LastDayOfSabbatical

Last day of Sabbatical

So, just to catch you up. Two weeks ago we had a splendid “dock party” for Siwash. Here’s her cake made by the most wonderful bakers at Angel Maid in Culver City.

It was all very festive, and yet sad. We were at the dock that used to belong to my Mom and Dad, but that is now for sale. Everything is in flux. And yet somehow, all those present felt a palpable comfort in being able to gather and muse about this old boat that survives everyone.
Science is starting to ascend through all the bubbly stuff of life, as it reliably does. Unanswered questions on several fronts still titillate my students and me.

Here’s a cool one. Kind of a research update from the weeks we spent on Catalina Island last Fall.

Remember, if you will, that our hypothesis to explain the value of sensitization, the increase in defensive behaviors that we observe in sea hares following a lobster attack, is that this hypersensitivity helps protect the sea hare from future attack. By the way, we got the original research, showing sensitization after lobster attack, published in a cool, highly visible journal, the Journal of Neuroscience.

http://www.jneurosci.org/cgi/content/abstract/30/33/11028?etoc

To me, this paper was fairly straightforward. Entice lobsters to attack sea hares. Separate them before too much damage is done, and then test the sea hares for enhanced reflex withdrawal. No big deal, really.

But this paper has made more of splash than I ever thought possible. Lots of folks emailed me to congratulate us. The paper may get mentioned in other journals as a “hot” paper. Pretty cool. The best part is that the research was performed by so many students over several years.

Ok. But showing sensitization still doesn’t answer the question of what good it does for sea hares! Does it really help sea hares protect themselves from future attacks? Well, Dan and John and I went back out to Catalina Island a few weeks ago and actually tested this hypothesis!

We put out the same enclosure cages we used before. Then we went back to the lab and marked sea hares with little plastic tags. Then we gave half of the sea hares “standard” electric shock treatment to induce sensitization. Then we planted sensitized and naïve animals in a cage. Finally we did our usual dive protocol with bait sea hares in order to identify attacking lobsters. We planted a hungry lobster in each of the two cages, and checked back in the next day to see which sea hares the lobsters preferred. We hypothesized that the naive sea hares would be preferred because they were not pre-sensitized.

As so often happens in science, our hypothesis got roundly defeated. Every one of the 5 lobsters that ate 1 or two sea hares consumed ONLY the SENSITIZED ones. Previous sensitizing attack seems to make sea hares more, not less, vulnerable to subsequent attack.

Now dear readers, you can email me or post ideas to explain these results. Clearly this professor has no clue what good sensitization is doing these slugs!

On this note, we end the sabbatical. Perhaps I’ll continue with the Wright lab’s research adventures, but we shall see.
Thanks for reading this stuff. Writing about research and life clears my head in ways I still don’t really understand.

Two Parties 50 Years Apart

7 August 2010.

100 years old, and still kicking.

How did it happen that I’m now the custodian of a 100 year old boat? I am still trying to figure that out.

The way I see it, I may be the legal owner, but Siwash is just passing through me, like she did my great-grandfather, grandfather, and father.

We celebrated her 100th anniversary at Catalina last weekend, and it was very cool.

50 years ago, Mom and Dad, much younger than I am now (33 and 38, I think), rowed all around Howland’s cove, dressed up in 1910’s garb to invite everyone. Bird and I did the same thing for last Saturday. Note the dingkitten is the same in both photos.






Here’s Dad reading his proclamation about Siwash in 1960 (note Grandad farthest to the left, drinking, and Mom right at Dad’s knees lighting a cigarette.



Here I am giving the anniversary proclamation in 2010.



Here’s Siwash, loaded to her waterline with well-wishers (photo by Fin Beven, a legend in his own right).

Here's Siwash's intrepid crew!

And, of course, just to show that Siwash is sailing as hard as ever, here’s Bird “holding her down” in hurricane gulch on the way home.

If you missed this party (or if you liked the rum and want some more), you can still come to the "docksider" party next Saturday starting at 2PM (and you are all invited).

100 years is a long time ago.

A few months longer ago than that, my dad’s dad was a snotty-nosed teenager hanging out in the cockpit of a new yacht being built right down in Wilmington harbor, the guts of the Los Angeles harbor area then, and now.

The new yacht had not yet been finished. Grandad said he could see right through from the cockpit to the bow. The yacht was launched that August. This weekend we celebrate that launching with a “cocktail party” at Howland's Landing on Catalina Island.

This yacht came by her name in a funny way. The builder, Charlie Fulton, had just attached the transom (the board that covers the aftermost part of the boat). Some disgruntled worker in the yard had had some kind of issue against Charlie, and chalked the moniker “Siwash”, which was a slang (semi-deprecatory) expression in those days for someone with native American blood.

Charlie had, indeed, some native American blood in his veins, but he also knew what every sailor does: changing the name of a boat is bad luck. So he PAINTED the name clearly on the transom.

Siwash is in my blood too.

We will be handing out rum drinks to anyone who comes aboard. Best not to wait too long after the sun is over the yard-arm. Sailors develop a might thirst by the time noon comes round.

Grandad’s dad had already given him a 28 foot sailboat when he was thirteen. Now less than 4 years later he wanted a 47 footer! He worked on his dad every day for more than a year. When Charlie Fulton went bankrupt, Grandad’s dad, Walter Savage Wright, a successful lawyer, couldn’t resist. He bought the boat and it hasn’t been outside the family since.

Here’s a challenge. I challenge anyone to identify a presently floating yacht that was built in Southern California longer ago than 100 years. I’ll give you a rum drink, and you can stay aboard for dinner!

For those of you that can’t make it to Catalina this Saturday afternoon, come instead to our dock party on the 14th of August. Contact me for details!

Memes and the celebration of life

Mom displaying the genes (but not the memes!) of her first born, Howard C.


24July2010
Death is really just like a candle coming to the end of its wick. The flame gets weaker and weaker till finally, poof, it disappears, leaving behind something new, the smoke of the extinguished flame.

When my mom died, she too left a cloud of smoke. Some of this smoke is made up of “memes.”

A meme is kind of like a gene. It is a cultural memory. Language is a repository of memes. The old memes are just the language, the new memes are slang.

Any “culturally transmitted” behavior is a meme. For example, sometime after the milk deliverers in England figured out how to put aluminum-foil lids on the milk they delivered, small birds (blue tits) figured out how to pull off the lids. Each tit didn’t employ his/her own trial and error process to learn how to remove the lid. Rather, he/she watched other birds successfully get the tops off, and then imitated them. Behavioural ecologists tracked the spread of this cool meme from its source, all over England. This is a classic meme. It is a culturally transmitted idea that works.

We all leave meme’s behind when we die. One of my favorites from Mom is what she says when things are getting intense: “Oh, gosh”.

But at Mom’s “celebration of life” (this term is a classic meme that tons of individuals picked up on and re-used) I was amazed at the richness of the meme’s attributed to her.

For example, people were uniformly impressed by Mom’s frankness. This honesty sometimes hurt, but ultimately, it gave comfort because it meant Mom wasn’t hiding anything (this is the extreme version of that meme). I kind of expected this one, and it was widely expressed by her near and dear.

But what surprised me was the apparent strength of Mom’s memes. Women referred to Mom as a role model! Really? My Mom? Mother of 3 boys? A role model for young women? Yes, indeed! Lots of women (young and old) told their stories of how Mom was their role model. You could see other women in the room involuntarily nodding their heads. Everyone saw the nodding, thereby strengthening the meme even further.

I had NO IDEA that Mom’s memes would be so strong. Pretty cool, really. From that extinguished flame came some meme smoke hardly visible (at least to me) while the flame survived.

