine).

A little chat with the barman and waiter, Sean, proved him knowledgeabe, informally, on Somalia, development and politics in Africa, and, among other things, famous graffiti artist Banksy (e.g., http://youtu.be/XXSg8BApBwA).  For a while, pleasant enough, I was away from my computer but still "in it" -- that is to say, not really away from this expansion into a global consciousness through the facilitation of a great global conversation.

If you still believe you are living only where you appear to be living--restrict the definition of personal environment any which way you may want--you're late to dismiss that notion: we live where our minds live in concert with others and in the minds of those engaged with us in our various and highly individualized pursuits.

* * *

Those who know me personally know I love music and enjoy entertaining with guitar and voice, but approaching 60, a baffling leukemia bubbling up white blood cells for my lymph glands to swell on, those 2,000 books in the library, and a penchant for Orvis wear (also overweight, receding hairline, and so on), it just seems as inviting today to take on as a mission the creation of a development ethos for remote societies and businesses and to formalize that as a remote research station for prospective clients who might enjoy harnessing devoted, informed, and resourceful development-related and culturally perceptive research, analysis, planning, and project design and coordination services.

There's more to come on that theme, but that above seems broad enough for a start.

Altogether, I feel like I have just had a long day racing around K Street, hanging out on M Street, and generally typing up a storm all the way to dusk, and that should tell us all something -- it sure tells me a few things -- about what has just become possible, and what's coming as a consequence of the dissemination of English worldwide, terrific access to helpful others with multiple language sets, insight-inspiring frenemies,  and the development of global web-based communications.

When I started Communicating Arts, my DBA, (http://www.communicating-arts.com), in 1996, I began with this slogan:

-- Business Without Boundaries and Excellence in Every Art and Craft --  

That's a long string, I know, but this evening I think the same never more relevant nor more true.

The walls we think are walls are not the walls we need to be thinking about.

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