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Written by Rex M. Rogers

Published: 02 July 2011

Beirut is a city by the Mediterranean Sea facing West. Huge, multi-million residents. Mountains just behind or East, somewhat like LA or San Francisco but much closer and higher mountains with the city climbing the sides.

Our hotel is in a community up the mountain about 30 minutes from the city proper. Long way from the sea but can see it and the city clearly whenever we travel down hill. Sunsets spectacular. Birds everywhere, first wildlife I saw: pigeons.

City features few Western-style skyscrapers of glass and steel, instead, thousands of all off-white stone, cement, or manufactured stone-surfaced highrises maybe 20-30 stories at most with smaller windows and less glass than Western buildings, probably due to the constant sun. Many residential buildings have huge canopy-like curtains hanging from the top of the balcony to shield the sun and heat.

The Lebanon flag is a distinctive one: a red band on the top and bottom covering about one-third of the flag with a wide, white band in the middle two-thirds. In the middle of the white is a green Cedar of Lebanon. Red, white, and green. Beautiful.

Boiled eggs and goat cheese for breakfast, along with Nescafe coffee brewed in my cup at the table, served like tea with hot water and makings, very strong, which I like. Also black olives with every meal, salty and not bad but not my favorite.

English-language CNN available on the tube and maybe one other English station, the rest Arabic of course, along with some French. Lebanon has a French colonial history, so people here speak Arabic, French, and maybe English. My cab-driver spoke no English, but we got to "J'mapelle Joe" and Rex.

People at the hotel call me "Mr. Rex." I thought this was because they had confused my last name until I heard them address others in a similar way. The hotel key is attached to a bolt-shaped piece of gold metal that weighs a good pound or more. Probably won't forget it's in my pocket.

Went to another Lebanese restaurant tonight at 7:30 pm, ordered meal about 8:20 and it came a half hour later. Long mealtimes. Left the restaurant at almost 11:00 pm. Restaurant was a huge outdoor patio on the side of a mountain over-looking a deep valley. Patio covered by various canopies, lots of flowers, seating areas part couches with cushions, part straight-back chairs. Interesting place. Ate raw liver, chicken wings, sausages, a sort of hush puppie with beef inside, salads, and more. Dessert here is about 10-12 kinds of fruits placed on the table in bowls. Cantaloupe and watermelon fantastic.

For those who wish, meals end with a small cup of Turkish Coffee. Strong enough to kill a moose, probably why I didn't sleep much at all last night--either that or the jetlag. Restaurants we've been to both had pools of water with frogs in them that made an incredible racket. Few or no bugs. Balmy, pleasant to sit outdoors into late evening.

Full moon out tonight over the mountains populated by thousands of lights in the dark. Looks like San Francisco.

Saw Martha Stewart on a TV channel called "Fatafeat." Found out this word means "Crums," their version of the Food Channel.

© Rex M. Rogers – All Rights Reserved, 2011

*This blog may be reproduced in whole or in part with a full attribution statement. Contact Rex or read more commentary on current issues and events at www.rexmrogers.com or follow him at www.twitter.com/RexMRogers.

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Written by Rex M. Rogers

Published: 28 June 2011

Since New Year’s Eve several countries in the Middle East and North Africa have experienced a wave of unprecedented social unrest played out in street demonstrations, many of them ending in violence. The countries involved include Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Yemen, Bahrain, Syria and more. The goal for most protesters, as far as can be discerned, is to replace long-time autocratic regimes with some version of democracy, or at least a more open society.

Among the more than 500 million people in the region many are fed up. They want to share in the freedoms, opportunities, and material wellbeing they’ve seen in the West or elsewhere in the world. They do not generally want to transpose Western values and practices upon their cultures but rather develop their own versions of open societies that respect human dignity, life, and liberty.

Christians can and should support all efforts to achieve human freedom. To do this, Christians do not necessarily need to “take sides” in the political processes at work in the region, although this may at times be warranted too. They can support change by presenting moral structures and providing principles based upon a Christian worldview.

The Word of God is not a political manual, yet it speaks to politics. Our task is to ever seek to apply unchanging biblical principles in a rapidly changing world.

© Rex M. Rogers – All Rights Reserved, 2011

*This blog may be reproduced in whole or in part with a full attribution statement. Contact Rex or read more commentary on current issues and events at www.rexmrogers.com or follow him at www.twitter.com/RexMRogers.