It is kind of sad, but true, that most memes, like most genes, eventually go extinct. Virtually all memes that do survive lose the connection of the meme to its originator. Exceptions include, e.g., Caesar: “Et tu, Brute?”; Socrates: “The unexamined life is not worth living”; Yogi Berra: “You can observe a lot by just watching.” Yet, some memes survive for a very long time. Otherwise you wouldn’t be able to understand what I am writing.

But the fact remains that most of us will die without leaving many memes behind. Most of our memes will be unrecognizably swallowed up by the culture we live in, or perhaps just go extinct on their own.

Oh, gosh.

I don’t know how long Mom’s memes will survive. But, there are at least some of us living today, that won’t forget her crazy notions.

Trust the trail

The Friday Harbor Marine Laboratory, where I am doing research right now, is the most amazing place. Besides all the water and the diversity of sea creatures, there is this drop-dead wow beauty. It is set on a peninsula of maybe a couple of square miles of just amazing old-growth pine forest. They have a hiking trail that goes through this forest. Everywhere you look there are giant pine trees, but even more amazing are the fallen trees. No one can take anything out of the forest, so the fallen trees just get covered with moss and gradually rot.

So I’ve got my running togs on (I forgot my hoody in California, so it’s just my shoes and socks and shorts and t-shirt). First day. Jogging up the main trail. I see a sign “Shoreline trails.” Yup, that’s the one for me. I’m trying to keep a decent pace (cause I’ve been lazy recently and not run enough, so I’m trying to compensate), but the trail gets thinner and bushier, and I have to bend down low to get through the underbrush, and suddenly I realize that it is just a deer trail. Not meant for humans at all. Then I realize that this trail is not trustable, unless you are a deer. I reach the shore and turn left, go for 15 min or so, flush a bald eagle out of a tree (I’m not kidding here, the national bird, huge, beautiful). But now there is really no trail at all. So I realize I probably ought to head back. So I decide to walk through this old-growth woods without a trail (I could try to retrace my outward path but nah). It is overcast and the sun is almost down anyway. Ok, I’ll just walk back in the general thataway direction and find the trail I was on.

Man there are some stickery, beautiful, thorny, shrubs in those woods. I’m getting my legs cut up pretty bad, and I’m going pretty damn slow. Nobody anywhere. I’m not sure if I’m going the right direction. This is not going too well. And then I start looking for fallen trees aligned in the direction I want to go, and getting up on them, and avoiding the brambles that way. But some of these trees are 10 or 15 feet off the ground, and I become aware that if I fall off one and break my leg I’m in a pickle.

So I’m up on a huge tree trunk about to traverse its length. And then I stop. What the fuck are you so nervous about, Bill? You are in the most beautiful woods you’ve ever seen and you're worried cause there is no trail. What is wrong with you? Breath! Look at this place. Just look around. This is amazing.

But I can’t shake being nervous about what is going to happen to me. I get tangled up in briars and nettles, and it goes on and on. Getting up on fallen trees, balancing and testing them for rot and going very slowly along. I realize I am not as agile as I used to be. Not so much spring. Not so much balance. I’m dying. We are all dying. We trust this trail we are on, but ultimately at the end it betrays us. We just don’t know when. Maybe today is my day.

But maybe it isn’t.

Whoops. There’s the trail. Of course it is. So I turn right, heading for the main trail, which I will take back to the labs, leaving this existential crisis in the nettles. So I’m walking along expecting the main trail any time now. Then I meet a couple of students from the labs. We’re talking, and they inform me that I’m actually already on the main trail. I've been walking in the opposite direction from the labs. Oh. Oh well, I might as well continue this direction then.

Jeezus, this story is long. The point is. That even when you’re on the fucking trail, you might be going the wrong direction. So stop being so damn nervous and look around! It’s so easy. Just look around. Just absorb the scene. Breath. Your trail will end soon enough. Just breath.

The earth breathed

My mom died at 2 AM this morning.
The earth breathed, and the heavens moved over a notch.
Fare thee well, Mom.

Friday Harbor Labs.

Sitting on a bus creeping through downtown Seattle on its way to Anacortes, a port on the east side of the Puget Sound. There I will climb aboard a ferry that will take me to one of the most amazing marine labs ever.

I first fell in love with Friday Harbor Marine Laboratories (FHL) in Fall, 1985, a month after defending my Ph.D. thesis at Scripps Institution of Oceanography. I had managed to finagle a 1-year FHL postdoctoral fellowship under the supervision of Richard Strathmann, one of the most creative larval biologists of all time.

My family (daughter, age 9; son, age 6; wife, and I) just rolled into Friday Harbor, and I started coming in every day to do research.

It was unbelievably cool. I became a part of the small family of scientists that work at FHL year round. My job was to do research there, and when summer came around, to organize the weekly seminars. Not a bad job. I was in heaven.

Summer comes to FHL, and there is a steady stream of really interesting, deeply involved scientists. The people I met that year keep popping up in the who’s who of science (is there such a thing?). Many of them have become long-term friends.

But just the place, itself, is magic. The ocean there is just teeming with wildlife. A visit to the tidepools is just enough to blow your mind. Gobs of kelp of myriad different kinds. Huge chitons, big-ass barnacles, limpets of all shapes and flavors. Our friend, David Duggins, was skippering the research vessel, and he would put down a net and bring it up with hundreds of different species. In one trawl. It was like the jewels in the dragons cave. Just grabbing a handful of a net full of marine creatures; creeping and crawling all over the place, was breath-taking.

So here I am about to go to be part of the summer scientist influx (actually I’m part of the “pre-summer” crowd).

I am meeting up with crazy Leonid again. We are returning to our research on slug brains.

Now I’ve just arrived and found my studio apartment. Here’s the view outside my window. Pretty cool, eh? Work starts tomorrow. Tonight I sleep.

The intimacy of care-giving. Dear moments.

I said goodbye to Mom a couple of days ago. My little brother had just arrived to take over the night watches. She barely registered my adieu, which is a good thing, because I would have melted if she had fussed. I had told her repeatedly during the previous nights that we were changing sons and I would be gone for three weeks. This interval pretty much guarantees I won’t see her alive again.

So, four separate watches (around 1 week each) I had, each one with a Mom in a very different state. I will always remember these watches. It was the first time my Mom and I had been so engaged since I was a little boy in her care. The fact that I was taking care of her (rather than she taking care of me) hardly matters. The emotional connection was very strong. The intimacy of these nights was really good for a couple of reasons.

First, the intimacy reminded me that I really do love my mom. You kind of forget this when your life is forging ahead and she is doing just fine in her own life. When an adult child gets together with his parent in normal circumstances it is usually just about exchanging narratives about your lives; her Alaska trip; my research trip to Catalina.

But now, there we were, Mom and I, many nights in a row. Physically engaged in a common project; the task of taking care of her immediate needs. There were some really cool moments during this project.

One thing I really liked was how she responded to being uncomfortable (e.g., a new pain, or getting tangled up in the bed-sheets). “Oh gosh,” she says. Nothing more. Just, “Oh, gosh.”

I mean, I would be saying “Goddamnit, I’m stuck again. Or “Shit I can’t move my foot.” But Mom always says simply, “Oh gosh.” It really sounds like what she might have said as a 7-year old. It sounds like something my granddaughter would say.

Another cool moment happened on my fourth watch (ending two days ago).

Mom was going through many long periods without saying anything. Now and then, I would ask her if she wanted to sip some water or “liquid food” through a straw. “No thanks.” Or, “Yes that would be nice.” But mostly she was very quiet. Sometimes, perhaps much of the time, this was because she was checked out, maybe perusing what was coming, maybe simply sleeping. But the quiet of my last night with Mom, middle of the night, was broken when she suddenly said,

“That bottle of beer looks really good.”

Bottle of beer?

