Two Wheels to Akkol and Nature

I advertise this occasional web journal as the Continuing Adventures of a Foreign Service Bicyclist, but the bicycle has been conspicuously missing from these posts.  It's time to correct that omission.

And there is good reason!  I just completed one of my rare longer-distance rides.  The story begins with Alan Bessen, a young ecologist and activist who would like to accomplish in Akkol, Kazakhstan, what the Green Mountain Club did in Vermont almost a century ago.  Before it is overrun by development and the leftover pollution from Soviet times, Alan wants to clean up the lakes, forests, and hills around Akkol and make them a destination for those who love ecologically friendly outdoor pursuits.  One of his projects is the first blazed, marked trail in Kazakhstan that will take the hiker on a 30-km loop hike through the hills and forests around Akkol.

When Alan visited the U.S. Embassy some three weeks ago, he invited me to a conference in Akkol on April 29 that would highlight the projects he envisions with the goal of attracting attention and investment.  I knew in a moment I would go and that I wouldn't let anything get in my way.

February Snowshoe Hike in Akkol

You see, I already knew about and loved Akkol.  It is a favorite destination for our informal international hiking club.  It's only an hour's drive to the north of Astana, and I was there for the first time a few months after my arrival in Kazakhstan.  We go snow shoeing there in the winter, and we go on day hikes in the summer.  The last time we went snow shoeing in February, I thought to myself what a great destination Akkol would be by bicycle.  "It's only 100+ km from Astana," I thought.  "Surely I can manage that, can't I?"  I started to think that I would ride up on a long weekend in May or June, rest for a day, and then ride back.  Alan's telling me of the April 29 conference moved up that plan by at least a month.  More than that, I would represent the U.S. Embassy at the conference and set a green example for all who were there.

Arriving in Akkol Under a Threatening Sky

And so it was that I headed out around 11am on Thursday morning.  The road north from Astana is one of the best in Kazakhstan, but it was still cool, only in the upper 0s or lower 10s C.  There was a breeze blowing from the north.  The coolness together with the breeze had me wondering.  I'm not in the physical shape I once was.  I had biked through the winter indoors on rollers, but my riding was minimal, just enough to keep me from falling apart completely.  I had done a 30-mile a month ago and a 24-mile ride the previous week, but 125km (77+ miles), was something I had done only once the previous summer . . . and that only because I had gotten lost.  As I got closer to Akkol, the Sun disappeared behind clouds and rain threatened even as I found myself stopping every 5 miles for a short rest.

Lake House

At long last I coasted into Akkol at 6:30pm with hardly any strength left in my legs.  Alan and visiting Almaty -based ecologist and activist Zhanar Sambetova met me on the main street, and we walked the final ten minutes to Lake House, Alan's rustic home on town's main lake.  By the time we got there I could barely move my fingers.  Zhanar had to help me take off my gloves and jacket.  I was that cold and tired!

Alan Bessen

But from that point onward it was a weekend of warmth and magic.  Alan already had a fire going in the wood stove.  He and Zhanar commanded me to sit and revive myself as the two of them got dinner on the table.  With the wood fire and Alexandra the cat on my lap, I began to come back to life.  The rest of the evening was spent in talking about the events planned for the next two days.

Friday's conference, Wake Up Akkol, was a modest affair at the town's civic center, but a number of speakers had traveled some distance to participate.  Dressed very unofficially in my travel clothes, I had the pleasure of telling the hall how much Astana's diplomatic community already loves Akkol for hiking and snow shoeing and how much more we will like it if Alan succeeds in his plans to clean the lakes and woods and create a marked hiking trail.  I found a number of microphones in my face afterward as local news correspondents asked for interviews.  This was one of those rare instances in my life as a Foreign Service Officer where I felt I was doing positive good just by showing up . . . and showing up, moreover, by bicycle.

Zhanar Sambetova Takes Me on a Bike Tour

Akkol Lake

After the conference Zhanar led me on a bicycle tour around Akkol.  There are two lakes right in and outside of town that would be ideal destinations for kayakers, canoers, and campers if only the trash that litters the lake shores and surrounding wetlands could be cleaned up.  As Alan later told me, the lakes themselves are in need of help.  Soviet methods continue in Akkol, and that includes the dumping of trash and raw sewage into the lakes.  As Zhanar, Alan, and I watched a beautiful red sunset over the lake that evening, however, I could see why Alan is so passionate.  As the Sun hung on the horizon, the trash dropped from view, replaced by birds drifting on a peaceful lake.

Alan's plan for Saturday was a day hike.  The meeting point for the hike was the town square, but we were surprised when we got there to see that the square was filling rapidly with students who, we surmised, were not coming for a hike.  Then we remembered that the next day would be May 1, which is still a national holiday in Kazakhstan.  The students had come to rehearse their May Day procession.  Still, somehow we hikers managed to find each other.

The first part of the hike was through city streets to the outskirts of town.  The houses we passed were  of a typical Russian-style wood construction, some of them perhaps a hundred years old.  Many leaned in one direction or another in response to decades of brutal winds and long winters.  

Hilltop View

Finally out of the town, we headed first into grassland and then up a forest road to a low hill.  The altitude was likely not more than 300m, but the panoramic view from the top showed just how rich the region is in hills and forests.  Before long we had a fire going and prepared a picnic lunch, sharing around what each person had brought.  Stories were told as we basked under a warm Sun and a clear blue sky.

