Reporting from the Front Lines of the War in Ukraine: Kristaps Andrejsons

Kristaps Andrejsons, Host and Creator of The Easter Border podcast

Since 2017 I have been listening to a podcast from Latvia, The Eastern Border. I began listening because I had been reading Russian novels for several years and learning Russian. The podcast alternated between current Russian politics and Soviet history--and how they seemed to be coming together.

In 2019 I was in the Riga for a few days. I contacted Kristaps and visited him in his hometown of Ludza, the easternmost town in the European Union in continental Europe. (Reunion Island is in the EU and further east.) Ludza is just a few miles from the Russian border, so Eastern Border is a good name for the podcast. I wrote about the 2019 visit here. 

Then on 24 February 2022, the format of the Eastern Border podcast changed. In the past twelve months Kristaps has traveled to Poland and Ukraine many times. He went from history podcaster to war reporter. I listened to Ukraine War Episode 136 just tow days ago.  

Kristaps has been to Kyiv, Kherson and within a few kilometers of the front line of the war.  Last week he was talking to Russian journalists who fled their country when the war started and are in Latvia.  He has talked with combat troops, journalists and leaders in Ukraine and with refugees in countries throughout Eastern Europe.

He knows soldiers from many countries, including the US, who have volunteered to fight in Ukraine. He told me about a guy who had served in Iraq and Afghanistan and came to Ukraine to fight in a war where the good side and evil side were very clear--and he is on the good side. 

Although his plans are always guarded, he may be returning to Ukraine soon with a major German publication as a translator, guide, and expert on the war.  

If you want a ground-level view of the war, Kristaps is a great reporter.  He also has deep knowledge of Russia and sources within Russia so he can decode and interpret Russian propaganda.  

 

Catching Up with a Great Science Writer and Bicyclist I Haven't Seen For More Than 15 Years.

 

Katharine Sanderson and I on the 

north side of the Millennium Bridge

In 2004 Katharine Sanderson flew from the offices of "Chemistry World" magazine in Cambridge, UK, to Philadelphia to write about a collection of historic science books. The museum and library I worked for the time, Science History Institute, had just acquired a collection of 6,000 science books dating back almost to the invention of printing.  The article is here.

In February of the following year, I saw Katharine again and the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS).  At the meeting, which was in St. Louis that year, Katharine introduced me to Marc Abrahams, the creator and impresario of the Ig Nobel Prize ceremony held the second Thursday of September in Sanders Theater on the campus of Harvard University--in the other Cambridge. I eventually became a volunteer at the Ig Nobel Prize ceremony.

Marc Abrahams at the Ig Nobel Prize ceremony, assisted by a human flashlight

In 2005 Katharine was back to Science History Institute to write about the 40th Anniversary Moore's Law.  Gordon Moore is a co-founder of Intel Corporation and known the law of increasing complexity of microprocessor chips that bears his name. But he considers himself a chemist and held the ceremony to celebrate Moore's Law at the Science History Institute, not in Silicon Valley.

Katharine and I met at another meeting a couple of years later. During that visit we ran to Camden, New Jersey, and back across the Ben Franklin Bridge.  We have kept in touch. I followed her writing at "Chemistry World" and later at "Nature" magazine.

A decade ago she started a family and became a more avid bicyclist.  She also moved to one of the top places for the cycling in the world: the Pyrenees mountains in southwestern France. 

Now she lives in Cornwall on the southwest coast of England. A good place for riding, but not the Pyrenees! We finally got together for a long walk and coffee after more than a decade and a half.  We also walked along the Thames with Katharine's friend Elaine who lives in the Pyrenees. Her husband Peter Cossins wrote "A Cyclist's Guide to the Pyrenees." Now we have a tentative plan that if I make one last ride of the Tour de France climbs, I will ride the Pyrenees instead of the Alps and Katharine will visit and ride the big climbs.

Since she is about half my age, I will watch her disappear into the clouds.

Philosophy Discussions on the Way to NYC Shopping

From 2002 until the pandemic, several of my kids and I would go to New York the day after Christmas to shop along Broadway. Usually we drove to either Trenton or Secaucus from Lancaster, parked the car, and took New Jersey Transit trains to NYC.  

We would talk about almost anything on the drives up and back. On one of the drives when my younger daughter Lisa was in grad school, so 2013 or after, it was just Nigel, Lisa and I in the car. Nigel fell asleep in the back seat. 

Lisa and I started what became a two-hour plus discussion of free will--does it it exist? 

At the time, Lisa had come to believe in Determinism. That school of thought says free will is an illusion. We act as nature and nurture has programmed us. The appearance of free will can always be explained by brain activity and environment.  

I believe that all people have free will, but most people choose to use it rarely or never. Many wish they did not have free will and want someone else to make the tough decisions in their lives.  

Last week, I was in the English section of a Swiss bookstore and saw Sam Harris' book "Free Will." I meant to read this after Lisa and I discussed Determinism. (Was the decade delay a free will choice on my part, or because I had a job and kids living at home at the time, simply something I forgot--determined by my environment?)

Even though it is a decade later and Lisa has a different view of free will now, I  decided to buy the book and read it on the flight from Geneva to Riga, Latvia.   The book is well written and I am unconvinced. Another book titled "Free Will" takes the position that we have free will but use it rarely. That is my position. I wrote about that book here. It's very good on parsing Fate, Chance, Free Will and Determinism. 

I may choose to re-read Mark Balguer's book "Free Will" later this year. I recommend it to anyone interested in the subject.  As for Sam Harris' book on the same topic, I will leave it in an airport or train station for someone else. It is very well written. And that makes me reject the premise all the more. 

Every sentence I write involves choosing the right words in the right order. Sometimes I surprise myself with a choice of words that seems perfect for expressing and idea. Sometimes I re-read something I wrote and think I should never attempt to write again. Most of writing is determined by decades of experience and training and intuition. But once in a while I have to choose among very different possibilities and in that moment, I have Free Will.