Holiday Season 2025
Recently, one of my favorite students asked me if I had any regrets in life. At the time I thought, no. What is there to regret? Live, love, laugh and pass along as much of your good fortune as possible. Now though, at the holiday season I realize I do regret having spent my entire life away from my family, specifically my parents. Early on in my career, I applied for jobs in Alabama, but no one there wanted me. Fortunately, others did. So I spent my adult life as an itinerate scientist moving across the North American continent five times to date from Raleigh to Richland to Pohatcong Township to Seattle to Baltimore to Victoria. That makes twenty-six Christmas Holidays spent in the rain soaked Pacific Northwest since we married in 1987.
Five moves across continent with one more to come when we retire to Moulton only serves to highlight that the apple doesn’t fall too far from the tree. My maternal Mississippi born grandfather, Richard LaFayette Robinson, was for years an itinerate laborer. Eventually empirically mastering the basics of engineering to become an “iron worker”, which helped him finally settle-down in Sheffield, Alabama working at an aluminum plant. By the time he retired, forcibly due to a piece of “rebar” piercing his left eye, he had mastered nearly all trades as he continuously upgraded their small home with electrical, plumbing and brick work. Mom says they moved so often that my Grandmother, Reba Mae Roberts Robinson also Mississippi born, became a skilled but reluctant mover. They tried to keep Mom in the same school for an entire school year, but still moved a lot. She recalled once how they lived in a gas station where PaPa worked as a mechanic. Proudly she said they lived in the front room with a window whereas the other family that worked the station lived without one in the back. PaPa – born in 1900 - had learned the trade of automobile repair from his Dad who learned it like they learned everything back then, from first hand experience.
My love of cooking is pretty much all learned first hand, inspired by watching my Mother and grandmothers. Being a sickly child I was at times more often in the kitchen than other boys. My love of ad hoc soup comes from Saturday lunch where my Mom would make a left over tomato based soup. Always delicious and often soaked up with a grilled cheese sandwich, these soups seemed to come together like magic. They were never the same twice as she used whatever she had left over from the week. The base however was always tomatoes canned by my paternal Grandmother, Sarah Elizabeth Holland Goodlett, a process we often witnessed while on the farm in Moulton during our “vacations” in the sweltering Summers. On special occasions this Grandmother made a meat-onion dish poured over hot biscuits that the family simply called “hash”. Interestingly, I just found a French recipe called Fricot de Barques that I made recently, which despite the anchovies not in my Grandmother’s dish, tasted just as luxurious probably due to the extra fat on the cheap cut of beef that is used. Perhaps my paternal grandfather, David Kyle Goodlett, tasted the French version of our family’s hash in France during World War I? No idea where this came from but like chess pie, it is a meal of simplicity. Notably, the anchovies in the French version melted away unnoticed save for some added umami flavor. My Grandmother Goodlett also made chess pies, a Southern classic made from basic ingredients during times of scarcity: milk, eggs, sugar and butter. In this year’s version I substituted ¼ coconut milk instead of milk with 4 eggs, 1.5 cups sugar, 1 tablespoon cornmeal, 1teaspoon vanilla, 1 tablespoon white wine vinegar.
For Christmas day I made a whipped cream a la orange made with some buttermilk for a hint of tanginess to accompany the French toast. Apparently, I made this once before and Graham liked it enough to write it down, something I, who rarely uses recipes, did; by the way it had an orange creamsicle flavor. I also made salmon for Donna and a porchetta for me and Graham. Stuffed with a combination of pancetta, parsley, rosemary, citrus zest and garlic blended in a food processor to make a paste, the porchetta dried overnight on the cool back porch to insure the skin was dry for roasting. This was served with basic blanched green beans, sweet potatoes and stuffing of the boxed variety that Graham loves with gravy made for the porchetta drippings. My cranberry sauce - always different - was sweetened this time with a pear ginger jam, apple sauce and orange juice while my polenta sous vide was made with turkey bone broth canned at Thanksgiving. And no holiday meal here would be allowed without Donna’s deviled eggs. Breakfast began with French toast made from an Italian focaccia dolce served with orange “creamsicle" icing and bacon. 2026 will begin with a similar culinary start that of course includes black eyed peas but made Italian style with a sofrito and some tomato sauce base.