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Written by Rex M. Rogers

Published: 27 June 2011

I’m in Beirut as I write, my third visit to Lebanon, so I’m beginning to learn a few things about this interesting country and people. Here’s my lengthening list:

--The food is excellent. Hummus, varieties of spiced meats, sweet and to-die-for fruit, which tends to be fresher than what’s available in supermarkets in the States because most of the fruit comes from within the country.

--The children, as all children everywhere, are beautiful. But there’s something about Lebanese little ones that attract my eye every time. They look like black-haired (sometimes curly), dark-eyed, olive-skinned angels.

--Beirut fills a basin around the Mediterranean Sea and quickly climbs the mountain backdrop to the east. Four to six story residences and even larger apartment buildings dot the hillsides offering spectacular views of the city and sea to the west or valleys and mountains to the east.

--The Lebanon Mountains, or Mount Lebanon, run along the central part of the country north to south. The highest point reaches above 10,000 feet. I saw snow patches on several mountaintops during our drive over a pass yesterday. The mountains boast some good ski resorts, are populated by pines (including the ancient Cedars of Lebanon), and a tree-line that can be seen on most of the ranges, meaning the tops are bare, much like California’s southern ranges. Another range called the Anti-Lebanon Mountains runs along the eastern border with Syria.

--The BeKaa Valley is a rich agricultural plain lying between the mountain ranges, is some 75 miles long and up to 10 miles wide. The valley is beautiful and produces much of the country’s farm foods like potatoes and fruits, including grapes with associated wineries.

--Baalbek, an approximately 2100 year old Roman ruins is located to the east and north in the BeKaa Valley. It features incredibly preserved stone works, in particular the temple of Bacchus or Dionysus, the god of wine, ecstasy, and madness. Bacchus is the word from which we get the term bacchanalia, meaning wanton orgies. Add temples to Venus, the goddess of love, and Jupiter, the ruling god, and you get the picture of the activities that took place in Baalbek, which by the way gets its name from the idol Baal. But the architectural antiquity is fantastic to see.

--Lebanon is a country divided by religious sectors. Maronites, Christians, Druze, Muslims, Greek Catholics, Greek Orthodox, and more tend to live in historically defined areas. There’s a history of friction, but there’s also a history of periods of productive and peaceful interaction, like now.

--Lebanon is surrounded by politically powerful neighbors: Israel to the south, Syria to the east and north. When the big powers rattle sabers Lebanon gets caught in the middle.

--Lebanon is a geographically small nation. If you dropped it into Lake Michigan, the country would disappear.

--Lebanese people live in diaspora all over the world. About 4.3 million live in Lebanon. As many as 15 million plus people of Lebanese descent live elsewhere, many known for the business prowess, especially in restaurants.

--Lebanon may have some Bedouin peoples, but there are no deserts in Lebanon, the only Middle East country that can make this claim.

--Lebanon enjoys its French colonial heritage in that children often attend schools structured upon French educational systems and take French courses each year. Many Lebanese speak Arabic, French, and English.

There’s much more. Lebanon’s economy is growing and for now its politics are relatively stable. Lebanon is small but influential, an engaging country, people, and culture.

© Rex M. Rogers – All Rights Reserved, 2011

*This blog may be reproduced in whole or in part with a full attribution statement. Contact Rex or read more commentary on current issues and events at www.rexmrogers.com or follow him at www.twitter.com/RexMRogers.

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Written by Rex M. Rogers

Published: 25 June 2011

Drinking too much has been around as long as, well, “drinking.” This is particularly true for young people under the legal drinking age of 21 years.

But there’s a new development afoot that’s causing more concern than too much beer on the weekend ever did. It’s called extreme drinking, which is sometimes assumed synonymous with binge drinking and sometimes presented as another notch beyond that. Extreme drinking is increasing rapidly and dangerously among high school and college age students.

Extreme drinking is often built upon drinks like Jungle Juice, a mixture of hard liquor, fruit juices, and, sometimes, high caffeine energy drinks. It makes adolescents drunk quicker and cheaper, which is part of its youthful appeal.

Researchers have demonstrated that teens don’t drink like adults, which means they don’t drink a glass over a meal or social drink at a party. Instead, 90% of all teen drinking is binge drinking. Four beers for women and five for men consumed within an hour is the standard definition of binge drinking, a both-gender issue.

Caffeine in alcoholic drinks apparently makes them more dangerous because the caffeine can keep a person awake and drinking long after the drinker might typically have fallen asleep. And hard liquor is being used more often than beer in drinking games like beer pong.

