Sprinting
Towards the Finish Line
Saturday evening we hit bed
a little past midnight, having spent the evening eating a wonderful meal,
drinking wine, watching a somewhat unedited slide show (got to address that),
and then going for a short hike. Our intention was to wake at 4:30 AM to make
it back to
The first part of the drive
was very predictable. We were driving on the worst roads that I have ever
experienced (in terms of potholes, at least), without adequate signage, and in
the dark. The amazing thing was not that we got lost, which we did, but instead
that we were able to get unlost and to do so without
breaking an axle or denting a wheel (though who really knows how we ultimately
fared mechanically). The vehicle turned out to be a Mercedes-Benz van (a
“1000”) and it had a verrrrry long-travel suspension.
It needed every centimeter of that travel. Indeed, we only bottomed out the
vehicle, or the shocks, two or three times on the entire trip. Still, much wear
and tear, no doubt, must have occurred. At least our driver seemed to really
enjoy the trip, seemingly as much as we did.
On exiting the little town
where we had been staying—heck, upon exiting the entire region—we finally made
it onto fairly smooth pavement that allowed much higher speeds. Still, we did
manage to drive the van off the road at least once after returning to smooth
pavement. I saw it coming. Too fast, too tight a turn (sweeping and downhill),
and too high a center of gravity. But how do you shout, “Please slow down!” in Goergian? I certainly don’t know, and at some point one is
beyond where doing so really is going to make a whole lot of difference.
Fortunately, it was a well-handling vehicle and the shoulder was in pretty good
shape. The upshot is that the craziness of our driving seemed to increase in
inverse proportion to our distance from
“The genome is not, in any
sense whatsoever, a scale model of the body. It is a set of instructions which,
if faithfully obeyed in the right order and under the right conditions, will
result in a body. I have previously
used the metaphor of a cake. When you
make a cake you may, in some sense, say that you are ‘translating’ from recipe
to cake. But it is an irreversible
process. You cannot dissect a cake and
thereby reconstruct the original recipe.
There is no one-to-one reversible mapping from words of recipe to crumbs
of cake. This is not to say that a
killed cook could not achieve a passable reversal, by taking a cake presented
to him and matching its taste and properties against his own past experience of
cakes and recipes, and the conconstructing the
recipe. But that would be a kind of
mental selection procedure, and would in no sense be a translation from
cake to recipe.” p. 175, Dawkins, 1999.
The Last Supper, Sunday,
November 21, 2004.
Where was I? Oh yes, so
Sunday was spent feeling really, really crappy. “Broken” I believe was an
appropriate word that we came to for describing the state. Drinking water and
then green tea, taking a bath, changing into clean clothes, eating a small
meal. These helped, but not enormously. Unfortunately, this was a day also
dominated by needing to pack for the trip home and taking care of a very bored
child (note to self: the rest of the homework must be completed before the
books are read).
Fortunately, things began to
turn around with dinner, and a wonderful soup. The rest of the meal, and the
wine, also were restorative, delightful, and wholly appreciated. The meal ended
on an intense note, however, as first the conversation was a recap of an
earlier one on the behavioral consequences of internal fertilization (and, yes,
you do know what I’m talking about, but no, you probably are thinking of
different consequences from the ones that I had in mind). Fortunately or
unfortunately, the conversation veered off from evolutionary biology to
religion. I’ve been all through this, again and again, over my career as an
evolutionary biologist. Sill, we did come up with some interesting
philosophical nuggets.
The first was the question
of why religion—particularly in the U.S.—and science parted ways some time
during the 19th century from what previously had been a unified
whole. I argued that science simply became more difficult to comprehend, so
therefore was more difficult to appreciate by the lay public. Religion,
particularly at a highly over-simplified level, appears to be much more readily
grasped, so the public began to become increasing divided into those two ends
of the spectrum, the well and broadly educated at one end and the poorly or
narrowly educated at the other. However, a difference here is that even the
well educated began to have trouble being learned in all fields, so naturally
specialization began in which some people were scientists and others simply
were not. Many of the latter were also among the religious. It wouldn’t
surprise me that the clergy ultimately is as much to blame as any group for the
resulting split since clearly had the clergy enthusiastically repeated
scientific reasoning from the pulpit there probably never would have been such
a split that we would now be having this argument. And why shouldn’t the clergy
have fully embraced scientific thinking? It is not as though clergy ever stick
solely to relaying ancient philosophies and what is understanding science if
not the closest thing to understanding God’s world? In other words, the split,
I would argue, is an entirely artificial one that is a consequence of an
education system, particularly in the
Not that I am arguing that
the techniques of science and religion are identical (nor necessarily even
similar), but instead I see most arguments that posit a profound distinction
between scientific and religious world views as not all that well thought
out. They tend to boil down to something
to the effect of “I was told that science (or religion) is bad and therefore it
must be.”