Five of my seven graduate students will graduate in 2026. The first, Linda Nartey, is a Ghanaian microbiologist par excellence. She probably didn’t understand fully what she as a microbiologist was getting into doing a PhD with an analytical chemist, but she has persevered. Focused on developing a faster way to diagnose urinary tract infections directly from urine, she has gotten a lot of publicity. Rightfully so given her method can diagnose a UTI from 1 microliter of urine as soon as it is produced. Bo Ren, aka Ren Bo given he is Chinese, will also finish his Ph.D. Focused on the effects of bacterial infections in mammalian cells, he has developed methods to improve the detection of their proteomes in the presence of an overwhelming background of host proteomes and is investigating differences in ascites fluid cells from women dying of ovarian cancer. Kate McMurray, one of three Canadian women pursing Masters degrees in the lab, was born and raised in Victoria. She has developed a nanoscale method to quantify amino acid differences in tumor and immune cells from the same ovarian cancer patient's ascites fluid cells that Bo is studying. Two other students are being supervised by my colleague, Helena Petrosova who is a senior scientist at the Proteomic Centre and without whom having this many students -seven at the moment- would not be viable. Madi Shiyuk, is one of the other Masters students who happens to also be on the Canadian junior powerlifting team, is developing methods to image the tumor microenvironment with our colleagues as part of a Terry Fox Research grant. The question at hand and with Kate’s work as well is how does the TME metabolome differ from normal cells/tissues. Madi, who I met while we briefly had the same powerlifting coach, will take her MS degree to medical school in the Fall. Finally, Sophie Culos is probing the way that bacteria remodel their membranes as a function of growth conditions. Notably, this is important to understand because it lets us mimic in vivo growth conditions that are more likely to reveal susceptibilities for therapeutic development than bacteria grown in the lab, which is the typical way they are studied. All these projects are tied together by methods to study cellular biochemistry directly from the host without ex vivo expansion.
Even though I have an MS degree in chemistry from Auburn, I have never had Masters degree students until coming to the University of Victoria. The Masters path is just not that popular in the States, while here it is common. Also not popular in the States, except with the MAGA cult, is President Trump whose ratings hover in the mid 30% range. There is no rational argument for this incompetent executive, pathological narcissist to be President save for his populist promises to take away privileges from immigrants seeking a new life in the USA as well as those who gained long overdue privileges during the Civil rights movement. It is in fact these people who made America great in the first place. This latent racism harkens back to the quote widely attributed to President Johnson "If you can convince the lowest white man he’s better than the best colored man, he won’t notice you’re picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he’ll empty his pockets for you”. Trump’s Goebbels - Steven Miller - has unleashed a gestapo styled masked, armed and poorly trained group who terrorize non-whites with demands of papers to prove citizenship. All this and more led me to my first protest, a No Kings rally in Vancouver with Donna who is no stranger to protests and misses Baltimore’s proximity to Washington, DC. These rallies held worldwide were a spectacular success, seven million people standing up against his despicable actions. Sadly, the raids on immigrant communities continue with court rulings pushing back, but always at a pace too slow to prevent the continued chaos. The promise of a better economic life that wooed many independents to his side were empty unless you are among the wealthiest American minority. This staggering transfer of wealth to the richest Americans accelerated in recent years. The only promise President Trump kept is the one to hire only the best, but clearly what he meant was best dressed because most of his cabinet choices are spectacularly incompetent. A lawyer to head Health and Human Services, Robert Kennedy Jr, is an anti-vaccine propagandist who tops the charts as dangerously incompetent. More people will die because of his ignorance on vaccines alone than should. While one can argue that vaccines are better for the individual than the species, this would not fit with the MAGA cult conspiracies. Fortunately, evolution appears to still be a working theory. Sadly, the deaths of anti-vaxers that we saw in mass during the COVID epidemic will leak over to innocent people trying to survive preventable diseases like measles. It boggles the mind how someone can single handedly destroy so much basic research into infectious disease and cancer. One of the most amazing discoveries of my lifetime, are the anti–PD‑L1 therapies that take the brakes off immune cells (mainly T cells) so they can better see and attack tumor cells. These are literally miracle drugs that have saved tens of thousands of lives. The process of their discovery, founded in the basic research funding that made the USA a power house in medicine since the end of World War II, is now ending due to the combination of anti-immigrant policies and a decrease in basic research funding. Inevitably, China and the EU will take the best and brightest from around the world who are now afraid to come to the US to study or simply have no opportunities due to the decrease in funding. Ultimately, these policies will make China and the EU great again, not the USA. Perversely, Trump's attacks on educational institutions, which have as one aim to give Americans more opportunities at these schools, is the MAGA version of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion for Americans who are not as bright or hard working as their international counterparts. All my life I have had to compete against the best and brightest from around the world making me and the USA better off for it. This competitive advantage has ended.