I put my head next to hers and peered the same direction as she was looking. Perhaps there was something there that looked like a beer bottle. Nope, nothing there.

“Do you see a bottle of beer there, Mom?”

“No, but I’d like to.”

This just completely cracked me up. It was pure Mom.

“Would you like to split a bottle of beer with me, Mom?”

“That’s a great idea, Bill.”

So I poured her a glass of beer from the fridge (this was the only time she drank beer during the entire two months since I came back from Costa Rica).

We toasted each other. Mom used a bendy straw, and sucked her beer right down to the bottom.

“I’m going to miss you, Mom.”

“I’m going to miss you too, dearie.”

Breathing

I hate jogging. All I feel when I run is the pain. What’s the point? And still I do it. I’m on sabbatical and there is a part of me that knows that the exercise rules and habits I adopt now might add decades of quality to my life.

I found a soccer ball while on a beach run a few months ago. Now, I push it ahead of me when I run on the beach. It makes me forget my pain. I kick it as far along the beach as I can (not very far; I played my first real soccer game in my 30’s), and run after it. Sometimes I kick it crooked, and it starts to roll down the beach slope into the ocean. NOooooo. I can’t let it go. This ball is saving my life! I sprint to catch it before the briny does. Almost every time I succeed, but the effort creates such an oxygen debt that I stand there at the seaside, arms akimbo, breathing hard, just trying to catch my breath, softly kicking the ball with my foot straight toward the high-tide line, and walking to where it rolls back down. Over and over I repeat this little kick-and-retrieve exercise till I catch my breath, and then start kicking it down the beach again.

Breathing hard.

Breathing hard is not what it used to be. I used to think, shit, what the hell did I do so wrong that I’m breathing so hard? I really blew it. Whatever I was doing, stop doing it.

But now I realize that breathing hard (short of a coronary) is exactly what you must do, at least once a day to keep from going down hill.

The last few weeks, I’ve been studying my Mom’s breathing. She’s going through bouts of breathing really hard. Not the good kind. This is the breathing hard that lung and liver cancer make you do.

Last week she was tossing and turning in her bed. My older brother describes it as her just wanting to crawl out of her own skin. Kicks off the bedclothes, breathing so hard you think she will burst. Jumps up. I gotta pee. Then she quiets down. Then she gets cold. I put the covers back on her and the cycle starts over again.

But the last few nights, she has taken another ratchet downhill. She is not getting up anymore. She can’t. She’s too weak to stand.

But still I listen to her breathe. Soft, peaceful; followed by labored, heavy, pained breathing. Cycles go on and off. Maybe 5-10 minute interval.

The other day, in spite of my best effort, my poorly kicked soccer ball rolled into the sea. It immediately floated away. I watched for a moment hoping it would come back, but I soon realized that the wind and current and waves were taking my ball farther out.

Somehow, this made me totally desperate. I swam out after this silly ball, soaking my brand new running shoes and shorts, totally ruining the rest of my run. But I saved the ball.

I still have it.

Honored Travelers

These days, I am escorting an honored traveler. I am escorting her as far as I can.

I’ve done this before. Decades ago, two honored travelers came into this world. but they came from the other direction. Through the membrane between death and life they burst, like magicians appearing in a cloud of smoke. Then, they were the honored ones.

First, my daughter; then, my son. They emerged completely helpless, and their mom and I did everything humanly possible to keep them alive and comfortable as they moved away from that membrane.

Now, some 30-plus years later I am escorting another honored traveler, my mother.

She is traveling through that same membrane, but this time in the opposite direction. As before, my job is to perform the nitty-gritty tasks on this side of the membrane. The feeding, the butt-cleaning, the consoling. This nitty-gritty work is strikingly similar to 30 years ago; so is its purpose, which is to keep the transition true for the traveler.

My kids needed that nitty-gritty work to start them down the path of the living. My mom needs it so that she can cleanly, gracefully, make the transition to the dead.

Obviously different, birth and death; but being the escort is striking similar in both cases. Somehow in both cases, there is a strong connection to what it means to be human. This is what we do, we humans. I find a palpable sense in both cases that the nasty thankless work I am doing is bigger than I am. I can’t really explain it. But I’ve been struck by the similarity of these transitions. When things start getting really out of control, you don’t say screw it I’m out of here. You say ok, I am going to do this. That’s all there is to it.

There just aren’t that many activities where that mind-set ascends so clearly. So, yes, the feeding, the cleaning, the changing; everything; is all ridiculously, amazingly, similar. But even more similar is the feeling I have while I’m actually doing these things. I think in both cases I feel a sense of awe to be escorting an honored traveler.

Peer Review

During the last 4 weeks or so, I’ve been (in the background) engaging our “Scientific Peer Review System” in an effort to get some of the research my collaborators and I have been doing out into the literature. In short we are trying to get a paper published.

Peer review is an amazing process. It is frustrating, maddening, enlightening, inspiring all at once. It is the bane of my existence, and it is my only claim to legitimacy. It is the core of science.

Many of my colleagues spend unending hours railing against the anonymous reviewers of a manuscript or grant proposal. If only the reviewers had read the paper! If only they actually knew the literature! If only they weren’t so caught up in the fashion of the day, they could see the work’s brilliance and originality.

I submitted a paper a while ago with my first undergraduate collaborator at Chapman as a first author. She did a great job of learning a new technique, of coming into the lab day after day and running experiment after experiment. She got “significant results”, which means that she found that something is going on. She wrote a first draft. I rewrote it, then she rewrote my rewrite, and back and forth for, well years. The data are good, the experiments “worked”, but the question of what they mean was not really clear. This is the critical question of all science: What do the data mean?

She got into graduate school in Japan, a very gutsy move, and has learned junkloads of new science there. She is fully committed to the science pathway, a commitment that is not for the faint-hearted. The second author is also presently in graduate school, and going great guns. She is also a toughie.

So that kind of toughness breeds reciprocal toughness (from the undergraduate mentor, me). We have to usher this study into the light of day. Into the light of peer review. Bright, startling, hot light. This is really hard. Like a sharp rock.

Because we had presented the data in a variety of scientific meetings, we had a pretty good sense of what the data meant.

Our peer reviewers did not share that sense. The paper is 11 pages of double-spaced text. The critiques we got back from the three reviewers covered 16 pages. All the good and all the bad of the peer-review system is throbbing in those 16 pages.

Science is not for sissies. This kind of a review makes you just want to beam the fuck up. Get me out of here. Give me a real job. Don’t make me look at this paper again. Really? I have to get in there and entertain every one of the 16 pages of small and large criticisms?

Yep. That’s right. That’s what you have to do. Stop whining and get to work.

And now we are almost done with that. Every single critique, large and small is in our 10-page (single-spaced) response letter. The manuscript itself has been reworked, not beyond recognition, but to the point of “wow, that is a shift.”

Revising a manuscript is a little like the rough side of being married. Someone, more or less just like you, doesn’t agree with what you are doing and thinks you should change it. If you don’t respond at all, there will be consequences (you won’t get the damn thing published!). Doing nothing is not an option. So you grab each aggravating, sometimes embarrassing (it isn’t uncommon for a critique to make you realize how little you actually know), comment, and work it. Think about it. Look up articles that deal with it. Write and rewrite.

Then a little magic happens. As you get more familiar with it, you start to see the critique for what it actually is. Not for what the damage it can do you, or for the biased perspective of its perpetrator, but for the strength that it can give your work. To know the way 3 or 4 smart people think about your work is a gift from the gods. It makes it much stronger. You have to preserve its core with love, but these changes are little miracles of science.

So. All that is fine and dandy, but will the paper get published? Stay tuned.

Teamwork

All hands! All hands on deck! Let’s go.