Apparently the real reason
that
Well, a well trained
evolutionary biologist ought to be able to answer that question: Reality is those things that can impact on
the Darwinian fitness of our genes—but that, surprisingly, is not the point I’m
trying to make.
Later, as I struggled
endlessly with a balky Georgian internet connection, Talia
came to me to say that she found it troubling to question reality. She
preferred certainty to uncertainty. Well, yes Talia,
we all do. But that doesn’t mean that we can be certain of much of the
anything. Welcome to the real world and, yes, we are all very, very proud and
impressed by your intellectual prowess!
The conversation at the
table ended with a well-stated summation of how the two perspectives, that of
religion and that of science, are different given a lack of good training and
perhaps also imagination. I really can’t recall what exactly I said. Ah, such
is the upside as well as the downside of good wine.
That evening I spent an hour
or so at an internet café sending off a much needed e-mail and printing out a paper
that I very much must read sometime before Tuesday. There I met an American who
had been living in Tbilisi for a dozen years. He expressed strong disgust of
the 56 or so million Americans who voted with the majority this November 2. I
believe the word “stupid” was his dominant adjective. I pointed out that those
56 million Americans obviously believe that George Bush is a good man who can
lead the country well (yah right, and I also believe in an incompatibility
between God and science). Instead, I countered, that the really stupid
Americans are those who don’t/didn’t vote. Challenge me on that assertion. I
dare you! I double dare you!!
So now we’ve landed in
Amsterdam. The rest of the evening, yesterday, was spent preparing to leave and
spending our last time together. Traveling sure is such strange business. New
experiences demand, I suppose, a loss of old experience. Bye guys. We sure are
going to miss you.
I never quite got to why I
fear that I will be responsible, from afar (action at a distance?) for waking up
our hosts too early this Monday morning. I’ll get to it, and then to the
missing 1.5 days spent in Western Georgia. Right now, though, I have to deal
with deplaning, after getting in only about a solid hour or so of sleep this
past evening, flying from Tbilisi to Amsterdam. On to exploring Amsterdam,
again, for a few hours in the rain!
“…the relationship between a
gene and its phenotypic effect is not an intrinsic property of the gene, but a
property of the forward developmental consequences of the gene when interacting
with the consequences of many other genes and many external factors.” p. 176, Dawkins,
1999.
So, let’s see. We were
saying goodbye. I can’t even recall if we said, Thank you. Thank you! We were
all very tired by then. As we headed to the airport by taxi my mind wandered
(that’s our tax, in the photo to the above-left that I by chance photographed
going by the institute on a previous day). I felt that I really ought to be
paying attention to Tbilisi for one last time this trip, but it’s hard to do
much of anything when you’ve been awake for something like 20+ hours. As we
were driven my mind was drifting, walking through the recent events, and then
it hit me. Merde! Were we going to be responsible for
waking them up yet again? The answer, as I write this, is that I don’t know.
But this is the story…
It might have been our first
night in town. Naomi was walking us to Liana’s for dinner when we passed by a
lovely flower/plant shop sitting just around the corner from her place. She
pointed out a plant (a Norwalk Pine) which she said she was hoping to buy since
it reminded her of where she grew up in Washington state. The following Sunday,
our first in Tbilisi, as Talia and I walked from yet
another wonderful meal at Liana’s, we stopped by the shop to inquire how much
it would cost us to buy the little tree for Naomi. We hesitated, however,
because we really didn’t want to have her receiving the plant until after we
left (one of those host-guest things).