We finished up the day back at Alan's Lake House.  Zhanar, our new friend Raisa, and I cooked dinner in the kitchen making use of whatever we could find and doing what we could in a kitchen with no running water and only the wood stove and a hot plate for cooking.  We ended up with what we called Meat ala Akkol, a mixture of beef and vegetables that on that evening tasted better than any restaurant meal we could imagine.

Zhanar and Raisa caught early trains the next morning while Alan and I lingered long over tea and breakfast.  Then I was on the bike again, feeling much stronger and happier than when I had set out on Thursday.  The previous day's clear, warm weather continued, and warm memories of the preceding two days replayed in my mind.  In Alan and Zhanar I felt I had met kindred spirits who love the outdoors and nature as much as I do.  The environmental movement in Kazakhstan is small and new, but it is growing.  Alan and Zhanar know what they want to achieve in Akkol, and is is my ardent wish to see them succeed.  With those thoughts in my mind, I made good time and was home in just over six hours . . . with a smile on my face for the people I had met and their vision for a Kazakhstan where nature is valued and nurtured as a gift to future generations.

Eclipse

I've been in Bangkok this week for a regional conference on environment, science, technology, and health (ESTH) issues.  As such conferences go, it was not a bad one; there was reason to escape from Astana for a few days.  Add to that the escape from winter to the tropical climate of Thailand, and it was not a bad few days even if I saw little other than my hotel room and the conference hall.  Well, add to that the first massage I have had in years.  In fact, make that two.  The first one on the evening of my arrival was so good that I had to go back for another on my last night.


Due to flight schedules, I actually arrived in Bangkok Monday evening, March 7, even though the conference itself did not begin until Wednesday.  That meant I had a day to luxuriate without a care.  I've been in Bangkok before such that I was not intent on spending the day as a tourist.  Rather, like any sane woman who has spent her winter as an icicle in Astana, I went shopping, finally finding those hair care and other products that are not be be found on the steppe and that can not be shipped through the diplomatic pouch.  Just sipping coffee in the shopping mall with no particular schedule to keep was a mini-holiday.


A partial solar eclipse on March 9 was an added bonus.  A friend at home in the US reminded me of it; otherwise I might have missed it altogether.  The eclipse was only 40% in Bangkok -- one would have had to travel further south to Indonesia to see it total -- but there it was, the Sun clearly reduced to a thick sickle as it rose on Wednesday morning.  I took a minute to watch it through mylar glasses before running on to my conference.


Partial eclipse.  That's a rather apt description of my life in Central Asia.  A Washington colleague asked me during an evening happy hour how the assignment in Astana has been going.  I answered, “Professionally it's wonderful.”  Then, lubricated by the first margarita I had tasted in a couple of years at least, I blurted, “But personally it's been a disaster.”

That blurted admission also explains why, other than overwork, I have written so little here.  As Thumper says to Bambi, “If you can't say something nice . . . don't say nothing at all.”  

Yet, with apologies to Shakespeare and John Steinbeck, this has been my winter of discontent.  I've already listed the reasons in The Last Thing on My Mind; repeating them here would just be tedious and tiresome.  Yet, I do need to say plainly one thing I only implied last October: 

No single or divorced woman born when Eisenhower was President should accept an assignment as an FSO in Astana.  

She might be OK if she's committed to living in a monastery as far as intimate personal life is concerned, but for the rest of us, Astana is a disaster.  Hear my warning written here in black and white:

• If you had an intimate relationship before leaving the US, it will not survive the eleven time zone separation;
• If you fall in love while on R&R at home in the US, you will awaken one frigid winter morning in Astana to find it was an illusion no matter how passionate your words expressed across time zones may have been;
• You will find no eligible men among the expats in Astana, and local men will see you as official, foreign, and unapproachable;
• If you, a 20th century woman, take the plunge of trying OKCupid, you will receive a quick 21st century introduction to the art of the romance spam . . . with some spammers being more sophisticated than you might imagine.  After all, who but a spammer would engage with a woman on a dating site who is looking for a date on her next R&R to the States that is still months away?  Also, you will wonder why so many guys listed on hikersingles.com seem to have only the faintest interest in hiking.

Have I made myself clear?  Do not come to Astana unless you are prepared to be alone, for that is what you will be.

Having finished my rant, I hasten to add that all the mitigating circumstances I listed in The Last Thing on My Mind still apply.  Of these, the most important is friends.  The nature of my work is such that my network is smaller in Astana than it has been at previous posts, but it is those close friends, in particular NN, EU, BL, and ET who have seen me through the isolation and hard times.  Also, although work involves the usual overwhelming mix of competing State Department priorities, I have now been in Astana long enough to see that I have and am making a difference.

An Earlier Total Solar Eclipse in My Life:  March 7, 1970

I quietly passed the midpoint of my three-year assignment to Astana in early March.  If my Astana assignment has been an eclipse, then it has been a partial one much like the 40% eclipse in Bangkok this week, not the total eclipse that applied to much of my early life.  I'm in the dark umbral shadow as far as the intimate life is concerned, but the warming rays of friendship pull me through.  And just as the Moon moves on, uncovering the Sun, so too will this Astana assignment move into history.  I've reached deepest eclipse.  Personal life, intimate personal life included, will get better.  With some luck the long, frigid Astana winters will help preserve my youthful looks for another year.

