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Churchill, Roosevelt and Stalin at Yalta.

Driving east along the North Shore you’ll see a glimpse of the relatively level shoreline of the southern African coast.

Look north, the steep highlands of the North Shore are a consequential contrast to the southern view.

Geography has meaning and consequence. In the case of southern Africa the level-appearing shore suggests (whether true or not, I do not know) to me reasonably cooperative terrain.

Whatever the on-the-ground conditions, this type shore around Durban, SA, supports the southern hemisphere’s largest port. Four-thousand-plus ships per year spell a busy port to me. The Twin Ports and Two Harbors would be prosperous indeed with a tiny proportion of such commerce.

It used to, and still does, amuse and annoy me that so-so many residents and visitors look at (as example) the North Shore’s Sawtooth Mountains and never hear how each peak shows a lifted rock layer sheared off later by the last glaciation and explaining (for those who stop to read the geology) the general east/west direction of lakes in much of the Boundary Waters Wilderness, in the past called pays den haut or upper country by the French who early explored our area. So much to see and appreciate.

The ancient origins of Iron Range ore, the plains intruding into our region part of glacial Lake Agassi and the pine forest sands of northern Wisconsin and Minnesota are all other parts of a story and history too seldom told and celebrated.

Drive west past Bad Medicine Lake south of Itasca and see if the sudden appearance of the great plains doesn’t give pause.

Go to the Hull Rust pit outside Hibbing and see if ancient deposits don’t impress.

Or try the Skyline Drive and imagine that level as once having been the shore of glacial Lake Minong, predecessor to today’s Lake Superior.

Being so far from home, a place made dearer knowing an active war zone lies between it and me, makes for me an increase in appreciation. Damn if I might not be happy to see a black fly this May.

OK, too much eager optimism there, but you get the idea.

Being physically far from home has brought some strange sights. Some will remember from their pasts or at least from Back To the Future scenes of gas station attendants running out to pump gas and clean your windshield. Long gone? But still to be found (not at all sure why) at service stations in South Africa (SA). Many may also recall SA’s apartheid past.

Here, where Cry The Beloved Country originated and moved our collective consciousness, maybe it’s a bit reasonable to lean in on current events.

Gads and Gods, how I prefer to avoid things political (too), but here we are where almost daily aboard ship I hear some poor suffering soul upset their flight home can no longer go through Djibouti.

How sorrowful it is that conflicts and war tearing places and people apart upsets someone’s vacation plans. Go fund them.

So it seems that over time no matter what occurs nothing puts a stop to racial, ethnic or religious, etc. differences as opportunity for profitable exploitation.

Accenting differences or pointing out areas of past or potential grievance has long been a valid way to get ahead in the game.

What game? Anything you care to think of can become a game someone is willing to play for fun, profit or glory.

Nearer home, the sympathetic Protestant groups standing in Twin Cities solidarity with more recent African arrivals were followers of the same belief that took The Reformation as time to be hell bent on destroying all traces of Catholicism among their European neighbors.

What has changed?

If I were to be perhaps too cynical I might say there were simply too damn many Polack Catholics to kill even for the determined and ambitious Swedish Lutherans to handle. Too many, though for some having more to kill for the glory of their beliefs might encourage rather than daunt.

Hard to tell when in a fracas. We might only know afterward, when counting the lost and dead of both sides. Things in the Middle East having more than a touch of religious motive are enough to give pause if not abandonment of cause.

Passing along the apartheid coast might give some perspective. Are things now better than they were? Is some improvement in conditions and relations better than standing pat?

The one thing I think I can say with confidence is things being more godawful complex than we can imagine. A doofus blaming their ruined flight plans on the warmongering U.S. shows (as, I think, do all) the same (or worse) self-centered selfishness they decry.

As example take (something few of you will likely take into account) the role of the Yalta Conference in the situations of today. At Yalta, Roosevelt and Churchill, both ailing and worn down, simply relented, rewarding Stalin, who’d been a key player in starting WWII, with half of Europe and role of People’s Dictator over many millions, many of whom he was willing to use, abuse and slaughter.

Thinking we know what’s right or best or good or bad or practical or foolish or moral versus bankrupt is hardly reliable.

Didn’t, after all, Roosevelt and Churchill both think they were saving lives and doing good when giving to Stalin the keys to half of Europe?

And didn’t Stalin, as a force for good and representative of the best possible system, believe he was justified as Dictator FOR ALL People to do what was necessary for the benefit of all?

Why of course he did. His firmness of conviction helped guide him in crushing millions for their own good.

Whether Stalinist acts or religious devotion we might be dealing with much the same. Should Roosevelt and Churchill have refused to give Stalin his due? Tens of millions paid with their lives. Was it worth it?

Terrible as it is having your vacation flights altered, is it perhaps more consequential to acquiesce to authoritarianism whether political or religious or financial?

History is both fact and narrative. One should not erase the other.