I spent the week off and on
trying to figure out how to sneak back to the store and covertly acquire the
plant. Fortunately, on our last Sunday in Tbilisi (yesterday as I write this;
how could it be only yesterday?), Talia and I were
left alone as we were packing (well, as I was packing). I snuck off to the
plant store with the intention of brining back the plant and then hiding it in
an obvious place where they could find it after we were gone. However, when I
got to the store the plant was gone. Dang! Until I realized that it wasn’t gone
but instead had been moved, to the floor. Recognizing me, the people in the
store tried to explain something. Fortunately there was a woman visiting (same
as the previous Sunday) who spoke English. She explained that the plant had
been sold but had not yet been picked up. I thought that was odd, but didn’t
think about it much (thing being Georgia, though, she also thought that it was
odd). We then hatched an alternative plan whereby a different example of the
same plant could be brought from another part of town and it could be brought
over later to the shop to be subsequently delivered to Naomi (since by then we
would be gone). That worked for me, except that I didn’t know Naomi’s address.
Since it was close by I walked down with one of the shop girls to ascertain the
address from the security guards at Naomi’s place. This turned into a lengthy
process. There really is good reason that Naomi never told me her address—I’m
not sure that it can be told, in English at least.
When I got back I told Talia the story and told her not to tell Naomi (though Talia really has trouble not blurting out these things, she
did a fairly good job of keeping our secret). I have no idea whether the
evidence was also obvious to Naomi et al. once they got to the store,
especially since I’m not sure the employees understood the connection between
us, so presumably were only too happy to share the odd “coincidence.” At any
rate, Naomi never let on that she knew. But later that day she did come home
with two identical clay pots, which I was only too willing to hypothesize were
for two identical plants (it is an odd feeling of lives overlapping but not
entirely; Naomi came into the apartment and immediately brought the pots into
her bedroom, not sharing them but not hiding them from us either, but I did see
two pots going by from my vantage at the other end the apartment). The only
problem is that we kept Naomi up until 2:00 AM, until what is now early this
morning. I’m sure that no matter how late Georgian’s consider “early” morning,
the plant I paid to have delivered very well may arrive while they’re still
asleep. Oh well…
“One does not have to be
clairvoyant to prophesy… the rise of a flourishing new discipline of
‘prokaryotic sociobiology.” p. 178, Dawkins, 1999
The rest of Friday, and
all of Saturday (and then that’s that). 784 miles to go and we’re in Washington, and then it’s time to finish
up this diary. Chronologically we were driving down the road on our way to
Western Georgia. Our first stop, other than for photographing the Caucuses, was
a small church only about 100 years old. I don’t know what it was called nor
where it was located (note to self: find a map of Georgia). I suppose that I
should figure this out. Our guide, Tina, asked me what I would like to be
seeing on the trip. I kept replying that I didn’t know nor really care, and
that therefore we could do whatever she wanted to do. As a result, we visited
four more churches that day. One was high on cliffs carved out by a river. The
next was the most spectacular of them all, Gelati
Monastery, full of frescoes and mosaics, some 100 feet off the ground. I’m not
sure what to say about it so instead I took lots of photos (though not of the
interior art—how could I do justice to it anyway?) We then visited a minor
Russian orthodox church (the rest were all Georgian orthodox) with an
interesting grave yard. Again, I’ve much more to say in photos than in prose
(yes, this is one of the photographer’s burdens—a loss of words). Finally was
the runis of a church/castle that we reached just as
the sun was setting. I’ve still got photos, though almost all of them are one-second
exposures. Very mysterious (and amost overwhelmingly
spectacular). As we left I couldn’t figure out how to open the gate and was
helped by a women who at first was puzzled by our cluelessness
but then left with a very well pronounced good bye. We thanked her profusely
and then once again were on our way.
Having visited the various
churches/castles/monasteries, and with the sun now set, it was time to head off
for the evening’s destination. This so far as I could understand was a smallish
village where our tour guide once had family and still had friends. After what
seemed like hours of driving on what seemed like the most disrepaired
(but still passable) roads on Earth (and at some point stopping to buy bread),
we stopped in front of a dark house on a dark lane next to a dark mountain.
Thus began 36 hours of partying, Georgian style.
