Antarctic Anecdotes

    Don’t it always seem to go, That you don’t know what you’ve got ‘til it’s gone. They paved paradise, to put up a parking lot. -          Joni Mitchell, Big Yellow Taxi Joni Mitchell was right. You don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone. That’s why Tuesday, June 7 was such a sad day for us here at the pole. It was the day the last egg ran out. I’ve often been asked friends and family about how we eat here.   Besides the obvious answer…with a knife and fork, just like at home…the food has been more than a pleasant surprise.   Someone here long ago learned the lesson that if an army marches on its’ stomach, then Polies thrive on theirs.   Our Galley Staff includes a chef, a sous chef, a baker, and a couple of stewards.   As befits the Island of Misfit Toys we call the Pole, each has a background story all their own.   The chef is a graduate of the Culinary Institute of America who got tired of t...

Perhaps you’ve heard this one. Antarctica is a harsh content. It’s the highest, driest, coldest continent on earth, and the place most inhospitable to descendants of the small hairy bipeds that once scampered about the African plains.   We’ve already noted that as creatures who evolved in warmer climes nearer the sea, there’s a host of physiologic stressors to life at the South Pole. In addition, one can add a virtual cornucopia of psychologic challenges, given that humans are used to things like night and day, personal mobility, and living in kinship groups.   These factors and others have been implicated in mental health issues at the extremes of the earth.   As our winter ensues, and our story progresses, it’s helpful to think about what’s going on in our heads as well as our hands and our hearts.   There’s a long history of mental health concerns with in the annals of the continent.   The Belgica was the first ship known to become frozen in the ice and fo...

There’s a part of me that like to pretend that even for an oldster, I’m kind of a cool guy.   The reality, of course, is quite different.   I may be cold here at the Bottom of the Earth (-90’s F outside with a wind chill down to -130’s F as I write), but cool is definitely not one of my most pertinent adjectives.   When I choose to introduce reality into my self-perception, the truth is quite different.   Take music, for example. I am firmly of the belief that no good music has been created since the 1989 release of “Love Shack” by the B-52’s.   This is why when I watch the Super Bowl halftime shows, I generally have no idea who the performer is, what the songs are, or why they’re any good.   Halftime of the 2023 Eagles-Chiefs contest looked like a timely convention of Chinese weather balloons.   At least I understood the “left shark – right shark” controversy of Katy Perry’s Super Bowl performance, because I had previously seen Katy Perry in Chicago a...