Reflection and Distillation

It’s been quite the ride. You saw the pics but missed the soundtrack. Yes we listened to plenty of music , some of which surfaced by title in the blogs but we also had plenty of time to discuss our impressions as we traversed America . I’ll summarize a few.

First we were in awe of the natural beauty of this country – from the bayous to the beaches, the mountains to the canyons, it is humbling to feel the breath of nature. For that alone, this is a trip we urge you to take. However, we were also impressed by the fragility of this beauty – the slow and imperfect recovery of NOLA from Katrina, the parched beautiful browns of inland California. Occasional signs of renewable energy generation were insufficient to diminish our fears of climate change and our concern about its denial.

Second, we met so many interesting people – from Burundi to Bucharest, from Conakry to Chelmsford ( UK and MA). Everyone has a story and people of all ages, colors and political persuasions shared them with us. Just like our geography , the diversity of our people is a thing of beauty.

Third, this blog served to connect us with so many of our friends and colleagues, within the US but also across the world. We were reminded that this is one of the great gifts of science – a global reach of friendship. Just as love and friendship give us a reason for living and are the most important things in life, we were also reminded of their fragility. On the anniversary of my wife Kate’s birthday I learned that a dear friend in Dublin, Tony Farmar, had died. That evening Ian and I dined with Steve Prescott – all three of us with recent health war stories to share. Life is for living, friends are to treasure, don’t exist on the installment plan.

Finally, the politics. You can’t travel the country like we did, driving in a smart car, playing with smart phones and dining well without being acutely aware of our privilege and the inequality of wealth and opportunity in this country. Stopping at fast food joints and passing the homeless on each city’s sidewalks you see the dead end jobs, the evident poverty and the appalling diets. You can understand people feeling abandoned, making them susceptible to the guile of a carnival barker. In our opinion, these people are getting screwed by the Republicans and ignored by the Democrats. To see the shameful tax bill, the political support for an evangelical pederast and the diminution of our support for human rights , control of global warming and peace in the Middle East is dismaying. We get what we vote for. We need to engage politically if we want an ever better union and even to nurture the fragile beauty that we have.