Fire...oh, wait, I had to cut that part...and Ice (with apologies to Pat Benatar)

Faithful readers (of which I’m not sure there’s any except me, and that’s mostly just to assure myself that I’ve been doing something other than watching old movies and eating starches) will have noticed that I posted nothing in July and minimally in August.  These months were the start of the doldrums, a time when I couldn’t get motivated to do anything creative.  The research tells us that the third quarter of an Antarctic winter stay has the highest incidence of winter-over syndrome, with insomnia, irritability, depression, and withdrawal dominating our interactions and behaviors.  The months are even named things like Angry August and Stabby September. 

Despite knowing what might happen, and even telling others about Winter-Over Syndrome so we could watch out for each other, I nonetheless chomped down on the bait of sloth.  It’s not like we didn’t do anything…we’ll talk about some of these events in a moment. But on a daily basis, the combination of isolation and monotony and really nothing to do except take inventories and babysit the house meant that more days than not were spent simply killing times between meals and satellite passes, when you could distract yourself looking up things on Wikipedia and checking Facebook every two minutes or so until falling into a state of torpor as one satellite departs the horizon and you await the arrival of the next one to continue looking up things you don’t really want to know.  The baseline tasks still happened.  The occasional patient was seen in the clinic, and we did weekly training for our Medical Assistants and Emergency Response Team.  Administrative reports got filed on time.  Everyone did their part in cleaning public areas of station on Monday; we took trash down to the under-ice waste bins twice a week, and cleaned, swept, and mopped the Medical Clinic on Saturday morning.   I planted seeds in the greenhouse every week, took my shower every three days, and did laundry once a fortnight.  It’s sad when you wash your linens not because they need it, but simply for a break in routine.

I’ve been aware that people have started to isolate themselves for a while, but the month of August seems to have marked an acceleration of the process.  Less people come to meals; more of those who do pass through the galley take their food to eat elsewhere.  Some people have purposefully chosen to limit their participation in the larger community; unfortunately, while the membership of social groups s still somewhat fluid, in some circles there’s a clear idea of who’s welcome and who’s not.  There’s no question that the Station is a better, more efficient, and more welcoming place when everyone is embraced by and involved in the community, but it would be wrong to think this state of affairs was a surprise.  As best I can tell what we’re experiencing is as predicted by studies of Winter-Over Syndrome and the recollections of prior winter crews.  I liken what’s happening to a problem with the frontal lobe of the brain in patients with dementia  or alcohol intoxication, where behaviors that might be otherwise controlled, regulated, or suppressed and now given free reign.  The lack of behavior modifiers simply makes you more who you always were.  Folks who are loud get louder; the sarcastic and the critical become more so; introverts retreat even further into their own world.  And with the lack of outside influences and the monotony of the austral night, each joy is exaggerated, but every negative is magnified beyond it’s true significance. 

I think I see this in me as well.  While I don’t believe I’ve changed in any fundamental way…I don’t hate things that were favorites before, and I have no inclination to pick fights or punch inanimate objects in a rage...I do notice that those things that would slightly irritate me before have  now assumed an outsized presence on my life.  Annoyances that would normally fade away after a glass of milk, a couple of Hostess Twinkies, and an episode of WKRP in Cincinnati now fester in my mind, and I tend to ruminate on them because work and home are one and the same and there’s no place else to go.  I’m not at the point of obsession…I think…but I can easily see how someone could get there.  It feels like it’s already happened to a few of my colleagues, whose lives seem dominated by disagreements and slights that I suspect would mean nothing to them up North.  And most of us are able to distance ourselves from the moment enough to know these feelings and frustrations are transient, a function of where we are rather than who we’ve become.  A favorite phrase around the station is “Once you step off the plane in New Zealand, nothing at the Pole matters.”  Still, we try to take our minds and souls elsewhere, even as our bodies are stuck in place.

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On Monday Nights someone gives a talk.  It’s officially called the Monday Science Talk, but since there’s only a handful of scientists on station it’s really a chance for anyone to talk about whatever they want to anyone who’s willing to listen.  It’s not like we don’t ever learn any science.  We’ve learned about neutrinos, rocket propulsion, and asteroids.  One of the more interesting talks was about the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI).  SETI uses radio telescopes to scan the skies for organized signals that might emanate from a technologically advanced civilization (defined as one that just won’t stop and accept that pixies run the universe).  But how do you know where in the entire spectrum of possible radio frequencies to look?  Turn the dial just a bit to the right or left and you’ll miss Casey Kasem’s American Top 40 and wind up with Rush Limbaugh. 