And so, if you should happen to know of an eligible bachelor who is willing to wait through the time and distance for just another year and a bit, here's my personal ad:

A Hiking, Biking, Snowshoeing U.S. Foreign Service Officer, Temporarily in Kazakhstan but Hailing from Maine, seeks a life partner who --

• Has a pulse. 

• Loves the outdoors.  Doesn't have to be a fanatic but must enjoy hiking, backpacking, showshoeing, cross country skiing, kayaking, bicycling, and/or canoeing.

• Loves mountains and the state of Maine.

• Loves the night sky far from city lights; thinks that viewing the August 2017 total solar eclipse from somewhere near Yellowstone is a neat idea.

• Has a passport and likes to travel . . . perhaps even to Central Asia?

• Wants to visit as many of our U.S. national parks as possible.

• Is politically a left-of-center liberal Democrat, perhaps even a European-style socialist.  

• Likes Pete Seger, folk music, folk festivals, and the singer-songwriter tradition that started in the 50s & 60s.

• Believes in the power of words and letters to keep a relationship alive at a distance.

March 13 in Astana:  Spring Coming Soon?

End of rant.  Promise.  Spring will come to Astana, and this partial eclipse will have its end.

Meanwhile, to my Circle of Friends, I offer the following song by one of my favorite singers, Mary McCaslin, in tribute and thanks.  Mary's words apply.  Without my Circle of Friends, I would have curtailed and packed out of here months ago.

Ode to a Computer Printer and a Christmas Past

Today I placed an old HP DeskJet 400 printer in a trash bag and carried it out in the -28C morning air to deposit in the container to which all trash must go.  It was not a moment of ceremony, just a toss . . . and onward I went.

But although it may seem strange to pause and reflect over a now discarded plastic box of electronics, that is exactly what I'm going to do.  There are memories attached to that printer.

Christmas 1995.  In the latter part of my former life, it was one of the good years, perhaps the best.  Our son had just turned seven years old.  Relations with my spouse were better than they had ever been as we cared for our son and renovated our Silver Spring, MD, bungalow.  That year we had just refinished our basement and put on a new roof.  I had become something of an accomplished plumber in those years, and I still remember soldering those last joints in the copper pipes connecting the basement radiators that a friend had helped me collect from southern Maryland.  I didn't know then that those would be the last joints I would ever solder.

The days before Christmas 1995 found me at the Computer Depot on Rt. 355 in Rockville - Gaithersberg.  Computer electronics were to be a large part of that Christmas as we upgraded to whatever the technology flavor of the year was, maybe one of the first Pentiums running Windows 95?  I do remember with excitement that there would be a DVD drive.  As I made my way to the cash register, I saw it on prominent display:  an HP DeskJet 400 ink jet printer.  The price was a bargain, not even $100 as I recall.  Should I?  I thought about the dot matrix printer that had served us well but got excited over the thought that with an ink jet we would be able to print photos.  I added the printer to my cart.


Christmas morning was a good one, and I recall us watching our first-ever DVD on the big 20-inch color VGA monitor.  But it was the printer that stole the show.  It printed in color!  True, one had to swap cartridges to switch between color and B&W, but it seemed like magic watching the paper with printed image appear in minutes, a time that in those days seemed to us unbelievably fast.

The years went on, and one by one every computer-related device from that Christmas became outmoded and was moved to the attic if not to the trash.  The HP DeskJet 400 lingered longest and served us well until it, too, found its way to the attic, supplanted by something that seemed at the time faster and better even if I have no recollection what that might have been.

The HP DeskJet 400 gathered dust in the attic, alternately freezing and broiling for five or more years until I happened upon it again in the summer of 2005.  I was getting ready to go Moscow for my first overseas assignment as a Foreign Service Officer.  I didn't want to remove anything of great value from our home and was, rather, combing the attic for things we didn't need but that could still be of service to me.  Our HP DeskJet 400 was soon in a container bound for a new life in Europe.

For ten years the HP DeskJet 400 served me faithfully.  In 2006 I turned my back on Microsoft and switched completely to Linux that among its other traits gives renewed life to old hardware that is incapable of running current Microsoft operating systems.  I had pressed old computer hardware including a vintage late 1980s 486 computer back into service, and anyone seeing my home office in Moscow would have felt he was entering a museum.  My HP DeskJet 400 hummed along as she always had even if I could no longer find ink cartridges for her.  Instead, every few months I would sit over an open newspaper to refill the cartridges I had using a syringe.

My HP DeskJet 400 returned briefly to the US in 2007, but I think it was the return to Silver Spring in 2013 that broke her heart.  I lived only a mile from the home I had shared with my spouse and son when that Christmas morning dawned in 1995.  Much heartache and heartbreak had filled the intervening years even if, in the end, I think we all ended up in the places we needed to be, places that were better for all of us.  Our HP DeskJet 400 ached and groaned now, unwillingly ingesting new pieces of paper.  I had to feed each sheet carefully by hand much as one might feed an elderly friend no longer able to feed herself.