This is the start of a night-time sailboat drill. I write “all hands” cause I know that is the cry of the crew on deck. Yet I have no memory of hearing it from my bed. I’m being pulled out of the deepest sleep into a flurry of coordinated, precision teamwork. I am still sound asleep for the first few moments as I head for the main hatch. Got to take down the spinnaker, quick before the wind tears it to shreds.

But here’s the thing. I’m not in a sailboat race here. I am taking care of my dying mom at night. Her labored breathing on the monitor cues me that she needs help. I am rushing through the door that separates us, not sure what I will find.

Night time is scary and beautiful and tranquil and terrifying. All at once.

Just like a sailboat race, I’m called out of the deepest sleep.

Just like a sailboat race, I don’t exactly know what is going to greet me as I come onto the scene. Is she rising to get out of bed, is she out of bed, did she make it to the commode without me, did she fall on her face in a pool of pee and anguish?

Just like a sailboat race, I will need to integrate myself into a working team (my mom and her addled brain), who may not be doing things the way I would. Ok, let’s get you over to the pottie. Mom, you’ve got to move your feet just a little bit (the pottie is right next to her bed). That’s it. Good. Close enough. Now sit down. Good… she pees… The crisis settles a bit. Everyone knows what to do next. Let’s put on a new set of undies, Mom. Here they are. Mom, you awake? Ok, then, let me get it started. Lift your foot. Step in. I’m going to pull it up a little. Ok. How bout you stand up now. Mom are you awake? Let’s stand up so you can go back to bed. That’s it. I’ve got your nightie, so pull up your panties… that’s it…back toward the bed…put your butt down, Mom… lie back. Bella (the cat), you’re in the way… brush her away... Ok, Mom I’m going to lift your legs onto the bed. There we go. Good. ..pulling on the covers. You OK, Mom?

I look out at the moonlight on the water outside her window. It is perfectly calm out there. Not a ripple on the bay. A beautiful May night.

It makes me consider what I’m doing here. That’s a long story.

Good night, Mom. I love you. Don’t forget to call me when you need to go again.

Just like a sailboat race, this campaign of care; the nightly pattern of peeing and pantie changes; will end.

Just like a sailboat race, I look forward to the end.

Just like a sailboat race, I know I’m going to miss it when it is over.

Unlike a sailboat race, when it is over, my brothers and I are going to quietly let the vessel sink. And step back onto our own vessels, and sail on.

Adrenalin

Adrenalin

Just got back from presenting the lobster attack-in-reserve story to a bunch of evolutionary biologists at UC Santa Cruz.

I was an undergraduate there a million years ago and did a (for me) seminal piece of research under an amazing Marine Biologist, John Pearse, who, in spite of all evidence to the contrary, encouraged me to keep on being a marine biologist. Instead, I sailed with my first wife and big brother and his first wife on their little boat for more than a year.

Anyway, back to my visit to UCSC on Tuesday. Giving a talk is really nerve racking, especially if your data are new, as yet unpublished. Not sure if your story will survive the scrutiny of peer review. Plus, my night work taking care of Mom had depleted most of my concentration stores. But I managed to get it together, in the San Jose Airport actually, where the quiet and high-speed internet are awesome.

I was hosted by one of the coolest scientists on the planet, Jim Estes. This guy studies the ecological effects of cute little furry sea otters. They, like lobsters and sheephead inside the reserve, are what we call keystone predators. They eat urchins, which if unchecked, will eat a kelp forest right down to the bed rock. Add a population of sea otters to an urchin barren, and within a couple of years, viola, a beautiful kelp bed full of big fish and lots of new invertebrates.

The chair of the department at UCSC, Pete Raimondi, and another faculty, Mark Carr have pretty much written the book on marine reserves, so my coming in and telling all these guys that “it’s the behavior, stupid”, was a little unnerving.

Very unnerving actually. Giving a talk is a little like what I imagine rock musicians go through. Lots of adrenaline pumping through your veins. Your are up there naked, vulnerable. The scene in “Blues Brothers” comes to mind; when the band is pelted by beer bottles and anything else the angry mob can get their hands on.

Back to the sail-boat ride with my brother. When it was all over (January, 1975), my first wife and I were kind of shell-shocked. Months on end of idyllic sailing and surfing were over.

“So,” I said, “What do you want to do with the rest of our life?”
“I dunno,” says she. “What do you want to do?”
“Well,” says I, “I think I want to be either a rock musician or a marine biologist.”
To which she answers, “Well your voice isn’t very good.”

That is how I came to be a marine biologist.

But last Wednesday noon I felt the adrenalin surge of a rock musician going to the cyclone-fence bar for a gig.

But the mobs liked it! They asked great questions. Made me think. Made me wish I could be at a graduate University where lots of good scientists are talking about their work all the time. Saw some pretty stressed-out graduate students, though, which reminds me why I like Chapman so much. Everything is a trade-off

Looking to the Side

My Dad taught me how to find a distant light house when at sea on dark nights. “Look” for it to the side of your gaze. Sounds weird, but it works. You can be staring right at a dim light and it isn’t there. Shift your gaze 10 degrees to the left, and pop, there it is.

My mom looks at her needs that way (-my words preceded by dash).

-Mom, do you have any pains?
No, I’m fine.
You know, I’ve kind of been wondering if my liver is stretching or something.
-Does your belly hurt?
No.
Well maybe a little.
-So, on our pain scale (1-2 tolerable, 10 excruciating) how would you rate it?
I don’t know.
-Really, Mom? Cmon, give me a number, so I know what kind of pain medicine to give you.
I told you I don’t know, Bill.
-Ok, is it a 7?
Oh, no.
-Ok, how bout 3?
Well, no, it is more than that.
-Ok. How bout a 5?
No, actually it’s a bit more.
-6?
No, more.
-How bout 7?
No, I already told you it isn’t that high.
-Ok, then it is a 6 ½. I’ll give you some Tylenol with codeine. Is that alright?
That would be fine.

Now, readers, I would ask you to be a little like my mom. Don’t just stare blindly at the fact that she is dying. Look to the side. If you talk to her or visit, make it seem spontaneous. The direct approach just makes everyone uncomfortable, and blinds the flow of information. Looking to the side opens up the channels. You can much better see the depth of things.

Why is there cancer?

Evolutionary biologists are constantly wondering why things are the way they are. I’ve bored you all with a rather esoteric example: Why would a slug lose its ability to learn?

Here’s another one, a little closer to home: Why wouldn’t the human body evolve mechanisms to fight cancer? Why hasn’t natural selection eliminated cancer long ago? Surely a mutation that prevented cancer would confer an advantage. This is pretty puzzling.

First, I have to hasten to say that our bodies DO have cancer fighting mechanisms. Lots of them. They are found at many different levels (molecular, cellular, immune system). These mechanisms do a really good job. It is actually quite amazing that we live so many decades. Such longevity is very rare in nature.

But why do OLD people get cancer more than young ones do? In fact why do old people get feeble at all? In short, why do we senesce? Surely individuals that don’t senesce should be better at surviving that those that do! Makes sense right? If you don’t senesce, you live longer cause you don't die of old age. But if you are smart (which I’m not), you realize that ,,, it depends!

One of the greats of evolutionary biology, George C. Williams realized this back in the 50’s! Williams proposed the idea of antagonistic pleiotropy.

This is a mouthful, but the idea is quite simple. These are genetic “deals with the devil.” If my actuarial table says I am on average going to be eaten by a saber-toothed cat sometime before my 30th birthday, then genes that improve my chances of fighting cancer when I’m in my 80s don’t do my lineage much good. They will not spread very quickly by natural selection.