I was also interested in the Drake Equation, a probability construct that estimates, in a theoretical fashion, the number of planetary civilizations that exist in the universe at any one time.  The equation itself looks like this:

N = R ∗ × Fp × Ne × Fl × Fi × Fc × L . 

N is the number of currently active, communicative civilizations in our galaxy.

 R∗ is the rate at which stars form in our galaxy.

Fp is the fraction of stars with planets. 

Ne is the number of planets that can potentially host life, per star that has planets.

Fl is the fraction of the above that actually do develop life of any kind. 

Fi is the fraction of the above that develop intelligent life. 

Fc is the fraction of the above that develop the capacity for interstellar communication. 

L is the length of time that such communicative civilizations are active.

Got all that?  There's a quiz next period.  

 When the equation was first formulated in the early 1960’s, we had yet to discover exoplanets, those planets found to orbit stars other than our own sun. (It was also before some idiot demoted Pluto, for which I’ve still not quite forgiven Neil deGrasse Tyson).  It now appears that virtually every star has planets of one kind or another.  So the Fp factor, which used to be thought a miniscule fraction, is now basically 100% (1.0).  That inflates the number of possible civilizations to an almost unimaginable number.  Undoubtedly there’s someone out there, and at some point SETI or a similar future effort will find it.  But since the early days of radio we’ve also been broadcasting into the cosmos, so perhaps some alien being will stumble across a faint trace of “The Battling Bickersons” and decide to either dispatch an emissary to bring peace to mankind (please refer to “The Day the Earth Stood Still”) or decide that if those pesky Terrans can’t fix their own relationships, there’s no way we can do it even with three heads, radial symmetry, and fifteen dexterous but oily tentacles, and perhaps we’d better just stay home and enjoy some methane in the backyard.

(As best I understand, if SETI finds an alien signal, what they do with it is someone else’s problem.  Not my monkeys, not my circus.)

In the best spirit of adventuring and fellowship, most talks are stories told around a metaphorical campfire.  We’ve heard tales of people crashing rock concerts in Argentina, getting tear gassed in Chile, and arrested in Burkina Faso, the only phrase understood by the errant prisoners being “Les blancs sont un probleme” (“The whites are a problem”).  We’ve learned how to travel the world on somebody else’s money by working on cruise ships and teaching English overseas; we heard how one of our more demure teammates got tossed out of Octoberfest in Munich after chasing liters of beer to the cheers of an admiring throng.  The Vehicular Punster did a mock informercial for an imaginary pyramid scheme selling vitamins from China. 

(For the record, I firmly believe that Ouagadougou, the capital of Burkina Faso, is the best-named capital city in the world.) 

One of our stewards discussed how to get on Wheel of Fortune, and we cheered him on as he showed us his episode.  He kicked butt, winning $27,000 and a trip to Aruba.  One of the other contestants got totally skunked but seemed to have a good time; the other, a woman named DeeDee, kept shooting my friend killing looks each time he solved a puzzle and I’m certain would have shived him had Vanna White left any sharp hair implements anywhere around the set.  (It probably didn’t help that when Pat Sajak was introducing the contestants, my friend noted he had traveled the world and donated a kidney, while she was able to cook chicken.  To be fair, she also said she had a wonderful husband and three beautiful children but I discounted that because nobody on television ever says my husband is a hobo and yes, I do have three kids, but none of them are too good-looking, one is downright ugly, and the one we thought might make good lives in a crack house.)

My turn came in late August, and I was initially uncertain about what to do.  I didn’t know that I had a lot to offer.  We travel a lot, but I wasn’t certain that the younger folks would appreciate forty-five minutes on “Cruises You Can’t Afford and Cocktails I Have Known,” which would be mostly pictures of The Best Girl Friend Ever (The BGFE, aka The Dental Empress) and I sitting in the Cunard Line Commodore Club with drinkies in our hands.

The next choice was to do something medical, but the years have taught me that while people are fascinated by their own medical problems, they have little interest in medicine as a whole.  I flirted with the idea of showing foreign bodies on x-rays, because everybody likes that, but I soon discovered that for every film that showed something like a swallowed coin or a kidney stone, the internet was happy to provide at least thirty more of objects inserted into orificies never intended to be used in that fashion.  I won’t give you details, but let’s just say that some of these radiographs could have been titled Candyland with Mr. Mint, The Carol of the Bells, lt’s a Pink Plastic World, and To Infinity and Beyond.  While such a presentation would likely be received by our crew with great interest, it also would have violated almost every National Science Foundation Policy I can think of, so the idea was quickly shelved. 

(There may or may not be a Not Safe for Work Version of this presentation available for view.  I am not at liberty to say.  Also, is the plural of orifices orifi?  Asking for a friend.)