When I unpacked her in Kazakhstan in 2014, our HP DeskJet 400 would no longer accept paper no matter how carefully I coaxed.  In the end I put her aside, even buying a specialized tool so that I could open her and attempt a surgical cure.  Work intervened, and the printer sat forlornly for a year.  Only this Christmas, some twenty years after that Christmas of 1995, did I finally find the time.  I studied and diagnosed as best I could.  I thought I saw the problem, rollers that no longer had sufficient surface to grab paper.  I attempted a cure using pieces of cork cut to size and glued in place carefully.  Yesterday morning I put the HP DeskJet 400 back together, reconnected her to the parallel port on my old computer, and sent the print command.  Ever hopeful, my heart dropped as I saw nothing had changed.  Even with my careful coaxing, she would not accept the paper.  I opened the printer, adjusted, and tried again without success.

The time had come to say goodbye.  As I near the end of this Foreign Service career and look toward retirement in a small home in Maine, I know I will need to discard, give away, or leave behind many things even as I look to that future with joy.  This morning, placing our HP DeskJet 400 that had served me and our family so well for so long in the trash container, I said my first goodbye.

Correction.  In writing this note I am saying my goodbye.  Memories of that Christmas twenty years ago fill my mind.  I have no photos from those years; they were all lost during the years of heartache, separation, and divorce.  I have only the snapshots of memory.  For all the pain of a troubled marriage, there were good moments, and that Christmas morning of 1995 was one of them . . . when a wrapped box under the tree opened to reveal an HP DeskJet 400 printer that was still shiny and new, ready with joy to print what in those days seemed to us the miracle of color photos of a young couple with a young son for whom the world was just beginning.  Farewell, faithful friend, with gratitude for serving us so well and for so many years.

* * * * * * * *

PS -- If any of my readers are raising eyebrows over this ode to a plastic box containing computer-related electronics, let me help raise them further by informing as to what printer I selected to take the place of this trusty HP DeskJet 400.  After the HP ceased working shortly after my arrival in Kazakhstan in 2014, I went on eBay and purchased . . . a Panasonic KX-P2135 dot matrix printer not that much different from the Epson printer I had used in the late 1980s.  No refilling of cartridges needed here!  Ribbons are still available and last seemingly forever.  I've just needed to get used to that dot matrix printing sound all over again.

Year's End on the Frozen Steppe

December 29.  The autumn and winter that until now have been mild turned seasonal today.  The temperature dropped to -10C, the snow fell heavily, and the wind howled so fiercely that it woke me at 4am.  The walk to the Embassy, normally ten minutes in good weather, took twice as long as I walked sideways at times to make progress into the wind and shield myself from the biting snow.

Mid-December View of Astana and the Esil River

I say today was seasonal, but I'm getting used enough to Astana that even the "mild" weather of the preceding weeks would be seen differently by someone accustomed to the East Coast of the US.  Suffice it to say that I was snow shoeing last weekend and that ice houses have dotted the Esil River for some weeks now.  For anyone who wants to see winter in all her glory, Kazakhstan's northern steppe -- same latitude as Newfoundland and Labrador -- should rank high as a desirable destination.  Even if we have yet to see the -40C temperatures of a year ago, it is nevertheless abundantly clear that winter, Kazakhstan's longest season, has arrived.

With Colleagues at Astana's Ice City

It is a good time for brooding in all senses.  If some of that brooding seemed to take a negative turn in my last post (The Last Thing on My Mind), it did lead to a positive decision:  my overseas career will end when I depart Kazakhstan in mid-2017.  I will finish out my final two years in the Foreign Service back in Washington, closer to family and to home as I ease toward retirement.

That decision, once made, has had an effect I did not foresee.  Much as a person who is terminally ill might do all she or he can to live his/her life to the fullest that health will allow, so I, too, now know when my overseas life will end.  It has put a focus on the next year and a half that would not have been there had I not chosen to return to the US.  The next eighteen months are there to be lived fully and well so that there will be no retrospective regrets in the years to follow.  The closer the end date comes, the more precious each day will be.

Ten years.  My overseas career with the State Department began in September 2005 when I boarded a plane in New York bound for Moscow.  Since then I've only worked in the US for one year plus some months for language training.  I already find myself looking back with memories, some bad but mostly good.

Moscow.  It was a dream come true to be assigned to Embassy Moscow.  I traveled for the first time as a tourist to the Soviet Union in 1978 and then again in 1981.  In 1987-88 I spent six months on an IREX grant based mainly in Leningrad but with occasional travel to Moscow and Armenia, and this was followed by travel for conferences in 1994 and 2003.  Returning to Moscow in 2005, I felt I had landed in a city much changed from the one I remembered in the Soviet period.  The city was bright and alive with culture and commerce, and I spent every spare hour I could soaking it in.  My sisters came to visit, and my son spent a long summer.  When I landed in Moscow in 2005, it seemed that two years would last forever.  When the movers arrived to pack me out in August 2007, I had tears in my eyes.  The two years felt more as if they had been two months.