On the other hand, if a mutation comes along that actually INCREASES my chances of dying of cancer in my 80’s, but, at the same time, ENHANCES my ability to fight saber-tooth tigers during my first 3 decades, this mutation it will have a big advantage. Cause the bad part of the deal (cancer in my 80s) is hardly ever seen (cause I’m usually already eaten by a saber-toothed tiger long before I’m 80), while the good side of the deal is ALWAYS realized. With my new mutation, I, and my descendents, are able to better avoid saber-toothed cats, thereby living on average 5 years longer till the grand ole age of 35 (and produce a couple of more kids). If we happen to be lucky and live to be 80, the devil takes us and we die of cancer. But overall, we have more babies than the lineages that didn’t get to take the deal, so we have more babies. Now each time one of these "deal-with-the-devil" mutations arises, natural selection takes the bait. Thus, lousy genes that kill us when we are old build up. Viola, senescence, i,e., ower fitness when we are old.

Williams posed this possibility as a very logical, very powerful hypothesis. Of course, in science, this doesn’t make it right.
More later.

A Gift

I’ve been given a gift from the gods. I am on sabbatical and my Mom is dying. This means I can arrange my work schedule so I can be with her. Functionally I can help by watching out for her at night. Metaphysically I can process her decline and maybe finally become a grown up.

Because I have to admit I have not really experienced death so much. I was at sea when my dad died. My grandparents’ deaths were pretty much hidden from me. My sweet wife was very much present for each of her two parents’ deaths, but I wasn’t really there. Although watching her live through those passages gave me a sense of what it is all about.
So here I am. I’m using you, mister blog, and you blog readers, as a crutch. Perhaps writing from the perspective of the professor-on-sabbatical that I am supposed to be will give me a stable platform.

Biologically, cancer is a strange affair. It is really all about a cell of your body staging a revolution; reverting to its ancestral state, a single cell trying to grow and divide faster than all the other competing cells in its neighborhood. Somehow, this cell manages to slip past a huge number of checks and brakes put up by your body to prevent this evolutionary reversal. These checks and brakes work very well when we are young, but they tend to wear out as we age. Seems like everything wears out as we age.

Actually, recent research is finding that cancer has a wide variety of forms. Remember me writing about the “transcriptome”? The list of all the genes that are activated in particular cells? Well, cell biologists are now frantically categorizing particular cancers by their transcriptomes. It seems that each clone of cancer cells (e.g., tumor), be it a lymphoma or brain cancer or colon cancer, has its own distinctive transcriptome. The hope is that by characterizing these cancers’ transcriptomes, we can ultimately design therapies, specific to each cancer, that can re-instate the discarded checks and brakes, and stop the cells from their incessant growing and dividing.

Most of you know this, that cancer is a multiheaded monster. Eventually, maybe even in my lifetime, scientists will know enough about how to fashion specific weapons for any ugly headed cancer cell that crops up.

But not in my mom’s lifetime.

Not in the brochure II

So I’ve been here with Mom for a week plus. I’m here during the nights, Milan, Mom’s caregiver is here during the days.

Mom is very weak, but still very much alive. She has received a steady stream of visitors. They all go away scratching their heads a bit. Mom is on hospice, meaning that she is not relying on medical doctors to help her fight her cancer. There’s way too much of it multiplying way too fast, and her 82 year-old frame cannot take the chemo. But she doesn’t act at all like a dying soul. So her friends leave their from these visits perplexed. They expect to see Death’s cold hand on her, but don't. She is kind of a live wire on a death bed.

But that cold hand is not far away. Her balance is deteriorating daily, her appetite is minimal, her breath is short, and her concentration episodic.

So, we are starting down the waterslide, and this one has no safety net.

Not in the brochure

I wrote the following around 10 days ago. I’ve delayed posting it till now.
_______________________________
Here it is, the 10th of March. My mom’s had cancer for 2 years. Now it is starting to get the better of her, as cancer so often does. She’s got it in her spleen, colon, lymph nodes, liver, and lung. That is a significant fraction of the viscera available to take down. She’s 82 years old, and gone through the gauntlet of chemotherapies, and this is where she is.

She is dying. Not today or tomorrow, but maybe next week, or the next week, or the following. We don’t know.

I arrived in Costa Rica, heard her voice on the telephone as she got worse, and realized I was in the wrong place.

I missed my dad’s death. I’m not going to miss my mom’s. I will be there with her. Somehow I have to suppress the dread of empathic recognition, and the palpable feeling of a hole where she will be exiting. Or maybe I can just live in all of it. But I will escort my mom out of here.

On the flight home, I sat on the plane with a young woman whose dad had died 3 years ago of Wegener’s disease. I think that is the name she used. I’ve never heard of it. Neither had she. She had only a few years before been let in on the fact that her mom had multiple sclerosis. So she and her sister and dad were all watching out for mom, when her dad got pneumonia as a consequence of his disease, and up and died. Now her mom is transitioning from barely walking to not walking.

This shit isn’t in the brochure.

I watched a Robert Dinero tear-jerker on the plane out of the corner of my eye. I saw it coming from a long way away and didn’t purchase the earphones; there would have been a flash flood if I had. This is a turbulent time in my life. Not a bucolic sabbatical, but a tumultuous one.

The director of the biological station in Costa Rica had some keen insights to all of this. First he said, “you are doing the right thing”, that is by cutting my research month short at 10 days to assure that I am there when Mom dies. He had missed his mom’s death 40 years previously and is still not over it.

Through all of this, I try not to lose track that this is the natural order of things. The same director also recalled his days in Ghana. There, the death of a parent is a cause for a happy celebration of a natural milestone. By contrast, the death of ones child is considered a dark, dark day. I like this dichotomy. I hope when it is my turn my kids and I can mark my imminent passing in a spirit of celebrating all that is natural.

But all this natural order of things doesn’t much change the hole I’m feeling.

Getting Wet

Allright, enough molecular already. Hopefully you at least got a sense of what we are doing. Something in the brains of Aplysia (California) and Dolabrifera (Costa Rica) is different, because the former learns and the latter doesn’t. We want to find out what. That is the how question.

But we, that is I, also want to figure out why.

This question is much trickier. Why don’t these Dolabrifera show sensitization? Why don’t they learn? Part of coming to Costa Rica is to get insights. How do we do this?

You know what Yogi Berra says, don’t you? You can observe a lot by just watching.

Put your head in their world and just be there. Here is Leonid putting his head into the world of Dolabrifera.



Here is what he sees.



An active, responsive slug. Dolabrifera movements are quicker than those of Aplysia. During low tide in the noon-day sun, these slugs are all over the tidepools doing this. They are anything but dullards. The intuition I get from watching them is that they couldn’t have LOST sensitization, like an absent-minded professor. Rather they would seem to be actively suppressing it. If these slugs were sensitized, a wisp of water current would stop them in their tracks. Reduce them to a little ball of slug jelly. That’s what happens to Aplysia. But Aplysia’s ecology seems much slower paced to me. Maybe they can afford to be a slug ball some of the time. Here’s a representative video from you-tube.

Aplysia in situ

This guy covers much less ground, and his muzzle (called proprodium) is not nearly as quick. He won’t be slowed down much by a strong withdrawal reflex. How bout you all? Do you see any differences that might explain no sensitization in Dolabrifera, and lots of it in Aplysia?

What's Going On In There?

I first met Leonid at a huge Neuroscience meeting in Atlanta I think. I had read a little of his molecular magic. That is where I first heard the term “transcriptome.” This is similar to a genome, which is the entirety of the genetic material stored in the DNA in the nucleus of the cells of a particular species. The first genome to be sequenced was the human genome, an effort that was HUGELY expensive, but totally cool. Bottom line: a genome represents all the potential genetic instructions of an individual.