As far as adventures go, I did have some experiences in Rwanda years ago and I got to do some work with NASA was well, but those days were recorded on paper photo prints and slides in carousels back home.  I did have pictures on my phone of my car getting stuck in a snowdrift in North Dakota and staying the night in a hotel whose décor was Dead Things on the Wall, which itself is not an issue but becomes one when you wake up disoriented in the middle of the night and there’s a glass-eyed, bare-fanged bobcat looking back at you.  But I didn’t think that was enough to carry the room.

Since we had just done Christmas in July, I finally decided that an easy way out might be to discuss Chanukah in August.  The talk itself was pretty standard stuff.  Here’s why we celebrate Chanukah, here’s a menorah, and no, it’s not “Jewish Christmas;” here’s a video of Kyle and Cartman from South Park singing The Dreidel Song; I relate the story of my sister who, when asked how “real Jews” make potato pancakes (latkes), tells then “We open the box.” 

What made the talk interesting is when I started down the internet rabbit hole trying to find pictures of Judah Maccabee, the Hero of the Chanukah Story.

(Judah Maccabee is loosely translated as “Judah the Hammer,” which is why a certain obscure action film is called “The Hebrew Hammer” rather than “The Hebrew Hacksaw” or “The Hebrew Hand Grenade.”  The movie is notable for the hero, Mordechai Jefferson Carver, shouting “SHALOM, M…..F…..S!” while busting heads as he struggles with guilt because all his mother wants is for him to bring home a nice girl for Sabbath dinner.)

Of course, because the events of the Chanukah story happened between 167-160 BCE, there are no photos nor contemporary drawings of our hero, though there is more modern artwork depicting the events of the time.  One of my favorites is from a card inside a Victorian-era French chocolate bar (“chocolat”) depicting the death of Judah in battle.  He is given the title “Chef Hebreux” which I know means Chief of the Hebrews, but to my simple American mind suggests that in addition to being a charismatic leader and a master tactician Judah must have been able to whip up a hell of a falafal.

After finding numerous pictures in children’s books and flirting with the Brandeis Hebrew Academy's mascot Judah the Macca-bee (a blue and white hornet carrying a shield emblazoned with the Star of David, and likely to be decimated by any other high school mascot with a flyswatter), I ran across some comic book images more along the lines of the muscular, swarthy hero we might expect.  I found that a version of Judah had been a fixture on Earth 616 within the Marvel Universe.  And that started my plunge into the internet abyss of Jewish Super-Heroes, because once you’ve found one, why not found them all?

It turns out there’s quite a few.  Probably the biggest names would be Magneto, the sometimes rival and sometimes friend of the X-Men, whose story as a Holocaust survivor drives his anger towards those who would eliminate mutants from the world.  Benjamin Grimm, The Thing of the Fantastic Four, has been both bar mitzvahed and read Kaddish in the pages of the pulps.  X-Man Kitty Pryde, aka Shadowcat, is militant about both her mutancy and her Jewishness, and Sabra, an Israeli heroine, is scheduled to appear in the latest Captain America film.  Gim Allon, Colossal Boy of the 30^th century Legion of Super-Heroes, is Jewish, as is Kate Kane, the modern version of Batwoman.  Hal Jordan, the original Silver Age Green Lantern, has one Jewish and one Catholic parent.  This is good news for my son, because if Abin Sur crash-lands on earth and is looking to hand off his Power Ring, the kid still has a chance.

But wait, says the infomercial…there’s more!  In the late 1990’s Alan Olrich decided that Jewish kids needed their own books.  The result was the Jewish Super-Hero Corps.  The membership includes your basic super-hero tropes with a version of Magen David (a version of Captain America whose shied bears the Star of David) and Kippah Kid, a younger Batman who uses trick yarmulkes (the “beanies” worn by Orthodox Jews) to fight crime.  But then it just gets weird.

Former astronaut Menorah Man was on the planet Mercury and ate some radioactive olives, which gave him the ability to grow six more arms and shoot fire from all eight.  Sabbath Queen has a wand which can stop all electronics from working for 24 hours, except on the Sabbath.  (Saturday would be a Good Day for Evil.)   Dreidel Maidel was caught in a cyclotron and can spin.  The Mysterious Minyan Man, the Decimal Daredevil, can split into ten men.  My personal favorite is Matzah Woman, the eye candy of the group.  She gained invulnerability and microwave vision (so let her make the popcorn) by eating a piece of radioactive matzah.  However, she loses these powers if submerged in water for more than 18 minutes, which is the time it takes dough to rise.  So good luck getting her tipsy on Mogen David Concord Grape and naked in the hot tub.

