From a speech made by Han Gutbrod at the Burns Supper Tbilisi, 2025.
These are dark times. The clearest sign that this is a rough moment is that the organizers put me here. This is meant to be a funny toast – and they chose… of all people, a German.
The good people at my table, their heart sinks even more. They recall that at the beginning of this evening, the waiter came around and put that little green card, with a big V, where I sit. They already realize what for you is only just about to sink in: you booked and paid for Scottish whisky – and now you got a German vegetarian.
But it’s time to get to the lassies. And today, admiration is what I want to talk about. Burns speaks about admiration in his poem ‘Rights of Woman’ as something we, the lads, owe the lassies. Admiration and poetry are linked by requiring undivided attention. Poetry is often likened to music, but it’s also different, because it only works if you give it your full attention.
Brave Lassies of Georgia
When we pay attention, today’s 15th Burns is different from the earlier Suppers, and Tbilisi is also different from all the other suppers people have around the world. While we celebrate here, good people are under assault. You are entitled to different opinions on politics; but no decent person should cheer on the violence against citizens that we have seen in recent weeks and months.
In standing up to that violence, brave women have inscribed themselves into history: the elegant President, and many others to admire, the iconic lady holding the EU flag, the brave woman climbing into the formation of shields; Mzia Amaghlobeli [journalist prisoner currently on hunger strike]; and those of you who have been at the demonstrations know, you know in your bones, that women are often the first in line to protect the male protesters behind them from an onslaught. Some of these women are right here today. Robert Burns admired Joan D’Arc, and he would have admired many here in this country.
Lassies in the Room
When it comes to those of us in this room, there is also much to admire.
Look at how pretty it is here! I do not just mean the lassies in their fabulous gowns. Look at the decorations. The reason this place does not look like a kitschy restaurant where Georgian judges go to feast is that half a dozen marvelous women put the Scottishness into this room, the tartan, and more than 200 napkin holders, and this work of the lassies was fortified by, I gather, about 200 glasses of wine that you downed.
Pam Oliver – you are our oldest guest and likely our oldest dancer also. We admire you for your joy of life. When Pam comes into the jazz bar Zazanova, the faces of staff show awe, or even fear. They know that Pam will party and dance until way after midnight, when many of the staff, who are a third or even a quarter of her age would really like to go to bed.
Pam – you are closer to celebrating your 100th birthday than many of us development people are to finding another job. With your incredible energy, Pam, you are, to use a Burns phrase, “like a red, red rose, That’s newly sprung in June.”
Betsy Haskell – for many, you are our collective memory and an entrepreneur who stood at the beginning of many things we hold dear, including AmCham, which has just given scholarships to more than 60 students, generously sponsored also by some people strongly represented in this room. At the recent award ceremony, one young student spoke on how that scholarship had set her life on a new track – and it was an event that made some grown men in this room cry. Betsy, to making strong men weep, and to the impact of what you helped to create reaching decades into the future.
Tonight, we lads should also recognize someone else. Corinne Rothblum who for three years worked with AID governance programs. In that tricky field, we never directly worked together, but I heard from many, you had the reputation of getting good things done and that you listened.
In addition to that work, Corinne engaged in many causes – such as helping dogs – with warmth, because you believed it was the decent thing to do, and one never had the impression you did that to ever be the center of attention (I am sorry to impose that on you today). Next to many complicated feelings that you and USAID colleagues have right now, for us here this *has* to be a moment of expressing our immense gratitude, Corinne, to you and to all your USAID colleagues and partners in the room, thank you for touching so many lives and all you did to improve them.
Coming back to Georgian lassies, Nana Dvali is an extraordinary figure amidst us. If you know her, you admire her not just for her ability to consume any khachapuri that is in her sight. If you don’t know her, Nana is one of the pillars of rentals.ge. Not everyone immediately has a warm fuzzy feeling when you think of real estate agents. But what Nana has done is find a home for hundreds of people who moved to Georgia. Nana, you also helped people find a home of people, by creating now almost 30 years ago the International Women’s Association, IWA, one of the best organizations in Georgia, which has done many good things, including the Christmas bazaar, that has been a real community supporting its members and many other causes. Nana, to you finding and making homes, to the IWA, and to your khachapuri.
I spoke of four admirable ladies, and I want to speak of one more. When Burns writes on the red rose I cited, he has that stanza that goes:
““Till a’ the seas gang dry, my Dear,
And the rocks melt wi’ the sun:
I will luve thee still, my dear,
While the sands o’ life shall run.”
The sands of life – I need to speak of one woman of luminous beauty. That woman is no longer with us. Nana Janashia founded and ran the Caucasus Environmental NGO Network, CENN, and was a presence here and everywhere. She stood for what she believed in and was always generous.
If you squint, you can just about imagine her, in a dress that is a riot of colors, another rose (to use Burns’ phrase), bubbly, a smile bigger than any room she was in – such a force of nature that only another extreme force, lightning, could strike out the sands of that life. We lost her in August 2023, but in our best moments, she is still with us.
Perhaps, for the Burns Supper, we should introduce the annual Nana Janashia award for the most exquisitely flamboyant dress!
Seeing Light in Darkness
It’s time to bring this to a close. I said repeatedly that these are dark times, and Burns writes about nighttime in the poem Tam o’ Shanter. When shadows grow longer is also when you see where the lights really shine.
When we toast these admirable lassies, as Burns reminds us, we celebrate the full range of human experience, the heroic in Georgia, the dancing, the entrepreneurial, the selflessly engaged, and the colorfully radiant. When we toast lassies – we toast life, and that inevitably entails loss, as several among us also experienced in recent months.
The brief suspension of time that a poem – or perhaps a toast – brings, allows us to take stock of a moment and of people that otherwise we may pass without recognizing them for what they really are. Taking stock can give them the admiration that Burns suggests they are due.
Poetry should make strange things familiar and familiar things strange, and I hope you feel a little bit more familiar, and a wee bit more strange now. This, in my mind, is what in dark times a bright night like ours stands for, and are we not lucky that Robert Burns brings us together here for that purpose?
I would ask the lads in this room to stand, as a sign of their admiration. This is to the braveheart ladies of Georgia, to Pam, to Betsy, to Corinne, to Nana Dvali and Nana Janashia, and to all the other lassies that are sitting in this room or residing in your hearts.
To the lassies!!
By Hans Gutbrod