Tashkent.  I had never been to Central Asia before I arrived at Embassy Tashkent in April 2008, but I had long wanted to go there.  My interest in Uzbekistan had been there ever since the days I had devoted myself to researching the Stalin period purges in Soviet astronomy.  The fate of the Tashkent Astronomical Observatory and its director Alexander Postoev were key to many of the cascading events that extended all the way to Leningrad and that consumed the country's best astronomers.  Now I got to visit that observatory at last and share archival papers with the current director who was striving to restore the observatory's lost history.  Even if much of my life was being ever more consumed by a long and contentious divorce, I traveled and saw the historic cities of Samarkand, Bukhara, Khiva, and Kokand.  My son came to visit twice, and we took long trips together to Karakalpakstan and the Ferghana Valley.

Bucharest.  I've already written volumes about my time in Romania.  As readers of my previous web journal know (http://attitude-analyst.blogspot.com), I thought my career was over when I first landed in Bucharest.  My assignment there seemed a disaster, but instead my three years in Bucharest were the making of the person I am today.  2012 was easily the happiest year of a life that has included many good years, and I now consider Romania a second home.

Work.  Yes, official work has kept me busy wherever I have served.  I've been busiest in Astana and in Moscow, least busy in Romania, and have participated in diplomatic endeavors that I'm proud to look back on.  Still, if I'm to look at the years I'm proudest of when it comes to official work, I will find them in the years when I worked on the Hubble Space Telescope project before joining the State Department.  

Christmas with NN

Life.  But when it comes to living and growing, it's been my overseas career with the State Department that wins out over anything that came before it.  I have made new friends wherever I have gone, and a few of them have become so close that I consider them to be part of my close family.  The pain of saying goodbye to PE when I left Romania was as great as if I were parting from my own son, but I also learned that distance does not have to break ties if the bonds are already strong.  So it is with PE, and so it will be with NN who entered my life shortly after I arrived in Kazakhstan some fifteen months ago.  I may have only one biological son, but I also have two emotionally adopted daughters who never would have entered my life had it not been for the Department of State.

Carving Turkey on Boxing Day with BL

And so, as 2015 counts down to its final hours, I look back and appreciate the past.  My Boxing Day reception with sixteen guests is now history, and NN and I will toast the New Year quietly at midnight, she with tea and I with a more traditional beverage.  I will think back fondly on all the friends I have made these ten years.  And then, with the fireworks that will fill Astana's wintry night sky fading to the future, I will turn and look in that direction as well with the purpose of living what remains of this international career fully and well.  And to all my readers I wish --

Happy New Year!  С Новым Годом!  An nou fericit!  Янги йилингиз билан!  Жаңа жыл құтты болсын!

The Last Thing on My Mind

As the engines of my Lufthansa flight hum above the clouds, I come to the end of my first R&R leave that marks my first anniversary in Kazakhstan.  One year down, two to go.  When I arrived in Astana at the end of September a year ago, it snowed in my first week. I left the US in summer and arrived in Kazakhstan to an early winter. In the process I missed autumn.  Will it be the same this year?

This has been a transformational R&R.  For the first time post-divorce and after other life changes, I can feel the ground shifting again.  I've described the past five years as the happiest in my life.  That has not changed, but something is different.  It's too early to know where this will take me, and perhaps it's too early even to write.  At the same time, perhaps through writing I will give form to the feelings that have accumulated over the past month and that are now flowing over.

I had a boyfriend.  It's past-tense now.  We met at a speed dating event in September 2013.  It was near the start of my magical year in Washington.  We clicked and quickly became an item.  QJ was divorced with two grown children. We liked the same movies and much of the same music.  I never met someone who likes to walk as much as I do, but in QJ I found my equal.  We walked everywhere.  In New York City we walked all the way from the Cloisters to the Brooklyn Bridge and across the East River.  That's how much we liked to walk.

Within weeks of our meeting, I had stopped looking for other relationships.  We were each others steady date with QJ frequently picking me up after work even when that meant meeting me at 11pm at the end of an evening shift.  One of our early dates was a midnight dinner.  He spent his weekends with me, and I settled into the simple domestic joys of cooking dinners and breakfasts.  We would watch The Bob Newhart Show and other old TV shows together.

When I left for Kazakhstan a year ago, QJ wrote to me almost daily.  His messages were never longer than a few lines, but they were regular.  As work consumed me, I came to look for those daily messages and would write back by the paragraph.  I kept expecting that he would get a passport and that he would come to visit or that we would meet somewhere in Europe.

But the months went by, and he never came.  By spring I sensed that something had changed.  The messages weren't daily anymore.  When I started making R&R leave plans, he said he would not be able to join me in Maine because of work and sick parents.  I felt there was something else he was not telling me, but it was just a feeling.

At Ease in Ocean City

QJ met me at the airport in Washington, and a few days later we went to Ocean City for a long weekend.  That weekend banished all fears and suspicions from my mind.  Long walks along the boardwalk and along the ocean brought me back to the year we had spent together.  When we returned to Washington after that weekend, I was completely at ease.

I was therefore shocked when he called the next day to tell me I had changed and that he had not recognized me during our Ocean City weekend.  “Cutting to the chase,” as he liked to say, he ended our relationship.  The entire conversation lasted less than two minutes.  I was in shock, intellectually comprehending but not yet feeling what had happened.  The emotions kicked in only a day later, and for the next two weeks I alternated between crying and cursing fits.  QJ sent me a check for less than half of the expenses for our New York plans that were too late to cancel without penalty, which only added to the sense of injury.

