Another Flying Trip to Kyiv

Tanya had to go to Kyiv to provide biometrics (finger prints and retinal scan) to get her Schengen visa so we can go to Spain next month.  Our travel agent in Dnipro had looked after the visa application and biometrics was needed to collect her passport with the visa. The biometrics are good for 5 years and maybe Ukraine will get visa free access to the EU in the meantime*.

She had to be at the visa centre at 7:40 am.  There were no berths on the night train which would get us in at 6:00 am so we had to take the evening express and get a hotel room for 7 hours.  There are a number of new mini-hotels springing up around the railway station so Tanya booked a room in one of them at $25 for the night.  It was only a 10 minute walk from the railway station but we took a taxi since it was after 11:00 pm. That cost us $10 because we went out the new entrance at the opposite end of the railway station instead of the old entrance.  The way the streets are laid out it was a good 10 minute drive to get to the hotel and the driver did not take a long route.

The hotel was the third floor of a tall block of apartments and it was new and very nice.  Furnishings consisted of a double bed, two night stands, a TV, a small closet and a three-quarter bath not quite big enough in which to change your mind.  For only $25.  These hotels will destroy the one-night flat-rental business.

We rolled out at 6:30 to find the Gulliver Mall at the Sports Palace Metro stop.  Could have waited until 7:00 but better early. The Gulliver is a multi-story shopping mall filled with expensive stuff we don't need.  By 7:30 the Rotunda was filled with people, all waiting for their particular travel agent.  Our agent from Anik Travel (??) was a teeny tiny girl with a teeny tiny voice.  There were 30 to 50 people crowded around her and the ceiling of the rotunda was several stories up.  She spoke for several minutes instructing people about applying for a visa, documents etc.  Tanya did not need any of it which was just was well as she couldn't hear much anyhow. What they needed was an old Babushka with a voice like a foghorn.

There were well over a hundred people taking the elevator up to the 8th floor which was the Schengen visa centre.  We waited about 15 to 20 minutes, Tanya's name was called and in 5 minutes she was back with all necessary documents.  Much more efficient than dealing with individual embassies.

At 9:00 we found a real restaurant and ordered breakfast. No McDonalds for me this trip.  Two omelets, tea and coffee.  Tanya's tea came in a regulation size coffee mug, about 400 ml capacity.  My Coffee Americano came in a small tea cup, all 120 ml of it. Coffee Americano for the uninitiated is a 60 ml Espresso with 60 ml hot water added. If I had wanted something to sip, I'd have ordered a double Scotch, which here is 100 ml.  I said to the waitress, why can't I get a cup of coffee that size? No problem.  By the time I finished my small cup of coffee she was back with a mug full of coffee.  THREE Coffee Americanos. It was awesome coffee, strong enough to float a horseshoe.  By the time I finished it (total coffee intake equivalent of a double double espresso) I could have threaded a needle in a running sewing machine.

We had made arrangements to meet a couple of friends for lunch about 1:00 so we had time to kill and headed for Khreshchatik Street.  So many shops closed and places for rent.  This is the high end of fashion and jewelry so it appears the economy has been hit hard enough to slow even luxury goods purchase.

Valeria met us at an Azerbaijani restaurant in the Bessarabska Rinok Building.  It was only a 10 minute walk from her office with USAID.  Lera had worked for several years with STEP including two projects I had worked on and so we know her well and try to get in a visit whenever we go to Kyiv. Natasha had farther to come but got there eventually.  Tanya and I met her on one of my STEP projects in 2006 before we were married.  She translated several documents for me which were useful to the employees and customers of a feed company she worked for.  We had lost track of her for a few years until one day she showed up on Facebook.  After pleading for a visit for 10 years she is now going to come and see us in a couple weeks.