There is no end to the ridiculousness and cruelty of the MAGA President’s policies, but there is an end to my patience to give it attention. During the past year Donna has also continued to be exasperated with the cult that supports his policies including the misogynistic machismo that underpins it. Fortunately, she is often distracted with work for Janene Martin, a naturopath outside Baltimore, as she handles as much office work remotely as possible. Donna also keeps busy with the needs of Milo, an American bulldog now in his dotage, and Graham continued convalescence, as well as home repairs. At the moment she is transforming the upstairs bathroom, last updated at least 50 years ago, into one we hope Graham will be able to use. This is one of many projects that did not make it past the original renovations due to the demands of the Canadian Revenue Service. While we do have so-called free healthcare, our tax rate is similar to EU countries or the UK with the same. The good news is that if there is a medical emergency, you get world class care immediately that is "free". However, if you a have a routine problem, then you could be waiting a year to see a specialist. Sadly, financial constraints in all the Western world’s medical systems force medical professionals to practice health “crisis" care, not preventative care. Until this changes, none of the Western world will have affordable healthcare. Of course the barrier to this is that it requires changes to life style which are not easily changed.
Graham continues treatment with the same specialist, Dr. Mozayeni of Maryland, but without any obvious improvement in his condition loosely described as fibromyalgia resulting from a Lyme infection. He has taken up cigar smoking in the last year – ancient smoke lodge therapy? – and continues to follow changes in his blood vessels using a new microscope that gives him improved resolution. When Graham was young and still in grade school he declared that he would not need to go to University because he could learn all he needed from the internet. While he did make it through a year and half and into engineering school before dropping out due to his medical condition, he has certainly proven his prediction correct as he knows more about the metabolomics of infectious disease than I do proving it is easier than ever to learn online. The challenge though is that this process lacks accountability in the way that in classroom learning challenges students. He is often left with unanswered questions that in a classroom experience could be easily answered. But then he may have been correct in part because even I offer an online option for my advanced course in mass spectrometry in the life sciences. Perhaps the future is a hybrid where students having learned all they can prior to University spend only a year or two debating in the classroom to solidify their education, much as an apprentice plumber spends a few years with a mentor, before receiving a degree. This could be an answer to the rising cost of education.
In preparation for retirement I purchased a program called “Sweet Home 3D” that lets one design residential properties. It is remarkably simple to use. So easy is it that Donna now walks away when she sees me coming with a “what about this?” look in my eyes. Not so easy is to convert the drawings Daddy paid for before building his house in Moulton at one end of the 80 acres left in the family of the original 1840s “plantation". It turns out that the architect drew up a 1500 sq ft home with 500 sq ft garage that the builder and Daddy decided to build a mirror image of. So what was on the right went on the left, etc. Even more challenging is that they just used the drawings as a guide which of course is how it often happens with experienced builders who don’t need architectural drawings. However, where there should have been a proper porch protruding from the front of the house, there is only a narrow strip barely wide enough for a chair. By removing the protruding porch, Daddy cut costs. Straight lines cost less to build and this principle meant that the bay window out back also disappeared. Mom, still living in Montgomery at the time was not present for these decisions or they would likely not have been made! It is a solid build though that we will eventually renovate. Before building the house, Daddy built a “shop". The ”shop” is 900 sq ft, whereas he held my Mom to a 2000 sq ft house, 500 of which is the garage. I realized while home last Spring that this shop is really well insulated. This provides year round climate control in part due to the concrete floor he poured to build it on. So, for the moment I’m considering making this into a carriage house and putting up a new shop that might be more like a barn than the well constructed shop he built. However, to convert the shop to a carriage house requires we solve at least one secret of the dead. I know where the bathroom drain begins and ends, but where did he place the sewer line to the septic tank?
From Victoria, BC we wish you all the best in the new year: Dave, Donna, Graham and Milo
P.S. Mint, who continues in tile sales, also continues to impress his bosses at Morris Tile who increased his territory. He remains in Baltimore with his beautiful, intelligent partner Jasmine Maghari who recently finished her Masters degree in Genetic Counseling and began work at the University of Maryland Medical School across the street from where I worked….NOTE: punctuation for this diatribe was provided by Donna who can only hope to control my run on German style sentences.