By contrast, a transcriptome refers to all the genetic instructions that are actually being sent out to the rest of the cell (by the process known as transcription). Transcriptomes are species specific, but they are also tissue specific, and even cell specific. These instructions represent a subset of the genome, but they also represent what the cell does. For example, the Beta-cells in the islets of Langerhans in your pancreas have one job, and that is to produce lots and lots of insulin to be used by your body. The genome of these Beta-cells is the same as all the other cells in your body, and very close to the now-registered “human genome”. Again, the genome represents genetic potential. But your Beta-cells shut down almost all of those potential genes. Their single function is to make insulin, so it is the insulin gene whose instructions are sent out in huge volumes for manufacture into insulin.

The transcriptome is different from cell to cell. We know that much. We don’t know much about how transcriptomes of particular cells changes across evolution. For example, we don’t know how the transcriptome of different parts of the brain change across evolution.

Here's a part of the brain of an Aplysia (borrowed from Wikipedia). Each little yellow sphere is an individual nerve cell. This is the focus of our research.

The Seduction of Reduction

So, sensory nerve cells (neurons) in the California sea hare increase their signal strength after they are exposed to serotonin, thereby causing sensitization. Finding this out several decades ago started a furious research effort by a bunch of competing and collaborating laboratories. This discovery is the portal into what Eric Kandel (Nobel Prize, 2000) refers to as the seduction of the reductionist program. Because the next question is how does serotonin do this to sensory neurons? Well there are a slew of special “receptor” proteins all over the outer membrane of sensory neurons, receptors that bind to the serotonin and activate a signal INSIDE the neurons. What kind of a signal? A second messenger called cyclic AMP. On and on this reductionist program meanders, asking more and more mechanistic questions to uncover each of the diverse links that lead to the ultimate increase in signaling that causes the increased withdrawal behavior that is sensitization.

Now many of you have probably glazed over by now, but if you did you’d be making a big mistake. It turns out that a huge number of these links are very similar or identical in YOUR neurons when YOU learn (but if you glazed over, it didn’t happen, so go back and read it again!). Neurobiological research on Aplysia has really pushed forward our understanding of learning and memory. So much so, that the really big researchers in this field are patenting “memory” drugs, based to some extent on the knowledge gleaned from work on this California sea hare.

But here I am in Costa Rica, far from the insanity of biomedically motivated research wanting to know something far more fundamental: How do learning mechanisms change across evolution? This particular example is the disappearance of learning. How did that come to be? To do this we have to go inside the neurons of Dolabrifera and search around for a smoking gun. A difference between Dolabrifera and Aplysia, that can account for the difference in the response of their sensory neurons to serotonin. Or a difference, totally unrelated to the sensory neuron difference, that is the real cause of their lack of sensitization.

This is where Leonid comes in.

Driving into the biological station, San Miguel

The Science of Collaboration

Here’s Leonid coming into the airport in San Jose. This guy is a crazy Russian, in all the right ways. He is incredibly knowledgeable about virtually everything, but not in a Mr-Know-it-all way. Talking science with this guy is just as rich as rich can be.



I invited Leonid to come down to Costa Rica to make sure I correctly processed the brains of my favorite sea hare, Dolabrifera, so that he and his lab collaborators could do modern molecular magic and push forward our understanding of what genetic mechanism might account for this species singular inability to show “sensitization.” Sensitization, you might recall from earlier posts, is when an animal’s withdrawal response to a mild stimulus gets much larger following a “noxious stimulus”, traditionally, a strong electric shock. Sensitization happens in the California sea hare, Aplysia, but is completely lacking in the tropical sea hare, Dolabrifera. Two questions emerge:

What mechanism prevents reflexes in Dolabrifera from getting stronger after an electric shock?
What good does it do Dolabrifera to shed a perfectly good trait that all other sea hares seem to have?

These are the classic how and why questions one can ask of any biological phenomenon. These are where my research on Dolabrifera lies: figuring out how Dolabrifera fails to learn, and figuring out why it fails to learn.

I already have the faintest trace of an answer to both questions. Back in the 90s, my students and I tested 7 different sea slugs for a robust physiological correlate of learning. What the heck is that? Well, it is a careful term to describe something that might be a MECHANISM of learning.

It’s pretty simple, so here goes. Sensory neurons bring information from a light touch to the brain. If the signal is weak, the brain sends out a muscular response that is light. If the signal is strong, the brain says “pull hard”! The theory for what increases the reflex withdrawal in sea hares after they’ve been traumatized, is that the signal from sensory neurons in response to a light tactile stimulus gets much stronger after the animal is traumatized by say electric shock or lobster attack.

How does the sensory neuron tell the brain “pull hard“ when it is getting the same tactile stimulus that made it whisper “pull weak” before the trauma? It is pretty clear that the neurotrasmitter, serotonin is critically involved. When the sea hare is traumatized, this transmitter is released all over the nervous system. Serotonin changes the nervous system in so many ways, we are still making lists. But for our discussion, serotonin’s important effect is to cause sensory neurons that get a weak tactile stimulus to double or triple the strength of their signal to the brain. This makes the sea hare increase the strength and duration of its withdrawal response to the same weak tactile stimulus. Voila, sensitization.

In the 90s, my students and I decided to use neurophysiology to study this sensory response to serotonin in a variety of sea hares. In virtually all species, sensory signaling was increased by serotonin, just like it is in Aplysia californica. But there was one species, embedded in the family tree, whose sensory neurons were completely unchanged by serotonin. You probably guessed the name, Dolabrifera, the very same species we are studying here in Costa Rica.

So now, because of my research in the 90s, we know that Dolabrifera fails to show sensitization, most likely because its sensory neurons fail to respond to serotonin. This is not the end of the mechanistic questions, but rather the beginning. We know that sensory neurons in Dolabrifera don’t respond to serotonin. Now the question is what is it that is changed in Dolabrifera’s brain that prevents its sensory neurons from responding to serotonin?

That is where Leonid come in.

Good Omens

A few days ago I drove down out of the clouds around the Arenal Volcano to pick up my molecular biologist collaborator (and now friend), Leonid Moroz. The drive was hellacious. They had closed the easy road and sent me to the busy busy road, and oh my gosh what a lot of slow trucks on a two lane road.

But I made the 4+ hour trip with at least 5 min to spare. Picked up Leonid, as well as two students (Heather and Sheldon), and headed back west toward the coast. We stayed at a hotel along the way, got up early the next morning, a couple three hours to the ferry and 2 more hours of dirty road, and we finally arrived.

Travelers take notice of omens. This is because there are so many things that can go wrong, and we want to know if something will. Of course add on the importance of good luck in research, and you have at least two very superstitious scientists.

We had omens galore to view. First was the fact that 4 different people coming to the airport by different means (two airplanes, a taxi, and a car) actually defied the odds against the rendezvous, and found each other without mishap.

Second was something that at first blush seemed like a bad omen. At the ferry, my three fellow travelers walked and I drove onto the boat. Lots of backing and filling and brusque ticans waving and shouting. I must admit to being a bit flustered by the operation, but in any case got out of the car and cleverly locked my only keys into the car. Aaargh.

I bet I was the brightest red of reds at that point. I sheepishly approached the “foreman of parking” or whatever they called him, and in my best Spanish explained what happened to my llave. Did I notice a smirk? He pointed me toward a grey-haired gentlemen, and shouted to him something unintelligible (to my ears), although it was perfectly clear what kind of things he might have been saying. “Hey Juan, another bungling tourist locked his keys in the car.” I walked over to Juan who told me to wait a minute.

10 min later Juan returned loaded with tools. A piece of cardboard (to prevent scratching), two good sized screwdrivers, and a magic wire already formed into a little wedge to capture the lock.