By 3:00 we were in the railway station and I was asleep on a couch in the lounge. Tanya was in the book store next to it.  She found three books and said she would do nothing useful for the next three days. At 5:30 we caught our train home.  People watching is fun and on trains there are always one or more people that catch my eye for whatever reason.  There were two couples in their late teens sharing three seats.  The girls were dressed to the nines.  Black party dresses, black nylons (but wearing running shoes). The boys were quite respectable but in ball caps, muscle shirts and jeans.  My conclusion: they were returning home from a wedding and the boys had shucked the fancy duds.

On the way up there had been a tall not unattractive young woman wearing a faded denim western shirt, pointed yokes, pearl snap fasteners and all.  Not a usual occurrence.  In fact, first I'd seen.  I would loved to have asked her about the shirt but Tanya doesn't like me talking to strangers.

Lina house sat over night for us.  Her instructions were to feed the cats and dogs, and no more.  Yeah, right.  When we got home at 11:00 pm Tuesday, Lina had gone home and the house was spotless from top to bottom.

*I hear Canada and USA may need visas for the EU if they do not allow visa free entry to ALL EU countries, not just the more trustworthy ones.  For Canada it means allowing Romanians and Bulgarians visa free access.  For USA there are a few more countries.

Human Fetal Development - Part 2

Once the blastocyst implants in the uterine wall, it splits into two sets of cells, one of which will become the placenta and one the embryo/fetus.  The placenta sends hormone signals to the woman’s body that it is pregnant.  On Day 14 the zygote stage ends and the embryo stage begins.  This stage is when cell differentiation into different organs begins. The first step, known as grastrulation sees the embryo form three germ layers from which all the tissues will be formed. By Day 20 there is the beginning development of brain, heart, spinal cord and gastro intestinal tract. The embryo is the size of an apple seed or a grain of rice*.

Human fetus at about 4 weeks. Adapted from www.invitra.com/two-months-pregnant/

Embryo development from 4 weeks to 8 weeks www.pinterest.com/pin/479633429035019096/

At the end of 30 days, the embryo is about the size of a raspberry, some 10,000 times larger than the original fertilized egg.  At 8 weeks, the embryo is about 25 mm and weighs 10 grams; by 13 weeks, the end of the first trimester, it is perhaps 80 to 100 mm and 28 grams.

At the end of 26 weeks or the second trimester, the fetus could be born and survive with proper care, developing into a healthy baby.  The third trimester is primarily about the growing and maturing fetus. So far, I have described what we can see and measure in the developing fetus from conception on.  What is not as well-known as it is more difficult to measure is the development of the non-physical.  If birth after 26 weeks is viable then these must be in place by then also.

The bottom line is that the process is extremely complex and it is a wonder that any of us turn out “normal” in the statistical sense of “what usually happens”. (It is also normal ie it usually happens, that one in 800 births is a Down Syndrome baby). So many things from both internal and external sources can affect fetal development.  Alcohol; drugs, licit and illicit. It may not take much and timing is sometimes everything.  If 45 grams of a certain plant are fed twice daily for three to a pregnant sheep beginning on day 29 of pregnancy, the lamb will be stillborn with one huge eye in the middle of its forehead.  If a heifer calf is born twin to a bull, the male hormones over power the female hormones and the female is born sterile.

You can reach your own conclusions to this story but at least now you have a better idea of how things work.

*For a good overview of fetal development from conception through birth, see 

www.pregnancy.org/article/overview-fetal-development; 

americanpregnancy.org/while-pregnant/first-trimester, and 

www.invitra.com/two-months-pregnant/

Human Fetal Development - Part 1

The most enjoyable blogs for me are the ones with no real theme other than a general one, just whatever comes into the mind of the writer.  If I manage to get a thought in my head, it is like a pinball in a Black Rose arcade game.  This past week, I was thinking about embryo development and how complicated that is.  Bovine embryo development, I am familiar with but human, not so much.  Sure, we had four kids but it was kind of like bowling through a blanket; no idea what was happening after the initial roll, so to speak.