Just as Marvel and DC market their heroes, the Jewish Super-Hero Corps has been featured on a box of Old City Café Macaroni and Cheese.  Apparently this was a controversial move, as the rabbi supervising the preparation of the kosher product, one (name), resigned his position saying super-heroes were “too goyim (non-Jewish).”  You can also purchase a Magen David or Menorah Man costume for your child on Halloween, because there’s no better way to celebrate a pagan holiday than with a Member of the Tribe.

(And it gets stranger.  In issue #2 of their self-titled comic, a 1950s version of the Corps needs to hide a Solar Succah (a booth decorated with fruits and vegetables in celebration of a harvest holiday.)  The lineup included Captain Shofar, The Black Menorah, Valor Woman, Afiko-Man, and Shimshone, with Gragger Girl as the resident babe.  The good Captain’s orange and yellow uniform matched that of Gragger Girl so, as Frida from ABBA would sing decades later, “I know there’s something going on.”) 

But I wasn’t even close to the bottom of lepine warren.  There was Shaloman, “The Kosher Crusader,” who is actually a rock shaped like the Hebrew letter starting the word “Shalom”.  He…it…remains inanimate until someone cries “Oy, vey!”  This means he spends a lot of time in the kitchens of Jewish mothers who find out their son’s been dating a shiksa (non-Jewish girl).  My Dad tells me of a fraternity song they used to sing with a New York accent:

“Oy, oy, oy! 

Zeta Beta Toi!

Look what you’ve done to my little Yiddish boy!

I sent him to school to learn to read and write.

Oy!  Now he’s dating shiksas on Yom Kippur night!”

Finally, we come to Captain Israel,  As best I can tell, Captain Israel is not so much an entity unto himself, but more of a heroic response to the menace of Foreskin Man.

Yep, you heard right.  Foreskin Man.

This is a real thing.  In 2010 there was a move in San Francisco (of course it was San Francisco) to ban circumcision for non-medical reasons.  To promote the cause, one Matthew Hess created Foreskin Man, who has a day job as the curator of the Museum of Genital Integrity.  Foreskin Man saves babies from being circumcised, battling adversaries such as Monster Mohel.  To say the comic is antisemitic is to put it in the mildest terms.  It’s simply vile.

(The comic also protests the practice of female genital mutilation, which is the absolutely right thing to do.  However, the addition of Vulva Girl…yes, that’s the name… as an ally of the alleged hero simply mocks this worthwhile cause.)

What’s the best way to fight evil in the comics?  It’s to counterprogram with a hero of our own.  Enter Captain Israel, a creation of Arlen Schumer whose single eight-page book is devoted to defeating the menace of Foreskin Man.  The climactic spread shows a strong and proud Captain Israel standing erect, hoisting up the small and wilted villain limply by the collar, proclaiming “You’ve had a couple of issues of your own comic to say your piece on circumcision…NOW IT’s MY TURN!”  And he does. 

Kick ass, Captain Israel.  And Happy Channukah.

(One final thought:  There is an argument in books such as “Superman is Jewish?” that the entire super-hero genre as created by men such as Jerry Siegel and Joe Schuster (Superman), Bob Kane (Batman), and Stan Lee and Jack Kirby (Spider-Man) was a reflection of the Jewish experience of being strangers in foreign land, persecuted for being different, hiding power and strength behind an assimilated exterior.  That being said, I can’t figure out how you could circumcise an invulnerable Kal-El on earth under a yellow sun, so perhaps Jor-El and Lara were Jewish, too.  Either way, I would like to see the Son of Krypton toss Foreskin Man into the sun.)

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The Hair and Beard Experiment Just Because at 60 I Can continues.  My hair is now so long that it drapes over my eyes, and I need to wear a baseball cap to work at the computer or watch movies.  (I don’t wear my cap at meals, not for any reasons of etiquette, but despite the herculean efforts of the galley staff sometimes it’s better not to see what I’m eating.)  I haven’t had any problems with the beard itching or food getting caught in it, but when I wake up drooling in my slumber it’s pretty hard to get my face dry enough to get back to sleep. 

