I've heard from friends with ties to Columbia, that conditions have dramatically improved across the country, although impressions of that nation's difficult past still linger around the world. Tonight during Anthony Bourdain's show about Columbia, I watch as he visits Medellín and interviews locals - many of whom suffered enormously during the Pablo Escobar period of the 1980s. The people appear proud, hopeful, even happy. Mr. Bourdain says something to a local that reminds me of a rueful Richard Nixon speaking to White House staff in the final hours of his presidency:
"Only if you have been in the deepest valley, can you ever know how magnificent it is to be on the highest mountain."