DNA is kind of magical stuff. Data is stored in binary format, surprisingly enough. There is roughly one CD worth of data in the human genome; all crammed into a cell nucleus about 6 one-thousandths of a millimeter in diameter. DNA is organized into genes which makes you what you are.  Not just the physical (some of which is also normally binary such as male or female plumbing) but also the unseen stuff like personality, sexuality, intelligence, humour. . . How you respond to your environment is hard wired into you, as we are all both nature and nurture. The more we learn, though, the more nature seems to have the upper hand in so many things.

DNA contains not only the information for your physical and mental self, it also contains the information that turns the various genes on and off when and where appropriate so you are not just one huge blob of identical cells, like yeast or something (Stifle, Edith). The vast majority of this happens during the first few weeks of embryo development (bovine and human).  There is a great deal that can go wrong during that time and estimates are that only 30% of fertilized human eggs result in a live birth (with cattle, it is 70%). The majority of spontaneous abortions or miscarriages have chromosomal abnormalities. The causes of most congenital abnormalities are unknown.

A quick review of ordinary cell division from highschool biology: (Click on pictures to enlarge)

https://lookfordiagnosis.com/mesh_info.php?term=mitosis&lang=1#

The following videos are simple enough even for me to understand and should be watched in the order listed if you are serious about all this.  Number 5 is optional unless you are really serious.

1. Video explaining Cell Structure (7:21) https://youtu.be/URUJD5NEXC8
2. Video explaining DNA to protein (2:42) https://youtu.be/gG7uCskUOrA
3. Video explaining how DNA is replicated (3:27) https://youtu.be/TNKWgcFPHqw
4. Video explaining Mitosis (6:10) https://youtu.be/C6hn3sA0ip0
5. Video explaining DNA structure (5:57) https://youtu.be/o_-6JXLYS-k

When I count days or weeks in this blog post, it is from the time of fertilization of the egg.  Some of the references I ran into counted from the date of the end of the woman’s last period which is confusing as ovulation/fertilization usually occurs about 10-12 days after that so why not start there?

All the cell contents and half the chromosomes are in the egg.  Sperm is not much more than half the chromosomes with a tail.  Relative size is sort of like a rocket ship circling the moon.  Millions of sperm are released but only one enters the membrane of the egg. The reason it takes millions of sperm is that being male, they do not ask directions and most get lost enroute. Once a sperm cell has entered the egg, the membrane becomes impermeable to all other sperm.

Adapted from www.eevatest.com/sites/eevatest.com/files/embry-dev-stage.png

Adapted from dev.biologists.org/content/139/5/829

On Day 1, the pronuclei of the sperm and egg unite to form a nucleus with a full complement of chromosomes at which point the egg becomes a zygote, about the size of a grain of salt, a stage which lasts about 14 days.  One day 1, the single cell becomes two cells.  On Day 2, the two cells divide again becoming 4 cells and by Day 3 it becomes 8 cells.  

By this time the genetic function that was egg-oriented (egg mRNAs decrease) has pretty much wound down and genetic functions reprogrammed to development mode (development mRNAs increase). The overall size of the zygote does not change as more cells are added.  The membrane of the egg becomes the protective membrane (zona pellucida) of the zygote up to Day 6 when the blastocyst hatches and is ready to implant on the uterine wall on Day 7 to 12*.

* For detailed pre-implantation development, see dev.biologists.org/content/139/5/829

And sadness cut through me. . .

Many of the poems I learned in school are still with me, at least the first and usually more lines.  Hard to say why other than I liked or loved the poem. Everything from Walter de la Mare's 'Someone Came Knocking' and 'Silver'; William Wilfred Campbell's 'Indian Summer';  or Bliss Carmen's Vestigia.  Kipling, Tennyson, Browning, Noyes were all favourite authors, along with Coleridge, Longfellow, Hardy, Elliot, and many more.

CT Fyfe's anthology 'A Book of Good Poems' was one of my grade 11 and 12 Literature books.  My teacher, the late Sister Mary Annella (Pek), had Fyfe as her prof at University and she loved poetry as did I.  I had two copies which my children now have though I wish I had one of them back. Two of the poems I love to read when ever I am sad and do not want to play 'hurtin' music'.

