9-29-2010 Business Lounge, Frankfurt am Mainz, Germany 0705 local time, O dark Hundred back in Woods Hole.
I feel incredibly privileged, to be retracing how it all happened. In heading down the Mainz, the Rhur, The Rhone, The Rhine, or for that matter the Vistula, the Volga, or the Indus, crossing the Middle East and then heading up the confluent Nile to Khartoum, where the White goes West towards Lake Victoria, and the Blue heads into Ethiopia and the Rift Valley, I will be going home. Last I heard, the DNA was confirming the legends and the bones. Lucy and her kind were our Grands, and as we stumbled off through that genetically narrow neck of land called the Horn of Africa, we were beginning this great adventure that I have been privileged to be part of. Yes, my brothers and sisters, we were all there, we can’t escape it. I know, the ‘it’ I am referring to, that we are all experiencing, some kind of irresponsible cartoon archetypal theatre of male longings, of testosterone driven lustings for impossible feats of strength. Piles of heads in Samothrace. Heaps of bodies in Judea. Widowed, raped and otherwise abused better halfs left to die in the dust. And its also cuneiform alphabets, hospitals with sanitary facilities in Arabia when Europeans were blood letting in pest houses. Its also Shackleton’s Boat Journey, its Hilary and Tenzing, its that woman with the camel and the dog crossing the Outback. It’s the great adventure to save all beings, to leap into the middle of the blaze of pain and suffering and by enduring, transcend it. It’s the worldly buddhas, the prophets, the true saints, the buffoons and jongleurs. It’s this massive experiment in diversity and divinity that we are all born into, and die out of. Yes, privileged is the right word, but with my brain feeling a little scratchy after this overnight Eastward flight, I am very thankful for the Business Class Lufthansa lounge with its plug ins (but bring your two prong adapter), its hot milk on demand, and its relative quiet.
I hope you have all experienced swimming in a phosphorescent sea. ‘D’you fancy a swim?’ said Ian, as the blueberry pie and icecream dessert was finishing up at Ellies house. Ian lives in London, and is generally up for anything. ‘I’ve been swimming three times today, but not at night’, he went on, ‘do you reckon there’s any of that phosphorescence left?’
Fair question. The waters of Vineyard Sound And Buzzards Bay off Woods Hole clear rapidly this time of year, and most of what turns it murky in the summer is animals like noctiluca gonyalax, (little green blobs) or mneniopsis (1-2 inch blue green blobs); in reglar English; phosphorescence. Exactly what the survival advantage of lighting up when you are disturbed might be isn’t totally clear to me, but it’s gotta be there. With fireflies, it’s definitely sex, but compared to these guys, fireflies are Einsteins. Their light organ, studied by among others our late next door neighbors Elizabeth and John Buck and by my first biology teacher, Jim Case, runs on a integrated chemical process involving a special protein, luciferin, and an enzyme that produces the chemical change that emits photons…aka light. The little oceanic guys, the ones that Ian is hoping to encounter as we head for the beach, use a completely different mechanism. Calcium, that stuff we have so much of in bones, and so little of in the reactive cells of the softer parts of the body, is the trigger. When special membrane bound proteins that are sensitive to movement let it enter, the calcium activates conformation changes in a protein called aequorin that spin off the protons, producing a (usually) blueish light. What the Nobel prize last year was awarded for, however, was not this first part, but for an embellishment; Flourescent Green Protein ( FGP). Turns out that many oceanic phosphorescers enhance their emissions by having a protein that, when activated by the aequorin process light, converts the light to a slightly different wavelength, producing all kinds of color variations. Well, once you got a protein you can decode and identify the gene. And once you got a gene, you can add it to a convenient virus and transfect it into pretty much any cell you like. Green glowing mice. Red glowing presynaptic sympathetic neurons. A whole nervous system in full living function mapped out by these added color tags. Look for it in the coming years, as it helps unravel the causalities that, eventually, will crack the big causality of them all. Yes my friends, I am talking about CONCIOUSNESS…what Walter famously defined to me as “Something that I have, and I hope you do, too!” . So far, like a persistently evasive Theorem of Fermat, any attempt to make a causal link between brain and mind has fallen onto one of the pits of despond or horns of dilemma that lurk in these philosophical realms.