After numerous beepings of the bus horn we finally drew some attention to
ourselves and out of this dark house on a dark lane came people. Apparently
they hadn’t had electricity since 10 AM the previous day. Apparently no
electricity is a very common experience around this town. So, without missing a
beat, they invited us in for a impromptu feast and hours of drinking which was
followed by a little exploring of surrounding
hills and even more drinking while visiting a second family (and when I say
drinking, what I really mean is toast after toast after toast, Georgian style, that
was in addition to the merely drinking of wine with a meal that accompanied the
toasting with distilled beverages). The next morning—we slept well through the
night, at least until the rooster awaked us—I found myself exploring rural
Georgia, post-Soviet style, with calves, and chickens, and pigs, and maize, and
grapes, and ducks, and a Soviet tractor, and even an abandoned house being used
to store silage. Not quite self sufficiency, but about as close as I’m likely
to experience again any time soon. These people live very close to the Earth,
and I have lots of photos to prove this.
Breakfast was very similar
to the previous night’s dinner, with a number of dishes and freshly baked corn
bread, cheese bread, pickles, etc. Yummy! I’m not complaining, not by any
stretch of the imagination. Indeed, I was warned that Georgia would be like this,
and I didn’t see then nor see now how that would be a problem. However, while
the previous evening we had both wine and distilled spirits (and then even
stronger spirits when we went on that walk into the hills), this morning it was
just spirits. There was again more food than I could possibly eat, all quite
delicious, and toast after toast after toast. By the time we were done with
breakfast I was drunk enough to remain so almost until dinner (when we did it
all over again, though I insisted by then on sticking with just wine).
Replaying it all in my mind I realize that we essentially had four parties
(equivalents) over an approximately 24 hour period. Man, it’s a good thing that
I don’t vacation in Georgia for a living.
That day was one of the most
amazing of a life of adventure. We spent it—seven of us: me, Talia, our guide, our driver, and three members of the
family who we were staying with, a brother, a wife, and a sister (though
honestly I’m still confused about just who was related to whom or, at least,
how). We spent the day driving up a long canyon to mineral springs, apparently
once famous with much infrastructure, but now in growing disrepair (like
everywhere else). We visited a fish farm, explored a waterfall, drank mineral
water, and took hundreds photographs, with me well toasted the entire time.
Naturally I showed little forethought, though I don’t really even remember
leaving on the excursion (or, at least, I was not sure of where we were going),
so I failed to bring along extra batteries for the camera. This had me
conserving batteries when I should have been taking photo after photo. But
still, I took many photos, all of which still are in need of culling. As for
any altered state, the bliss of the day defies explanation. You can only
imagine from similar experiences of your own, ones spent with good company and
good drink in spectacular surroundings. Just smile.
As we drove back, my
sobriety slowly returning, we picked up passengers who needed rides down the
mountain. They were surprised the first time I yelled “stop!” What is this with
somebody screaming out in a foreign tongue and the driver obeying, stopping the
van clearly in the middle of nowhere? Then I’d get out of the bus, take a few
photos, and then went back in to show the best of them to our passengers. This
went on for some time and think they figured out fairly quickly that they were
simply hitchhiking on some sort of chartered excursion. We all had a grand time
and at least one of our passengers said, “Thank you” to me as they were
leaving.
We returned home, had an
even more spectacular meal, with lots of drink. By a bit after midnight I was
asleep, and then up again three hours later. You know the rest. We’re
about an hour from the states now. You
don’t need to hear about our domestic connections (I hope). Here’s to Georgia.
Steve
P.S., While crossing the
Atlantic one of the videos shown was about
P.P.S., As I write this (two
days after Thanksgiving—five days after returning) we have yet to see the bags
that we checked onto the plane in Tbilisi.
P.P.P.S., I’ve declared that I’m not going to touch alcohol again for the rest
of the year. So far I’ve kept true to my word. But it isn’t that hard given how
little alcohol is being consumed by those around me.