Both poems leave the reader hanging as to who, why, and what happened which adds to the melancholy. The wordsmithing is incredibly beautiful.  I hope you enjoy them.

The Listeners Walter de la Mare

"Is there anybody there?" said the Traveller,
Knocking on the moonlit door;
And his horse in the silence champed the grasses
Of the forest's ferny floor:
And a bird flew up out of the turret,
Above the Traveller's head:
And he smote upon the door again a second time;
"Is there anybody there?" he said.
But no one descended to the Traveller;
No head from the leaf-fringed sill
Leaned over and looked into his grey eyes,
Where he stood perplexed and still.
But only a host of phantom listeners
That dwelt in the lone house then
Stood listening in the quiet of the moonlight
To that voice from the world of men:
Stood thronging the faint moonbeams on the dark stair,
That goes down to the empty hall,
Hearkening in an air stirred and shaken
By the lonely Traveller's call.
And he felt in his heart their strangeness,
Their stillness answering his cry,
While his horse moved, cropping the dark turf,
'Neath the starred and leafy sky;
For he suddenly smote on the door, even
Louder, and lifted his head:--
"Tell them I came, and no one answered,
That I kept my word," he said.
Never the least stir made the listeners,
Though every word he spake
Fell echoing through the shadowiness of the still house
From the one man left awake:
Ay, they heard his foot upon the stirrup,
And the sound of iron on stone,
And how the silence surged softly backward,
When the plunging hoofs were gone.

Beyond The Last Lamp By Thomas Hardy (Near Tooting Common)

I

While rain, with eve in partnership,
Descended darkly, drip, drip, drip,
Beyond the last lone lamp I passed
Walking slowly, whispering sadly,
Two linked loiterers, wan, downcast:
Some heavy thought constrained each face,
And blinded them to time and place.

II

The pair seemed lovers, yet absorbed
In mental scenes no longer orbed
By love's young rays. Each countenance
As it slowly, as it sadly
Caught the lamplight's yellow glance
Held in suspense a misery
At things which had been or might be.

III

When I retrod that watery way
Some hours beyond the droop of day,
Still I found pacing there the twain
Just as slowly, just as sadly,
Heedless of the night and rain.
One could but wonder who they were
And what wild woe detained them there.

IV

Though thirty years of blur and blot
Have slid since I beheld that spot,
And saw in curious converse there
Moving slowly, moving sadly
That mysterious tragic pair,
Its olden look may linger on -
All but the couple; they have gone.

V

Whither? Who knows, indeed . . . And yet
To me, when nights are weird and wet,
Without those comrades there at tryst
Creeping slowly, creeping sadly,
That lone lane does not exist.
There they seem brooding on their pain,
And will, while such a lane remain.

Free at Last or a Lazy Day With No Guilt

Yesterday, I finished a report that had been hanging over my head for a long time.  I put a real push on it last week or so which is why I have not read any blogs nor written any.  If I am at the computer, I needed to work, I told myself.

Mostly the report was trend analysis of agriculture and livestock production over 15 years.

• 1 country
• 1 state
• 2 counties, 
• 20 municipalities
• 4 species of livestock 
• 4 livestock products
• 20 field crops - area and production
• 10 fodder crops - area and production
• 40 vegetables - area and production
• 30 fruits and nuts - area and production
• 2 main sources of data which did not always agree
• 2 sub-sources whose data did not always agree from year to year

Do the math, I am tired of it, but it comes to millions of numbers, I expect.  Feels like it anyhow.  Boiled it down to 185 pages, 100 tables and 150 figures.  Tomorrow I talk to the client.

100 tables, many larger, a few smaller

150 figures, many more complex than this

Now I can go and catch up on my blog reading.

We have been out of Scotch for two weeks but I can live with that.  The last of the coffee went this morning.  I will likely die.

