LyrArc Article Gist
On the 30th anniversary of this Interview with Norman Borlaug, of Iowa, Minnesota and Texas, with Mary Gray Davidson for Common Ground, a point of reflection of where we were including China and India, Africa, where we are now in 2026, and where we are headed if we have the right bearings. What has been accomplished under Deng and successors to Xi Jinping, under Nehru and successors to Modi, and in different parts of Africa, the path ahead, and the challenges in the deindustrialization of the US and Europe that is being reversed day by day. Borlaug never lost his faith in education. "Some of the greatest satisfactions I've had is to see little boys-and girls too, for that matter-that have dropped out of school in the third grade. They've got bright, shiny eyes. You give them a job scaring the birds out of your plots. And together with your colleagues you say, "Let's put a little few pennies together and get that little person in school and get them back." And they go through primary school. And then get them into high school You may have to move them to another village because there's no school like that. And I've seen some of them become Ph.D.s; some of the best scientists. And Master Technicians. They're tremendous. There's lots of unpolished stones out there that never got a chance. And a little stimulation. You have to identify them. You can't do that all at the same, we don't have enough pennies to start them all up. But if that happens to some of these, other kids start saying, "Look what happened to that person." That's all part of the game. You've got to reach for the star. You'll never get the star, or never reach it, but if you stretch yourself enough, I always tell the students, you'll get some stardust on your hands. And if that happens you'll be surprised what happens in your ability to do something for yourself, your family, the community, the state, the nation, and the world." ...

LyrArc Article Gist
The Adventures of Amir Hamza is a story much like the Odyssey but set in the Persian, Central Asia Islamic world. It was born as far back as the 9th century. It has a South Asian version since the epic is retold in different settings and has a oral tradition of being recited by dastangos who used to recite these myths and legends . Amir Hamza is supposedly the uncle of the prophet Mohammed. Its South Asian version is in the Hamzanama that was commisssioned with painted manuscripts by the Mughal emperor Akbar. It has 1400 illustrations and formed the basis of Mughal art which was a fusion of the artistic worlds of Hindu India and Islamic Persia and Central Asia. In those times the Persian speaking world extended from Tabriz to Hyderabad in south of India and the Hamza Adventures were told around campfires and in the outdoors. The Hamzanama paintings commissioned by Akbar were shown at the Sackler Gallery around the time of the Iraq invasion in the summer of 2002 and show a world long forgotten. The Saudi type of Wahhabi Islam and religious zealotry is a far cry from this more open world of art and legend and life in central, south and western Asia, of commerce, trade and ways of life intermingled and flow of people across a large region in Asia. What it may suggest is that the current wave of religious zealotry is a kind of phase that like a passing wind comes and then is dispersed, maybe its a reaction to western interventions, maybe a failed response of tradition with modernization, maybe something else, a clinging to old outmoded patterns in areas that are most left behind by change, with ethnic and other strife mixed in with it. No single or simple response to it makes sense and a lot of patience is needed. Conflict of civilizations talk and the like may simply be overdone and way oversimplified things....