P.P.P.P.S., Best line upon
returning: “As a person who has just returned from the former
“Nature, she does not so
much select special variations as exterminate the most unfavourable
ones…” p. 180, Dawkins, 1999
Packing for the next one: It is when one find oneself in the heat of battle
that one sees the world most clearly, and this metaphor most certainly applies
to packing for a trip. There is always a blur at the beginning that comes from
a combination of naivety, time pressures, and excessive ambition. Besides, it
is very difficult to fight the tendency to bring something along just so one can
avoid buying anew at one’s destination. The following, then is a list of things
that should have been brought, which I had hoped (but never got around to)
would be followed with a list of things that need not have been brought.
Things that should have been
brought (many of which were; those that should be on the plane are indicated
with an asterisk):
·
Yellow The North
Face daypack (rather than fullsize pack).
·
Some sort of
durable carry on bag (e.g., yellow Pivot bag).
·
One and ideally
two (if more than one person is traveling) or larger bags for bringing home the
inevitable more stuff that you left with.
·
Laptop
computer—need not be terribly fast. Lightness/portability/battery life/hard
drive size are more important criteria (PIII 300 with Windows 98 is my minimal
system, which I find to be quite adequate, ideally with at least a 6 Gbyte hard drive and at least 128 Mbyte
RAM).
o Flash memory card that plugs into USB port and various
versions of driver software for it for numerous operating systems on CD.
o Back up CDs of operating system and major software.
o Back up CDs for stuff you will be working on, if any.
o Load onto computer MS Office (including PowerPoint),
image-manipulation software, graphing software (though I suppose Excel will do
in a pinch), reference-handling software, and camera-interfacing software.
o The computer needs at least two functional batteries,
fully charged at the beginning of the trip
o One needs to have some sort of converter so that the
computer can be plugged in not only at one’s destination but also at long
layovers along the way. It is nice to have a converter that you plug more than
one thing into at a time, and don’t forget that you may need to be able to deal
with three-prong plugs.
·
A lightweight
set, non-bulky set of headphones that can be plugged into the computer is nice
especially if you are using the computer to brush up on your conversational
language skills.
·
Camera.
o Unless you are absolutely positive that you will be
able to charge your camera’s batteries along the way you should bring six sets
of batteries, all fully charged at the beginning.
o
o At least two 512 Mbyte
memory cards for the camera.
o Lens paper.
o Stuff for downloading images.
·
Depending on
climate, a warm vest and warm long-sleeve jacket (e.g., fleece for both).
·
If colder, then
also bring a set of synthetic long underwear as well as gloves, a jacket, and a
hat.
·
One long-sleeve
button down shirt that is good for casual wear but can be used for more formal
in a pinch.
·
Two cotton t-shirts,
one long-sleeved and one short-sleeved. Bring something that you can wear
almost anywhere.
·
At least three
sets of socks and at least three sets of underwear.
·
A lightweight
set of pants that can be folded down to next to nothing that can also be used for
more formal in a pinch (though I’ve yet to take the thing out of its stuff sack
on this trip).
·
I still find
carrying a lightweight sleeping bag that can take you down to freezing (with
all of your clothes on) to be a nice convenience, though it really does need to
be very light and also needs to be stuffed to very small proportions.
·
The lightest of thermarests also seems to be a nice thing to have along,
just in case you need to sleep on a floor. I brought one on this trip, between
two people (on the assumption that one of us might need to sleep on a floor),
but so far haven’t used it.
·
For the plane
bring only a single bag of about one-pound of gorp
(between two people). Anything more is superfluous.
·
Bring a single,
small bag of organic baby carrots, also for the plane.
·
Bring one book.
·
Bring one diary.
·
Bring lots of
business cards.
·
Bring lots of
pens.
·
Bring hair
rubber bands which, if nothing else, will be used to tie together charged pairs
of camera batteries.
·
Bring a single,
very small if possible, flashlight, ideally something that can use your camera
batteries for power.
·
Sunglasses and
extra set of regular glasses, plus at least two crush-resistant cases, one for
each pair of glasses.
·
Passports.
·
Money.
·
Compass.
·
Maps if you can
obtain them before hand.
·
Fanny pack that
can carry water bottles.
·
Two full water
bottles.
·
Addresses and
numbers of people who you will be visiting.
“God and natural selection
are… the only two workable theories we have of why we exist.” p. 181, Dawkins, 1999
“Individuals do not consciously
strive to maximize anything; they behave as if maximizing something.” p.
188, Dawkins, 1999