It is a truism that the Foreign Service (FS) is hard on relationships.  I quip that embassy communities are divided into four groups.  Married couples with children organize their social lives around school events and play dates.  Younger singles are busy finding each other and local partners.  Older divorced or single men often chase local skirts.  And older divorced women go home to feed their cats.  The odds of a relationship such as the one I had with QJ surviving when one half of the partnership goes to the other side of the world are long.  As angry as I've been, I must acknowledge that my profession is a cruel one.  Can I fault QJ if he met someone else while I was away?  Our commitment to each other had never been spelled out.  Could I blame him?  Not really.

The score is now FS one, Robyn zero.

And then there is my granddaughter.   She was born one week before my departure for Kazakhstan a year ago.  I was there for her birth, and now I was in the US again just in time to see her taking her first steps.  I've been sending handwritten letters to her over the past year so that there will be a collection she can look at one day to know what her grandmother was doing when she was a baby.   Thanks to Skype, she seemed to recognize me or at least my voice.  I was not entirely a stranger, although even at a year's age her eyes seemed filled with questions when she looked at me.  And then the R&R was over; I was on my way again.

That's two for the FS, zero for Robyn.

I'm the youngest in my family.  My sisters visited me when I served my first overseas tour in Moscow, and my son spent several summer and winter vacations with me when he was still in the university.  Two of my sisters are now in their 70s and, as much as they love me, they are not going to travel to the steppes of distant Kazakhstan to visit.  My son is now the father of a one-year old daughter.  He's not going to visit either.

That's three for the FS, zero for Robyn.

Then there's my emotionally adopted daughter PE in Bucharest.  I got to visit her for several days on my way to the US, and those number among the brightest days of my R&R.  But then I was on my way.  Life in the FS means we're always saying goodbye.

That's four for the FS, zero for Robyn.

Day Hiking in Katahdin Woods

After a week in Maine grieving for the loss of my relationship with QJ, I took action.  I joined a Meetup group hike in Katahdin Woods.  It was led by a couple in their 70s and 80s, and I learned that the woman leader had completed her through hike of the Appalachian Trail only two years ago.  That's still a life goal of mine, and her example is an inspiration.  I remained for a post-hike star party, borrowing a tent and sleeping bag so that I could spend the night.  There was a campfire with campfire talks before the start of the star party, and one of the speakers began not with words but with Tom Paxton's Last Thing on My Mind as he played the ukulele.  He brought tears to my eyes, but the scene of a beautiful campfire under a beautiful sky changed something.  Those were the first tears of healing.  I spoke with the ukulele player afterward, and something clicked.  We exchanged telephone numbers, but with only days left before the end of my R&R, we did not manage to get together.  We promised each other “next time."

That's five for the FS, zero for Robyn.

Canoeing on the Sebois River

Add to this the new women friends that I made that weekend.  Four of us spent three hours on Sunday in canoes and kayaks on the Sebois River.  Later in the week I met up with one of them for an afternoon of kayaking on the Passadumkeag River.  And then I had to say goodbye.

That's six for the FS, zero for Robyn.

Inside My Small Maine Home

My small home in Maine is beautiful.  The old camp that was on the property when I bought it in 2009 is gone, replaced by the small but modern home that my excellent builder NR finished last winter.  This was my first time living in it since it was completed.  With no more than about 600 square feet, it's tiny, but in my two weeks of living there I understood that it's all I'll ever need.  I own it for cash on 32 acres with beautiful sunsets through the branches of Norwegian pines.  Even the cloudy, rainy days are beautiful with the sound of the rain on my metal roof and a wood stove to keep me warm.  All that remains is for NR to build a garage.  I told him to make it big so that I can have the biggest yard sale that my small town has ever seen.  One day all I own that's with me overseas or in storage will be delivered to Maine, and that will be the time for a massive sell-off.  I believe in downsizing and a frugal lifestyle.  Ann LaBastille is my ideal even if I will never measure up to a quarter of her stature as a Woodswoman.  Let it all go.  I already have all I need in Maine.  Everything else other than photos and memories can go.

This morning I had tears in my eyes as I closed up my small home and drove off to Bangor.  I would like to stay in Maine now, not after my mandatory retirement in a bit under four years.

That's seven for the FS, zero for Robyn.

Finally, there's the past year in Kazakhstan.  It was a grueling year.  I doubt I ever worked less than 50 hours per week.  60 hours was the more likely norm.  Even so I could only barely keep up.  By March-April I had a vision of what I wanted to accomplish in this position that has me covering environmental, science, technology, and health (ESTH) issues throughout Central Asia.  My goal is a simple one:  restore this ESTH Hub to what it was before the emigration of our Scientific Affairs Specialist (SAS) in 2013.  A new SAS had been hired at a neighboring post, and I began working with her.  In July we sent out the first Hub newsletter in four years.  We had plans for other news products and reporting cables.

But there was a problem.  From conversations with others and from my own observations, I came to the belief that my SAS was being harassed in the workplace.  (I won't go into detail here in that there is an EEO process underway.)  By July I was not sleeping nights as the bulk of my attention shifted to saving my SAS.  All my energy went into her defense, but in the end my SAS could not take the stress and uncertainty.  She resigned.  With her departure, my own plans for this Hub are back to their starting place, and my faith in the FS has been shaken.

