Genetics at the Eagle and Child

I’ll begin at the end and work backwards. After a long day of showing Alison and Andy the sights of Oxford, we ended up at the Eagle and Child pub for dinner, made famous by CS Lewis and JRR Tolkien, the Inklings. We have been there several times and sat in different small rooms but we were pleasantly surprised to find that the very table that Lewis and Tolkien used to sit at was vacant, so we sat down and ordered our fish and chips. A few minutes later, a large and friendly group of mostly Americans came in and sat all around us, even mistaking us for members of their conference group. Phil leaned over towards Deb and said, “That man sitting next to Andy is a dead ringer for Francis Collins”. It turned out this group was in town for the CS Lewis conference, and when they went around the table doing introductions, he said his name was Francis.

So most of you—and I think most of the people at the conference table—probably do not know who Francis Collins is or why this was one of the most unexpected and extraordinary evenings of Phil’s life. Francis Collins is one of the great geneticists in the world, but also a humanitarian and science ethicist. In addition to a very successful research career (where, among other things, he discovered the gene responsible for cystic fibrosis—an account in Chapter 5 of Phil’s book), he was the head of the Human Genome Project from its beginning in about 1995 until resigning earlier this year. The Human Genome Project is the huge multi-national effort to determine the DNA sequence of humans, and he insisted that all of the information be made available to the public immediately. He devoted 25% of its annual budget to studying the ethical implications of human genetics, and still spends part of every year as a missionary doctor in Africa. He wrote a book entitled “The Language of God”, one of the best books I have read by a practicing and highly respected science about his Christian faith. To the extent that grown-ups are allowed to have heroes, Francis Collins is one of Phil’s. He asked who we were, so we introduced ourselves and explained why we were in Oxford. We then chatted throughout dinner about genetics, the human genome project, and CS Lewis and the conference (which we are not attending), and so on. So we have to ask ourselves, “What are the chances of bumping into Francis Collins, in Oxford, in the Eagle and Child, while having dinner at the very table where Lewis and Tolkien sat?” Alison asked if she could take a picture of us together, so the Eagle and Child was briefly invaded by genetics.

Phil and Francis Collins at Eagle and Child

This came at the end of our first full day in Oxford. We did a lot—a picnic lunch at Christ Church meadow, a tour of Christ Church dinner room and cathedral (where we ran into the same tour guide we had used for Cambridge and Wales, only leading a different tour—Oxford is a small city), punting, the Covered Market, a walk along the Thames, a stop in the Alice in Wonderland shop, Blackwell’s Books, Tesco, and so on.




Since Alison is only here for a short time, we wanted to hit as many of the highlights as possible when the weather was good. We ended up criss-crossing the city several times on foot, but we sure saw a lot. Then we headed to the Eagle and Child for fish and chips, and that is where you began this story. A great memory, among many that we have had this summer and this week.
--Phil

Alison and Andy Arrive

Yes, Alison and Andy arrived safe and sound yesterday afternoon-- on the hottest day of the summer thus far. They were a bit wilted by the time they got here, but everything went smoothly as far as finding each other in the Heathrow airport after their respective flights from Seattle and Raleigh.



We had time for an early supper and a walk into the city centre, stopping along the Cherwell to watch the punters. It was fun showing them all the interesting back streets we've found, though by the time we got there, most of the shops had closed. One advantage of meandering in the early evening though, was that the streets were quite free of tourists, so we could take our time without being jostled. During the daytime, Oxford is a bustling place.


We stopped at one of the nicer pubs--- the Turf Tavern-- before heading back to the apartment before a big thunderstorm came through to break the heat.

It's great to be together as a family!
--Deb

British Museum

Yesterday (Saturday) we decided to go to London. We debated which of many things to visit, and decided on the British Museum. The train ride to Paddington Station took about an hour, followed by a few stops of the tube, one stop at Starbucks, and then to the Museum. We mentioned before when we visited the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford that, while we appreciate antiquities such as Egyptian, Greek, and Roman artwork, we don’t usually head to that section of the museum first. We know that there are people who love these ancient cultures—we had lunch today with Naomi Koltun-Fromm for example, and this is her field of study—but generally speaking, when we go to a museum, we prefer European art. But we can confidently recommend that if you ever get a chance, you should definitely plan to go to the British Museum. Plan at least one long day. (The museum is free, too.) About two hours into our visit, Deb said to Phil, “You’ll have to be the one to write this blog”. There is no way to describe this in a few words, but I will do my best. It is genuinely astonishing.

The Museum is huge, and the ground floor is basically laid out chronologically—first the Egyptians, then the Assyrians, followed by the Greeks and then the Romans. The first exhibit you see in the first room is the Rosetta Stone—not a copy, but the original stone tablet unearthed by Napoleon’s troops in Egypt that allowed people to translate hieroglyphics and opened the door for studying ancient cultures. The objects here were collected, purchased, or “acquired” (OK—looted) by archeologists, diplomats, and adventurers over the past three centuries. Many of the statues and monuments are enormous, towering high above our heads, and the number and size are overwhelming. We still have no idea which Pharaoh’s dynasty was which, but we have a tremendous new appreciation for ancient Egypt.

Head of Ramesses II circa 1270 bc

And then you go into the second of rooms—still on the ground floor of a building with six more floors. These are the Assyrian exhibits. From our Bible lessons, we knew that the Assyrians were the people who conquered Israel in about 700 BC—Ninevah, of Jonah and the great fish fame, was their capital city. But we knew little else about this culture. And right there in front of us were the gates of the palace for Sennacherib, the king who conquered Israel. The lions flanking the gates were massive, and the gates themselves were at least 35 feet tall.



The more we read and observed, the more we realized that Ninevah was a beautiful and impressive city, and that the culture flourished for hundreds of years before dying out. Then it was on to the Greek rooms, and here were sculptures and walls from the Parthenon, the ancient temple in Athens. These were sent back to England by Lord Elgin, ambassador to the Ottoman Empire (which then included Greece) in about 1800, so these have become known as the Elgin marbles. (Insert your own joke here about losing your marbles.)

And on and on. We can’t possibly begin to describe the exhibits, room after room, object after impressive object. We saw dozens of mummies, objects from Captain Cook’s voyages, from the HMS Bounty (from the famous mutiny), from the ancient peoples of Europe. We learned more about the history of Europe in an hour at the museum that we could have learned in any number of hours of lectures in a classroom, and in a more interesting way. We saw a burial ship from Sutton Hoo in eastern England, dating to Saxon times or about 650 AD. (It was the Saxon equivalent of the guys who are buried in their favorite Cadillacs—some traditions are older than you think). We saw artifacts of the Vikings, the Celts, the Huns, the Mayans, the Incans, and even from post WWII America. The guidebook offers 15 different museum tours, based on different themes. We did most of two of them, with a few side trips. We saw more than our brains could hold, and we saw only a fraction of what was there. You really need to go yourself.

Naomi and Phil lunching at Kings Arms Pub