What I realized, as this guy miraculously slithered the magic wire into the narrow gap in the door held open by the screwdrivers, was that this apparently bad luck was actually good luck. People probably do this mistake “all the time” on the ferry. Well maybe not all the time, but the point is that because every car blocks out a bunch of other cars, ferries cannot afford to have any car stopped on their deck by some flustered soul locking in his keys. So they have a special guy who breaks into cars very well. If I had locked my keys in the car anywhere else in Costa Rica, it would certainly be many hours before I got back in it again. Bottom line: It was a good omen that I happened to lock my keys in the car in a place where the fix was right at hand.

Here we are, arrived, on the tip of the Nicoya Peninsula, set to start doing some serious science.

Fun and Wild III

The next morning I finally, after all these years, went on a Canopy Zip Line. This ride was apparently invented during the logging days, when loggers would be way up to hell and gone high on a mountain cutting down old-growth giants. At the end of the day they just didn’t feel like struggling down the steep slopes, so they devised these wires, strung from tree to tree, and rode down on a pulley attached to a harness. Nowadays, this is huge business for the tourist industry. I’m guessing property owners can make orders of magnitude more money by zooming tourists over the trees than they do cutting the trees down. So I joined the industry and ante’d up my $45 (all for science you understand).

Once again (like the water slides), a big hunk of the adrenaline is knowing that you aren’t in well protected Disneyland again. You immediately see this is not disneyland any more by the happy and VERY dirty faces of the previous group.



The main assistant (There were three assistants and a photographer) gives us instructions, that were more him making jokes than useful instructions. Up we walk up on a man-made platform at the top of a ridge. Very high. Lots of Texans in the group. Everyone, including me, gasping a little. The guide making more jokes, this time very much more appreciated.

So who goes first? Of course, a guy that had done it before. So very cool to watch him float off the platform down the forest to the next platform. When my turn came, it was really exhilarating. Wind on your face, green everywhere. Just like your best flying dream. I used to do this as a kid from the highest avocado tree in our neighbor’s back yard, but this ride was orders of magnitude higher and faster. We zipped our way down a very high mountain. Here’s a movie of the middle. You can see one guy zipping way up high from right to left, followed by his fiancé coming right into the platform we are sitting on.



This was all fun and games, but everyone knows it isn’t safe. I mean the guides are really experienced. You are never untethered, so you can’t really fall to your death. But one of the women in the group somehow let go of her right hand, which is bad for two reasons. One is that letting go means your head goes down till you grab onto something else. Two is that your right hand is your braking hand. So suddenly we see something not right as Pam zooms toward us waiting at the platform. She has her head down by her knees, and she’s just going REALLY fast. I immediately looked at the guide, and watched him prepare for a “catch”. He braced himself for the collision, and caught her body with his right arm and shoulder and cradled her head with his left hand. Her out of control momentum drove them both back a meter or so. He crashed into the tree trunk (on which the platform was built) a little, but she was unharmed. Scared shitless, but unharmed.

I have never heard of these zip rides in California, I’m guessing because they just aren’t safe enough for our litigious society. But here they are everywhere. Again, the Costa Ricans have imposed layers of security on an otherwise really dangerous ride. But my point is the same. In Costa Rica they work hard to create an illusion of safety, whereas in California they work hard to create the illusion of danger.

Here I am thoroughly enjoying everything, illusions and all.

FunAndWildII

The night after my water-slide adventure I stayed at a hotel (Arenal Paraiso) with acres of thermal pools. I wandered around looking for a good pool by myself, to soothe my aching knees (from scrambling over lava during the day). Found a good hot one at the very top. No one else there. Lowered myself in. Felt really good. Started to relax. Started to almost fall asleep.

Suddenly whoa! A snake. In the water. What the hell is it doing here? Then it started swimming toward me! Up I erupted, like a boulder flying out of a crater. Jesus. It was little, but isn’t it the little ones that eat you?

So that’s what I would call a “natural” hot springs, one that has an ecosystem. What if there were white sharks, and part of the fun was your participation in the food web? I went to a lower pool, but somehow I just couldn’t relax much. Here’s a movie peek at two of the well-hidden hotprings. Can you find a snake in the movies? Don’t tell me if you can.



So, would YOU ever expect to find anything alive in a 100-degree pool? No. Never. But that’s California. Here, anything is possible. I can really see how Michael Crichton started his novel Jurassic Park in Costa Rica. If a snake goes hunting for its meal in 100 degrees, anything, including T. rex, is possible.

Fun and Wild

A few nights ago, I paid money ($39) for dinner and a soak in a hotsprings at the Baldi Hotel (I actually stayed in the Hotel Amistad for $25 dollars!) The Baldi is as ostentatious as you can imagine, but it has lots of hotsprings. And the thing that caught my eye at the tourist information booth when I saw the pictures, is that they have water slides that empty into the hot springs! Really? Water slides at a thermal hotsprings? I drove out there, paid my $39 dollars, ate my dinner a little too quickly, and changed into my bathing suit and started wading around and around and around. People, sidling up to bars, kissing in the shadows, laughing and talking in groups.

Baldi

I, skulking past them, looking for what? Warmer water? A pretty girl? No, the frigging water slides. Eventually I asked, and found they were even farther up the hill. Up I went, and there they were, three giant water slide exits into a giant thermal pool.

I casually slip into the water, a bunch of overweight 50-year old frenchies wading around socializing. I sidle over to the three slide exits, two of them covered tunnels, the third open. Where are the laughing 20-year olds? I saw a bunch down lower. Cmon, isn’t anyone going down this thing? Nope. I asked the apparent guide of the frenchies, is the water slide closed? No, he said, relieved (He was bored to tears, I found out later). You want to try it? Sure.

So up we walk. Up and up. Now it’s been a few years (actually a couple of decades) since I last went down water slides, and they were much smaller than this one. The man, who was a Tico (slang for Costa Rican), LOVED water slides. Oscar was his name. I asked him about this one. Well there is one easy one, one medium wild one, and one really really wild one. Sounds like the set up of a joke, doesn’t it?

Cool. What do you mean really really wild?

Well my first time down it I thought I was going to die.

Oh. Why?

Because it (and the easy one) is completely covered, and especially at night, is pitch pitch black inside. You can’t see the turns coming.

Ok. I’ll go on the easy one.

So, picture yourself me. Here I am, kind of wandering around impulsively doing things till my Russian colleague (Leonid, more later) comes with his molecular biology stuff. Always wanted to see this volcano and here I am about to ride a water slide full of its heated water. In the dark. In a country far, far away, where I know almost no one, and am traveling completely by myself.

But what the hell, right? It’s just a water slide. People don’t die on it, or it wouldn’t be here. So Oscar goes first, and then I go. Seated. Slick new swim trunks on (less friction). My first sensation is that it is just such a rush to accelerate. I can see the first turn and lean into it. Nice. And then the lights go off. Pitch black. I kind of guess which way to bank, and I guess wrong. Almost slam my head on the side of the slide.

Not a video game.

Suddenly steeper, faster. I instinctively lie back, holding my head off the slide bottom. Survival mode. The next few turns scared the piss out of me, no idea where I was, just banging from side to side. Skipped out the exit into the pool of frogs, and just about puked.

Oscar was laughing. How’d you like it? Uh, it was a little much.

You have to get used to it, he said.

So, I went back up, and got used to it. Tried the medium one. Open, so I could see. Very fun. Then I tried that one again, only this time facing down on my belly like superman. Very cool. Like a big body surfing wave. Tried the covered medium one belly down. It was fun too. But I walked away from that scariest one. Why?

Because Costa Rica isn’t like California.

In California, they try to generate fun and wild from a platform of boring safety. They build an illusion of fun and wild. The jungle ride, magic mountain, the matterhorn. All are carefully engineered, with emphasis on careful. Cause if they screw up; if somebody gets hurt; they get sued, big time.

But in Costa Rica, where it seems nobody gets sued, they take very scary things, like boulders shooting down a mountain, and build an illusion of safety. Somebody built a scary water slide. It isn’t safe. It is fundamentally wild. But they present it as if it is a California water slide.

