I didn't have the opportunity to post these photos of children watching Victory Day parades in Chelyabinsk, Russia, when they were current back on May 9.

Now that I've shaken the dust of the road off, a long weekend (stateside) with a martial theme seems like a good enough excuse to me. Someday, this generation will come to you and ask, "what was the 'summer driving season'?"

No need to wait for the war to brush up on the background of American-Iranian relations. DIA users Just Foreign Policy is on a nationwide tour complete with this spanking-new high-quality YouTube documentary:

They're out on the west coast as I write this -- catch them near you sometime soon ... and/or Donate to Just Foreign Policy or write your rep in support of diplomatic, not military, engagement with Iran.

Since we're on about APIs lately, the Development Seed blog's description [warning: geeky] of using our API to internationalize StandAgainstPoverty.org by melding Salsa and Drupal is a timely comment.

Beautiful.

High among the many compelling reasons to work for DIA, one must rank the management's willingness to let one take four weeks' vacation on the trot.

Nevertheless, one does this sort of thing at one's peril, and the witticisms that have enlivened this space in my absence seem proof enough that the blog goes on.

But faint heart never won fair Hefeweizen, and I have to admit that somewhere between Maidan (in a lull of the crisis du jour and under the docile occupation of a half-dozen parties' professional protester-campers) and the Hofbrauhaus, work, DIA, nonprofit tech, all disappeared gloriously into the memory hole.

Feeds and newsletters and all that stuff in total stillness, with just the cool cascade of strange sights, new people, and miles of cobblestones to walk.

It's not that I don't love everyone, it's just ... I don't know how to finish that sentence.

Besides, travel is a form of metaphysical -- and ever-so-physical -- blogging (bear with me here, I'm trying to get a writeoff for attending Carnival).