The problem with underage extreme drinking: more injuries, more fatalities, more sexual aggression by the drinker or sexual abuse of the drinker, and a 40-60% higher likelihood the underage drinker, beginning early, will become an alcoholic in later years.

I don’t consider drinking a sin, as some of my conservative Christian friends do. But I don’t drink as a matter of choice, as more and more of my Christian friends are doing—in fact, I’d say the number that don’t drink has dropped precipitously and rapidly in the past thirty years. But that’s another subject.

Binge or extreme drinking is something else again. The attraction is anyone’s guess, though youth who participate talk about getting drunk without having to taste the drink—an odd thought to me—and about their perception of fun, which they indicate can’t happen without senses-deadening, ear-splitting noise and getting hammered. Psychologists talk about a sense of belonging for which people search during youth or a sense of alienation from the world with its concomitant desire for escape, even if for just a few hours.

I think recent increases in extreme drinking are not about kids just being kids or young ones sowing wild oats. This is a danger sign and a warning. For all their lack of innocence, youth today are still naïve about the long-term consequences of what in 2008 candidate Barack Obama called “youthful indiscretions.”

Youth have always been youth, meaning they get into trouble experimenting their way to adulthood. But the trouble they can get into today is exponentially more dangerous than it used to be. Indiscretions used to give youth hangovers and from time to time a pregnancy. Now indiscretions can leave youth with lifetime addictions or serious maladies like STDs. Or worse still, indiscretions can kill them outright. Extreme drinking brings all these probabilities with it.

Drinking education programs in schools can help but aren’t the real answer. We need something more powerful and we have it.

For all their presumed and postured rebellion against adults, youth still largely take their cues from adults. It seems youth want adult supervision, that’s part of the "belonging," even when they reject it. Until youth see adults sharing different attitudes about alcohol use and abuse and until adults use alcohol more wisely, I don’t think much will change in youth drinking patterns. So what the kids need are grownups in the group, adults who are mature in attitudes and behaviors.

It’s a tough world out there. Time for grownups to grow up, take charge, model good behavior, and don’t be afraid to set boundaries, stay engaged, and tough love kids into adulthood, especially in terms of alcohol abuse. The risks and rewards are high. Not doing this could mean youth never see adulthood. Adults getting involved with kids in terms of extreme drinking can mean kids live long and prosper.

© Rex M. Rogers – All Rights Reserved, 2011

*This blog may be reproduced in whole or in part with a full attribution statement. Contact Rex or read more commentary on current issues and events at www.rexmrogers.com or follow him at www.twitter.com/RexMRogers.

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Written by Rex M. Rogers

Published: 24 June 2011

International airlines, in my experience, continue to outdo airlines based in America in customer relations—and services.

I don’t mean you can’t find nice or professional American airline flight attendants or agents. Of course you can. What I mean is that overall, international lines work harder at the little things to make flying more pleasant, or at least make it less onerous.

Here are a few examples:

--International airlines serve better and more food, hands down, especially Air France.

--International airlines offer more choices of free newspapers.

--International airline staff, in my experience, less often invoke the trump word “security” to keep you from doing something they don’t want to deal with—like using a nearby restroom where no one is waiting as opposed to the restroom in your section where six are waiting.

This happened to me today on Delta. I’m a Platinum mileage traveler, was sitting 10 feet from a restroom between sections and the flight attendant jumped me with “Sir, where is your seat?” Never mind no one was waiting there while several waited for the “appropriate” restroom. She still said I couldn’t use the restroom in front of me: why? Because of “security.” Did you get that? If I'd used this restroom it would have constituted a security risk. Right.

--International airlines suffer these things too--but American airlines in particular charge exorbitant bag fees, set up innumerable disqualifiers to discourage people from redeeming earned miles, and present mileage clubs that really don’t offer much in the first place.

--The kicker for me was a 4.5-hour delay in Memphis last Saturday with Delta. OK, it happens. But for this one—no explanation, no apology, no amenities, nothing. Later this week I received an email apology and feedback form. Maybe I’ll send them this blog.

One last thing that doesn’t matter much in the scheme of things but it’s interesting. International airline staff members are better dressed, actually, often dressed-up with sport jackets, ties, and a polished attitude to go with it.

I think American airlines could learn a few things from their international peers.

© Rex M. Rogers – All Rights Reserved, 2011

*This blog may be reproduced in whole or in part with a full attribution statement. Contact Rex or read more commentary on current issues and events at www.rexmrogers.com or follow him at www.twitter.com/RexMRogers.