Two more examples tomorrow.

Wild&Fun

So what does wild mean? I’ve been thinking about this question a lot. I’ve also been thinking about fun. What does fun mean?

Yesterday I was over at a National Park trail at the foot of the Volcano Arenal. This thing is a real volcano.
Volcano Photo
It goes up symmetrically, very steep, and its top has been covered by fog all but maybe 15 min of the last 3 days.

But after walking a well-tended National Park trail , you come to the end, where the sign reads don’t go any farther. You hear this funny noise along the way, sounds like wind on the video, but it’s not.

It is the sound of boulders rolling down the volcano, I should say flying down the volcano. Eventually, you notice, way far away on the side of the volcano, a fog rising up. Then, after some practice you see that this is dust not fog, and that it is being kicked up by big mother boulders shooting down the mountain from the top. The noise is the noise of these boulders, distorted by the very long distance away. Check out the video. You won’t see the boulders, but you can see the dust rising where they hit. Really cool. Really wild. If you happened to wander over in that vicinity you would die a terrifying death as you tried to dodge screaming boulders on the sharp lava rock.



So the question of wild is very interesting. Christian, a Tico (Costa Rican) economics major was interviewing people watching the boulders fall. He had interviewed them two years before and was trying to see if the “value” of the experience had changed in the interim. I asked him if it had. He wasn’t sure, or really very interested. But what he WAS interested in was the monkeys.

Two years before there were tons of monkeys. Now they seem to be gone. Christian is convinced that the exponentially increasing traffic on the trail has scared them away. Totally cool hypothesis. This kid should be a biologist, not an economist.

Now those of you who’ve followed my blog might recognize this effect as a strictly behavioral one. These loud tourists have very little impact on the ecology of the area. Just a thin low-relief trail. No changes to the vegetation, or run-off or anything. Just a lot of loud tourists streaming back and forth every day.

But the behavioral effect that Christian observed, probably correct yet completely unproved (because Christian never measured quantitatively the density of the monkeys), is that the monkeys moved away during the last two years.

This is kind of the reverse of the lobster effect inside the reserves at Catalina. There, the imposed protection makes the lobsters more aggressive (via hunger), and thereby changes the ecosystem (our hypothesis, as yet unproven). Here, the lifting of protection may be causing the monkeys to shy away to somewhere else (don’t know what the ecosystem effect is here, but I imagine it is pretty big).

Ecosystem managers tend to think from the bottom up. Maintain the trees and plants intact and everything will be ok. I’m thinking more and more, these days, that this approach leaves a ton of critically important questions about behavioral changes unanswered.

Here’s Christian standing by a big ole tree in the park.




What about the fun you ask?
Stay tuned.

Wrong-footing Around

1Mar10

Wrong-footing around.

Came into San Jose, Costa Rica, near midnight night before last.  To bed at the Hampton Inn.  Slept like a log.  Awakened by telephone. The delivery of my little 4X4, rented for the entire 4 weeks. 

Everything is out of balance.  My Spanish sucks.  My sense of what the hell I am doing is very unfocused.  Bad combination.

Just a scant week before coming here, out of the blue, I got an email from the Costa Rican fellow who was so instrumental in organizing a travel course I co-taught here 4 or 5 years ago.  It was an intensive 3-week course with 13 students; TONS of logistics, a half-dozen different places we bused or floated to.  It was really cool, but also very hard work, and I vowed never to do it again unless someone else did ALL the organizing.  I even told Jose as much.

So literally days before I was to come to Costa Rica, and literally years since we last corresponded, Jose sends me an email, completely out of the blue, telling me he is ready to call my bluff and organize a travel course from top to bottom.  I write back and say I’ll be there in a couple of days, can we meet.

Yesterday, Jose swept into the lobby of the Hampton Inn, and escorted me back into the real Costa Rica.  The epitome of Costa Rica is that nobody uses street names.  They use landmarks.  Addresses are simply a hierarchical series of landmarks.  Very confusing.  Very wrong-footed.  Especially for an entity such as Google Earth!  When I looked up Hampton Inn on Google earth, I found no less than half a dozen in the airport area alone!  Which one was I in?!

Of course, I neglected to consider that Google Earth could get anything wrong.  That the descriptive algorithm of landmarks means ambiguity, a quality that makes computer algorithms burn up.  There is only one Hampton Inn near the airport.

Jose got there early.  He came with his sister and her husband.  We reminisced and gossiped in the lobby, and Jose recommended a good side-trip to one of the volcano rain-forests, and even called a local lodge there.  He was about to send me on my way, when I said, whoa.  I want to see your new school!  Cmon, Jose.  Let’s go see it. 

Wrong-footed in the right direction. 

WakingUp

Up at 5:45 AM.  Brutal cell phone, doesn’t know how loud it is.  Also doesn’t know that when I fumble it off, it doesn’t mean “snooze”.  The second alarm reminds me how out of control I am.

One last check of email before heading to the internet desert that is LAX.

Check the coastal forecast just out of habit. 

Whoops, Tsunami watch.  Big quake in Chile, 8.8.

Google around for a while.  Looks like Southern California has some protection.  In 1960, a similar quake sent a tsunami that devastated Hawaii.  Hawaii is on “alert”, so probably something will hit there.

For a marine scientist, or even someone who plays in the ocean, a tsunami is the strangest, beastly thing.  It is as if your cherished ocean is transformed.  Video footage of the big one that swept the Indian Ocean a few years back was jaw dropping.  People perched in multi-story buildings watching the water level rise, a river of strangeness where there once was a predictable ocean.  People who can’t climb higher are plucked off the building, and swept away by the irresistible current. 

I think often how I would react if a big earthquake hit our home in Venice. What would I do?  Would I scream at my Bird, “Get your wetsuit on quick, grab a boogey board we have to race to high ground.”  Of course, high ground (greater than 40 feet above sea level) is a mile away.  The wave period of a tsunami is 15 min.  The odds are against us, if it is the 40-foot waves that rang the Indian Ocean’s bell.

Bird is asleep, fighting a new winter cold.  The taxi is waiting for me.  “Bird, there’s been a big earthquake in Chile.  They’ve issued a tsunami watch for LA.  Warning for Hawaii.  Don’t think anything will come of it, but if you hear a commotion of police sirens or whatever, that situation’s changed.”  Strange way to leave a loved one for 4 weeks.  Still, I got a sleepy loving kiss out of the deal.

Heading to Costa Rica for a month.  Everyone I talk to thinks I’m going there to surf.  I guess I will have to surf to make them feel properly jealous. 

But first I have to spend a week dissecting out Dolabrifera brains and carefully, cleanly, preparing them for a “molecular genetic analysis”.

Dolabrifera is the slug that doesn’t sensitize.  You can give it as much electric shock as you want to, and its reflexes won’t get stronger.  Do that to our California sea hare, Aplysia, and for hours it reacts to the slightest wisp of a touch as if the sky is falling. It pulls in, not just the piece that is touched, but everything into a round ball of cringing slug.  Aplysia learns. 

Dolabrifera doesn’t. 

It is hard to believe that I’m sitting in LAX, swimming in the anxiety of travel; leaving behind my familiar house, my loving Bird, and the security of routine, in order to study a sea hare that doesn’t learn.

But I am.  There you have it.  Sabbaticals are the most improbable things.  My colleague at Chapman, Walter Piper, has a verb for this, “Wrong-footing”.  He likes to do it to his students, surprise them with a weird question, keep them off balance. 

This sabbatical has been wrong-footing me.  It keeps me off balance.  It forces me to think a little differently.  It wakes me up.  

Here's Miami's mobile charging station (sent my blog from here).  Fly to CR shortly.