Moving Photo

This photo of Condoleeza Rice and a Kyrgiz eagle falconer is amazing, and should move anyone but the most hardened ideologue. When I was born, her family was living under Jim Crow, and he was a Soviet "minority" forbiden to roam with his herds, as his ancestors had always done, or even fly eagles, by direct order of Stalin.

She is now one of the most powerful women in the world, a multilingual PhD who studied the Soviet system before its fall.

And the old practices of Central Asia are legal again-- eaglers and houndsmen hunt in the field, eagles fly on flags, and appear on national stamps.

I am no great believer in progress, but sometimes...

And of old things new again...