Ariel Zirulnick

It had been a grim week for a revolution that began as a peaceful uprising against a despot on Feb. 17, with this city and many others wrested from Mr. Qaddafi’s grasp by young people armed with little more than stones and a fierce will for change.

But Qaddafi, describing his people as rats, cockroaches and terrorists, fought back fiercely. First he flattened large portions of the cities that defied him in Libya’s west. Then he turned his sights on the “liberated” east by overwhelming the rag-tag rebels with the same brutal tactics.

As he encircled Ajdabiya in recent days – the next major town west of here – directing tank fire and rockets on civilian homes and militia positions alike, the certainty in Benghazi that they would prevail began to be replaced by doubt and fear. …

Tonight, there was only conviction that they will succeed, a collective exhalation of relief that the US, France and others had essentially said to Qaddafi “you will go no further.”

“We are so sorry to tell you that we have no vehicles for rent at all, I have no excuse for not being able to be more helpful,” a clerk at a car rental office in Yamagata City tells a customer who walks in covered in snow. In fact, he has many excuses: Yamagata is facing shortages of fuel, food, and electricity as it takes in refugees from around the unstable nuclear reactors in Fukushima.

In addition, every available local vehicle is being used to move supplies or people around the region. “You don’t have an umbrella do you, please take one of these, we have plenty,” says the clerk, bowing deeply to the customer as he leaves.

It’s a week before the biggest day of her life, and Anna Williams is multitasking. While waiting to hear back from the Ivy League colleges she’s hoping to attend, the seventeen-year-old senior at one of Manhattan’s most exclusive private schools is doing research for a paper about organic farming in the West Bank, whipping up a batch of vegan brownies, and, like an increasing number of American teenagers, teaching her dog to use an iPad.

Some Egyptians, filled with a new sense of freedom and pride in their country, have begun cleaning up Tahrir, which served as a home base for hundreds of thousands of Egyptians pressing for a new democratic order. Some of the protesters-turned-volunteers wore signs that said, “Sorry for the inconvenience, but we’re building Egypt.”

And believe me, I wouldn’t bet three cups of snot that there isn’t some person like me in the other camp, the Dook fan who has his own dime-store theories on why Carolina is a blight on the athletic world. But I wouldn’t trade places if the Buddha himself showed up wearing a navy blue unitard.

I’ll tell you why: I got to choose my church. Having grown up without an organized religion, I adopted the Carolina Way. I adhered to the Dean-Gut-Roy belief system, and incorporated it everywhere: doing things the right way; playing hard, smart and together; valuing your family above all.

We all burst from Chapel Hill in a plume of gorgeous blue smoke, wafting to all corners of the globe where other like-minded souls await. The “sky-blue mafia” has beds for you in Manhattan, an internship in Hollywood, and we’ll save your spot in line at the K&W in Rocky Mount. There is no old boy’s network, no secret handshake. We just share our affection for a town on a hill, and this: When we see Dookies clogging our TV, our lips curl, and we seethe.