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Central Asia

More Silk Road Adventures - The Caucasus - Gremi

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Gremi

 

Our next stop was at the town of Gremi, once the capital of the Kingdom of Kakheti and a well-known trading town on the Silk Road.  Until the 17th century Gremi was largely populated by Armenian Christians but in in 1615 the city was completely destroyed by the armies of Shah Abbas I of Persia and was effectively abandoned. The heavily fortified Church of the Archangels Michael and Gabriel alone survived the attack.  Another hill to climb.

 

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The Church of the Archangels
Following its destruction by invading Muslims the nearby town of Gremi never recovered its former fame or glory
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Many of us in the secular West are unaware that both Testaments of the Bible demand that women should be modestly dressed as women (not in men's clothing) and cover their hair when in a holy place.  Like other rules still observed by Jews and Muslims these are often ignored in many Christian societies today.  Yet here in Georgia, where there has been an eighteen hundred year struggle with Islam, the same rules apply when entering a church as when entering a mosque. Scarfs are provided to cover heads and skirts to put around pants (men's clothes).

Throughout this trip, organised by ExPat Explore, the accommodation was generally of a high standard. Members of our tour were particularly enamoured of this night in a four star country-club resort with an excellent buffet-style breakfast.

 

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Overnight accommodation - among the best - no golf was played

 

 

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Travel

Balkans

 

 

In September 2019 we left Turkey by air, to continue our trip north along the Adriatic, in the Balkans, to Austria, with a brief side trip to Bratislava in Slovakia. 

'The Balkans' is a geo-political construct named after the Balkan Peninsula between the Adriatic and the Black Sea.

According to most geographers the 'Balkans' encompasses the modern countries of Albania; Bosnia and Herzegovina; Bulgaria; Croatia; Greece; Kosovo; Montenegro; North Macedonia; Serbia; and Slovenia. Some also include Romania. 

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Fiction, Recollections & News

The Meaning of Death

 

 

 

 

 

 

'I was recently restored to life after being dead for several hours' 

The truth of this statement depends on the changing and surprisingly imprecise meaning of the word: 'dead'. 

Until the middle of last century a medical person may well have declared me dead.  I was definitely dead by the rules of the day.  I lacked most of the essential 'vital signs' of a living person and the technology that sustained me in their absence was not yet perfected. 

I was no longer breathing; I had no heartbeat; I was limp and unconscious; and I failed to respond to stimuli, like being cut open (as in a post mortem examination) and having my heart sliced into.  Until the middle of the 20th century the next course would have been to call an undertaker; say some comforting words then dispose of my corpse: perhaps at sea if I was travelling (that might be nice); or it in a box in the ground; or by feeding my low-ash coffin into a furnace then collect the dust to deposit or scatter somewhere.

But today we set little store by a pulse or breathing as arbiters of life.  No more listening for a heartbeat or holding a feather to the nose. Now we need to know about the state of the brain and central nervous system.  According to the BMA: '{death} is generally taken to mean the irreversible loss of capacity for consciousness combined with the irreversible loss of capacity to breathe'.  In other words, returning from death depends on the potential of our brain and central nervous system to recover from whatever trauma or disease assails us.

Read more: The Meaning of Death

Opinions and Philosophy

Luther - Father of the Modern World?

 

 

 

 

To celebrate or perhaps just to mark 500 years since Martin Luther nailed his '95 theses' to a church door in Wittenberg and set in motion the Protestant Revolution, the Australian Broadcasting Commission has been running a number of programs discussing the legacy of this complex man featuring leading thinkers and historians in the field. 

Much of the ABC debate has centred on Luther's impact on the modern world.  Was he responsible for today? Without him, might the world still be stuck in the 'Middle Ages' with each generation doing more or less what the previous one did, largely within the same medieval social structures?  In that case could those inhabitants of an alternative 21st century, obviously not us, as we would never have been born, still live in a world of less than a billion people, most of them working the land as their great grandparents had done, protected and governed by an hereditary aristocracy, their mundane lives punctuated only by variations in the weather; holy days; and occasional wars between those princes?

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