Last Blog (I think)
I am not sure if I am ready to bring this Georgia blog to a close. In fact, I probably am not. There is so much to think about and try to understand. Sarah and I returned to Lincoln, NE on the last day of April. We arrived to a verdant, spring green state with flowers everywhere beneath one of those huge Nebraska skies that in their own way mirror the grandeur of the Caucasus mountains. It was not a bad flight back but the problem is, as is so often the case, Ohare airport in Chicago. Lincoln, served by a small subsidiary of United, is given no priority. So this time we had to wait for over an hour while a third crew member could be located. At any rate, we arrived. Our luggage arrived. And now that we have unpacked and begun to put our house in order we can begin to try to understand this experience in Georgia. Just for example, what is it like to experience what many Georgians did in Soviet times where so much of life was controlled and regulated in a socialist way. I could perhaps become an Ayn Rand fanatic and rail against the system socialist. But, I think I won’t. I will say it is good to be home. I drove a car today for the first time in over four months. It is easy when people stay in line, when governments create rules of the road and enforce these rules, when the rules essentially are about respecting others right to move about with a reasonable level of safety and predictability. And, I saw no graffiti anywhere today. That is interesting.
So there is much meaning to construct. I will still have Georgian doctoral students at work who will contact me and I look forward to this. Now that I think about it, there is a topic for a blog entry all on its own—the Georgian doctoral student. So I guess this won’t be the last blog. I do have to produce a report for Fulbright and I do have to get a conference proposal together which also may become a blog entry. So, it won’t be the last.