News Depresses Me, Baby Goats are Better

Some people eat to live; others live to eat.  I live to know, to absorb as much as I can about the past and present of countries and cultures that interest me.  To try to understand what and why.  So I read history books and news on the internet. European and in particular Russian history and news items about Russia, Ukraine, Turkey in particular (with related items on Syria, Poland, EU, Greece) and America, Canada too .  Every day, maybe 50 to 150 news items specifically related to my interests cross my screen via email links or Facebook links.  I can't read them all but I scan most of the headlines and read at least 25, wishing I could read them all. But my head won't let me.

Russian history is never an easy read.  Anne Applebaum's Gulag: a history is just one of many books dealing with the unspeakable crimes committed during Soviet times. David Satter's It Was a Long Time Ago, and It Never Happened Anyway: Russia and the Communist Past explores Russia's inability/refusal to deal with its past and therefore its continuation down the same pathway today under Putin. Is there ever to be a future for the Russian people different from their past?

Ukrainian/Russian news is singularly depressing and why I have not blogged about it lately. Day after day the stories are the same.  the names and places change but not much more.

This article will give you a feel for the Russian stories.

Chechnya turns into terror zone as another Russian human rights defender attacked

And this one for the Ukrainian stories.
Behind the scenes of civic society’s battle with corruption in Ukraine

Then when I read that the EU is pressuring Ukraine to implement Minsk unilaterally (the way Russia wants it) so they can drop sanctions and get on with business as usual and that Obama says Ukraine is a client state of Russia, I just despair.

Knowing and understanding what little I have over the years has brought me no peace. Today is St Patrick's Day.  I think I will finish off my bottle of Jamison and watch baby goats.

Goats playing

Pizza and Cinnamon Buns

The flower gardens were dry enough to walk on and spring bulbs are already a couple inches high, with small brave blooms on snowdrops and crocuses. The girls were here today, Lina and Sveta, helping Tanya clean up her flower beds.  We gave them taxi fare and sent them home with one of Tanya's home-made pizzas and a tub of my home-made pork and beans.  The girls aren't easy but they can be bought.

Tanya has a  yeast raised dough recipe she uses for pirog (pie, stuffed with eg cooked cabbage and then fried) and lavash (like pirog but no stuffing).  We discovered it makes a wonderful pizza crust and have been churning out pizzas ever since.  Topping as pretty much the same - tomato sauce, various sausage, peppers, tomato slices, dill pickle, mushrooms, green onions, what ever we have, and grated local cheese.  Herbs and spices for pizza I need to look up on the internet because I make it up as I go. Oregano, for sure.  I put that on anything I can get away with.  Garlic salt (too lazy to use fresh garlic, though we have done that too.  Something called Italian spice mix but no idea what it is.  Dried chili peppers in limited amounts.

Usually if I help we make eight at a time but today, Tanya made four only. She left enough dough for me to try cinnamon buns for the first time.  Not perfect but certainly not a failure.  They were pronounced delicious.  The dough makes a very light bun so it is not an ordinary bread dough recipe, I know that.  Next time I will make a full tray.

Glassware is short lived at our home, it seems.  To have a pair of matching glass tea mugs, you need to start off with six. Concrete floors covered in ceramic tile are  unforgiving and the cups are in constant use.  We were getting low. A glass water jug had also gone the way of all flesh (or something) so I stopped in at our favourite kitchen store.  Bought a plain jug; was offered a fancy one for twice the price but thought better not. Also bought four lovely glass tea mugs with lilies on them.

He had six but it was pay for them and walk home or take four and a taxi.  I opted for the taxi and suggested Tanya stop in on her way home next day and pick up the remaining two.  She said she was afraid to go into that store.  I understood that as it is an easy place to spend money.  She did well, though.  Bought the two mugs and only two quite nice decanters which cost $2 each.  I would put oil and vinegar in them but vinegar isn't a thing in Ukraine like it is in Canada for salad dressings.