The path to the beach was dimly visible, winding through low brush under a scattering of trees. We crossed the clunky wooden bridge across the decorative pond that’s been made of a natural vernal pothole, originally sculpted out by the melting ice of a Laurentian glacier that visited the cape ..what…10,000 years ago? That’s chicken feed, of course, compared to the 3 million years of Ethiopian History. (OK, ‘Lucy’ is about 3.5 million, H. Sapiens was ubiquitous in central Africa by 150,000, and the big move out took place about 70,000 ago…) As the ice retreated, Vineyard Sound must have been a dry plain between the high ground of Cape Cod and Marthas Vineyard. Later, with the melting, we have today’s beach. Crossing the sand, the moon was dimly visible behind clouds. It was mid high tide…not so far to walk on the rocks. Shucked off clothes, aware but only just of our nudity, we crinkled over the knobbly rocks, and half stumbled half dove in. OMG!!! A little bit like those space movies where the stars come at you. A little bit like fireworks. But these guys are exploding wetly, noiselessly, into greens and yellows and blues right against your cornea…you feel the faint hit as you might feel the tension of a spider web across your morning walk. Take a breath, dive down, reach out in front and marvel at your hands and arms lit up in fire, visually tingling in contact of all those little dinoflagelates. And just to avoid being boring, there are the blobs of jellyfish, their light blooping into a big shuddering response, their feel completely tactile and long enough to have a real feel of night. The watertemperature was just on the edge of cold…keep moving. Deep enough so that to find the bottom I had to dive hard, and when I did find it was lovely mushly grainy sand. Not a single shark, barracuda, or Thing That Goes Bump In The Night to be felt , or seen…but the possibility adds to the intensity of the experience. Just waves and waves of light, every movement delineated, choreographed really, by all the bioluminescent bugglets. Good thought, IAN, think I, drying off on the beach, cold, but truly lit up by the experience. And so off to bed. With the doglet Fuji gradually dragging more and more covers down her way, until Sala and I are clinging together and she is happily sweltering down near our feel. And so up in the morning, and a thousand tasks later, to the airport and into the sky. And so last night, curled up in my sleeping pod in Business Class on Lufthansa, I could reach out, again, and touch the fire.
Oh Kevin, how wonderful Business upgrades, and how terrible the thought of the inevitable future returns to economy class. The epic battle with the controls for my sleeping couch, the agonizing decisions over the three possible starters, entrees, and deserts, to say nothing of wines and coffees, and the watching of Fabulous Fox on my very own video machine…it was all part of the privilege that comes with money. How easily my loyalties are purchased. If we all have a price, I’ve found mind.
So, why Ethiopia? Because Kevin decided, several years ago, that it would be a good thing to help people developing medical education curricula in Africa with an understanding that we thought we had arrived at; Inquiry Directed learning processes are a better way to develop an effective health workforce that will really understand at many levels the enormous public health challenge, and have the tools, on many levels, to both combat the AIDS + tB that is scourging its away around the highway communities of North Africa right now, and to lay a solid groundwork to mitigate the horrendous famines that will otherwise be the sure result of global climate change.
No, Inquiry Directed Learning cannot undo global climate change. But the processes that are integral to IDL, particularly student centered, problem based, small group process, are so effective at both helping students learn the nuts and bolts, but also to learn the curriculum of ethics, communications, professionalism, diversity, and public health that until recently were generally denoted as the ‘hidden curriculum’, and were expected to be learned from sullen sleepy junior residents or time bound attendings.
So that’s what our little team is going to Addis Ababa to engage. Can a country that needs health workers at all levels think big enough to devote resources to a massive training and retraining of medical personell in a whole new way of thinking of themselves in relation to their society? Hmmm…
Before I plunge into that, however,I want to return to my familiar theme of domestic bliss. As in; how to achieve domestic bliss. Its becoming more and more obvious. Like, in neon lights. Like written on the board in Times Square. Like right in front of your face. Like love the one you’re with. Ready? OK, its simple. When Sala asks me a question, I should just answer the damm question, rather than doing all the other artful and brutal things I do to take over, reinterpret, mis-hear, ignore, or lazily do all of the above.
So. I will be reflecting on this newly learned truth, and looking forward to applying it on this trip, and, eventually, with Sala.
And now, the sun is finally rising over Frankfurt, the rain has passed, and its time to stagger over for another coffee and face the fact that my connection to Addis still doesn’t leave for 3 hours.
Wiedersehen
Alan,
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