Make that ten for the FS -- the situation for my SAS looms large for me -- zero for Robyn.

But there is a bright point.  As my plane heads ever eastward, a young woman in Astana is opening my apartment and cooking a meal.  History repeats itself as I have another emotionally adopted daughter in Astana.  I care about her and what happens to her, and I know my presence in Astana has made a difference in her life.  Also, she cares about me and my health.  Sometimes she will stand in front of the Embassy late in the evening and call me to insist that it's time for me to come home.

So if it's ten for the FS, is it really zero for Robyn?  Is it just the end of R&R leave that weighs on me?  Many if not most of the personal changes in my life would not have been possible had I not joined the FS, and I have had many wonderful experiences, excellent colleagues, and opportunities to be involved in important work.  For some, I have become a symbol of what is possible for a person of my background.  Recalling that, I'd up my score to ten as well.  Ten for the FS and ten for Robyn.  Match.

But things do change.  I feel the call to return home ever more strongly.  I've seen and experienced much in Russia and the former Soviet Union (FSU).  Geographically, I've seen more of the FSU than I have of the United States.  I've had my say, in particular in my work on the history of science.  Add to that my work on Hubble for more than 15 years.  It's enough for a life's work.  Other than for my emotionally adopted daughters, everything and everyone I care about and love are on the other side of the world.  It's time to go home.

Why do I stay?  Money is one reason.  The salary I'm making in Central Asia is doing wonders to restore the retirement balance that had been devastated by divorce.  But how much to I really need?  I don't know, but an interim decision is starting to take form as I write.

If I'm to enjoy retirement, hike the AT, and do the other active things I want to do, I must preserve my health.  Starting now and until the time my faith in the FS has been restored in the form of a new SAS being hired, I will reduce my work hours to 40 hours per week.  I have nothing left to prove or achieve in this FS career, and I need the rest of the time to preserve my health and plan for the future.

On a Last Day in Maine in Baxter State Park

Then, instead of staying abroad for my last two years in the FS, why not return to the office where I worked in Washington in 2013-14?  I enjoyed the work there, and it was a job where when the shift was over, the work stayed in the office.  Also, since it was 6-days-on, 4-days-off, I had plenty of time for friends, family, volunteer work, and trips to Maine.  If I am able to live out of a suitcase with my sisters rather than renting an apartment, I should still be able to save significant retirement funds.   I can be near my granddaughter as she grows up, and I can connect with my new friends in Maine while preparing for that AT hike.  Maybe there will be more starry nights to the accompaniment of a ukulele and Tom Paxton songs?

That's the plan that's taking form as we wing ever eastward . . . and another life transition begins.

* * * * * * * * * *

Tom Paxton sings this as beautifully today as he did in the 1960s. For those of us in the FS, it's a song that could be on the mind of many a loved one at home in the US as we board our planes for overseas.

Savor the Leap Second

By any measure, today is the longest day of 2015.  No, I'm not referring to the summer solstice that took place over a week ago.  That day was as long as any other day this year.

Come to think of it, today is longer than any day in 2014.  Or in 2013 for that matter.  In fact, it's the longest day on record since June 30, 2012.

What I mean is that today, June 30, 2015, will be 86,401 seconds in length.  All other days of this year and of almost any year contain only 86,400 seconds.  It's just that every once and a while either June 30 or December 31 will have an extra second.  Why?  By international agreement, the final minute of the final hour of the day will be 61 seconds in length instead of 60.  When the clock shows 23:59:59, it won't trip over to 0:00:00 as usual.  Instead, it will go 23:59:59, 23:59:60, and only then 0:00:00.  How cool is that?

Now, I'm not referring to the digital clock in your kitchen, although you may find it out of sync by a second after midnight unless you update it.  Or perhaps you don't care about a few seconds here or there?

What I am referring to is Coordinated Universal Time, UTC for short.  I'm not going to go into a long, drawn-out scientific explanation.  This may be the longest day, but I'm not going to attempt a detailed explanation when many well-written ones are already to be found.  (See, for example, the explanation from the Time Services Bureau at the U.S. Naval Observatory:  http://tycho.usno.navy.mil/leapsec.html.)  What I have in mind for these jottings is something social.

For those who may have heard of Greenwich Mean Time and like to refer to GMT, I have a cosmic message:  GMT doesn't exist.  It hasn't existed in any official sense for decades, yet it has held on in the public imagination.  Rather, the closest thing we have to a world time from which all our local civil times are determined is UTC.  

The general story goes like this.  Our ancestors told time approximately by the rising and setting of the Sun, Moon, and stars.  By the middle ages, astronomers were the timekeepers, and any major city worth its salt maintained its own time.  Then came the great ocean explorers and the need for accurate navigation tools that led to the international conference of 1884 that chose Greenwich to be the prime meridian.  At about the same time railroads and the need to maintain railroad schedules forced the need for time zones.  Got it?  If you've already read A Timely Remembrance of Chester A. Arthur, you already know all of this.

But the story did not end with Chester A. Arthur.  As we got into the mid-20th century, the first atomic clocks appeared and allowed for the second to be defined based on oscillations of cesium atoms.  At the same time astronomers began to realize the the Earth's rotation is itself non-uniform and in fact has been slowing since the early days of the solar system.  Suffice it to say that at the time of the dinosaurs, the day was only about 23 hours in length as measured using today's time scales.

Through the 1950s and 1960s there was lots of scientific hand wringing over how to meld together our human concept of time with the accuracy of an atomic second.  Different compromises were tried, but the one that stuck came in 1972.  UTC would be defined based on the atomic second, but the International Earth Rotation and Reference Systems Service (IERS) would carefully monitor the Earth's rotation and recommend insertion of a leap second at midnight on June 30 or December 31 whenever UTC diverged from UT1 by more than 0.6 seconds.

"Hold on there," you say, "Where did that UT1 come from?"

Think of UT1 as time based on the Earth's rotation.  OK, it's the Earth's rotation relative to a mean Sun instead of the real, physical Sun, but trust me.  It's time based on the Earth's rotation and the rising and setting of the Sun much as time was defined by our ancestors millenia ago.

The compromise of 1972 decreed that UTC was to be based on the SI second -- i.e., the atomic second -- but that leap seconds would be added as needed to keep UTC and UT1 within a second of each other.  How's that for a melding of scientific accuracy with our social concept of time?

To date some 35 leap seconds have been inserted.  The one that will be inserted at midnight today is No. 36.  If you had not adjusted that digital clock in your kitchen these past 43 years, it would now be off by 36 seconds.  In another 30 years or so it might be off by a minute, perhaps just enough for you to notice.

So get this.  There's a move afoot to get rid of leap seconds.  Much of the push comes from businesses that are dependent on complex computer systems in which accurate time is of critical importance.  Your run-of-the-mill programmer likely as not did not program these systems for the occasional insertion of a leap second when IERS dictates.  If you are trading millions of shares of whatever on the stock market and the system crashes when it tries to cross the midnight hour on a day with a leap second, you might be upset.  If you are on an airplane and the air traffic control system crashes at midnight on such a day, you might be more than upset.  Proponents of eliminating leap seconds might add that as a result, you might never have cause to be upset about anything every again.

Sure enough, in 1972 the world did not depend on the complex and interlocking computer systems that rule our lives today.  In that year, the year when I graduated from high school, the world was a much simpler place where computers were big things that ingested computer cards.  Slide rules, typewriters, pencils, and paper were the norm.  Leap seconds couldn't crash anything.

As it stands, much of the scientific community doesn't care if leap seconds are eliminated either, and the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) will take a vote on changing the definition of UTC at the end of the year.

"Stop right there," you exclaim again.  "What does telecommunications have to do with time?"

Well, that goes back to those simpler days when the most accurate time was broadcast by radio.  In the United States it was NIST, in those days still the National Bureau of Standards, that operated shortwave station WWV to broadcast the most accurate time available in the country.  Other countries had their own national stations for time signals.  That's why international time is handled by the ITU.

When the ITU meets, all member countries will get a vote.  For the United States, it's my own Department of State that casts the vote.

"And what is the official U.S. position?"  Speaking very unofficially and only for myself and not representing the Department of State in any way in this web journal, I will just say that my understanding is that we favor elimination of the leap second.

"So does anyone still want to preserve the leap second?"  

Yes, there are some concerned communities.  Many although not all astronomers want to maintain the status quo.  Of course, astronomers have been trained to think about time since the dawn of modern man, so it's no surprise that astronomers get what the leap second is about and how to handle it in all their systems.  The same can be said about many of the engineers who work on space systems.  I had to keep track of UTC, TDB, TT, TAI, and the conversions between these time scales in the years I worked on Hubble Space Telescope.  Don't worry, I won't go into what those other time scales were about, but suffice it to say that anyone who is worried about relativistic effects when accounting for velocity aberration or pointing a telescope to sub-arcsecond accuracy is going to need to know how to handle time.

Russia also wants to maintain the leap second.  Perhaps the poor computers of the Soviet period forced Soviet programmers to be better than ours.  Perhaps their systems handle leap seconds properly.  Great Britain also wants to retain the leap second; some say the UK fears that elimination of the leap second is the first step towards diminishing the importance of the Greenwich Meridian.

Finally, there is one other group.  Let's call this the group of historians, philosophers, and dreamers.  Perhaps we can throw in people of a certain age, and I include myself here.  Sure, we can live in a world without leap seconds.  We already live in a world of time zones and daylight saving time where the idea of the Sun being anywhere near overhead at noon has long been done away with.  It will be centuries before UTC and UT1 separate at anywhere near the level of what we already do administratively today with our own hands.

To me, a self-professed dreamer and woman of a certain age, the point of retaining leap seconds is that our concept of time is part of being human.  Even time zones and daylight saving time are still tied to the Earth's rotation.  If leap seconds are eliminated, we turn over time to atomic clocks.  It will take many centuries, but at some point we will get to a point when we will no longer associate noon with being the middle of the day.  We will have put our computer systems ahead of ourselves, maintaining time for the machines we created rather than for people.  In doing so, we diminish ourselves.

And so, enjoy this, the longest day since June 30, 2012.  Wherever you are, savor that one extra second inserted into your day or night.  Let's fix those complex, interlocking computer systems.  This leap second is here to keep the clock in sync with the rising and setting of the Sun, to keep it in sync with us, the human race.