My colleagues’ assessment of me changes as the follicles multiply.  First I was Homeless Grandpa; then as my hair started to fall down my face, mostly on the right side because of a well-trained wave, I become Polar Emo Wannabe.  (Personally, I would have preferred being compared to Veronica Lake with her “peek-a-boo” hair.)  Two moths ago the Head Chef thought I resembled The Guy Who Stands Outside the Hospital and says, “No, really, I’m a doctor.  I’ll take out your liver for twenty bucks and a pint of Mad Dog.”  A few weeks after that I was wearing a thick red flannel shirt and the Power Plant Guy labeled “Homeless Lesbian Guy.”  Last week I was renamed Ted Kaczynski…the Unabomber.  Now all I have to do is get a cabin if Montana and write my manifesto, which would probably be 75 pages of “I love the Best Girl Friend Ever,” because not only did she let me spend a year at the bottom of the world but after a decade together I’m still that stupid enchanted with her.

But while my image among the South Pole crew evolves, my mother’s feeling stays exactly the same…“I wouldn’t go to a doctor who looked like you.”  But for what it’s worth, Mom asks far too many questions, sometimes the same one five or six times to see if she gets the same answer, so I might not want her for a patient either.  The Dental Empress/Best Girl Friend Ever will tell you I do the same thing, and she’s referred me to another odontologist accordingly.

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We took our Over-Winter Team photo in mid-August.  Herding 43 people together like a clowder of cats is difficult enough, let alone to get them to smile in unison.  The picture is usually taken outdoors, which adds a whole new set of problems.  First you have to rehearse inside, because -89 F with a wind chill in the negative triples is not the time to be figuring out where to stand.  Then you march outside in a parade of bobbing red head lights, and line up as you practiced, unless you realize that you’ve wound up next to someone you don’t like, in which case you shift to the other end of the line because there’s no way you’re standing next to that person from now until eternity.  This usually works out, because inevitably someone on the other side of the line has also figured out they’re next to someone they dislike, so places are swapped with little difficulty.)

This year, our picture had us at the at the Geographic South Pole with the Milky Way and Southern Lights above our heads.  To get the best shots of the heavens, however, you need a prolonged exposure.  That’s not an issue with inanimate objects, but at the Pole is means that your biologic subjects not only have to remain still, but also have to hold their breath, for if they don’t everything is obscured by a fog of exhalation.  So once you finally get everyone into place, and the camera starts to flash it’s countdown, you hear this deep collective inspiration.  As the seconds interminably tick by, you find that you start to waver just a bit, and maybe try to take another breath through clenched teeth to add to your bursting lungs.  After a brief eternity someone who’s been counting says, “Fifteen,” and you hear a collective release followed by a breath in so expansive it drops the oxygen content of the air overlying the continent for a moment or two.

While most of us will wind up with a print somewhere in our homes, (or in my storage unit, because the last thing the BGFE wants to see on the wall is continuing evidence of my folly), the photo is really for the main hallway in the elevated Station alongside team photos of every over-winter crew since the United States was first at the Pole in 1956.   Every picture has something of interest, whether it’s a different setting for the group, the increasing size and diversity of the crew, or the regrettable lack of dogs since the late 1960’s.  The best photos are the sepia-toned documents of the 2011 and 2012 crews; the former is pictured with the classic 2011 shot of Amundsen’s triumphant party at the Pole; the 2012 group embraces Scott’s doomed expedition.  History becomes palpable.

(Speaking of dogs at the Pole, there’s actually a small book in our library entitled, “Bravo for Bravo,” the first dog to winter at the Pole.  Bravo was a valuable member of the original 1956 crew; in additional to the burdens of mascothood, Paul Siple in his book 90 South notes that Bravo was “pushed out into the snow on February 2 as a substitute groundhog and reported that he had seen his shadow, a sure indication of a cold winter.”

We’ve often lamented the lack of dogs on the ice, but with recognize that a pooch could be yet another cause of dissension we vie to curry favor with our collective canine companion and battle over where the dog gets to sleep.  Some among us have suggested we get a cat instead, because nobody has to worry about the cat having favorites because cats just don’t give a damn.  I understand that animals are no longer allowed on continent because of the threat they pose to native species, but at the Pole there are no native species.  How can a dog, or a few hamsters, or a parakeet be more invasive than 43 humans the dump their wastes into a hole in the ice?)

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As I finish this note I’m reminded of how much these writings are devoted to me and my experience rather than to the South Pole itself.  Flat, white, barren, with infinite horizons in any direction, the icy ground varied only by small rises and falls of sastrugi, the Pole is awesome and awful, embracing and frightening, frigid yet accommodating.  But even as I write I know that my giving voice to feelings provoked by simply being alone at the bottom of the world, as close as one can be to standing on an alien land, is all about me and has nothing to do with the essential nature of the Pole:  Cold, austere, empty.

I should be able to describe the Pole in the terms it deserves.  But even though I’m cognizant of my error, I still find myself writing primarily about my thoughts, my feelings, and my friends.  When I start to feel like I’m not doing justice to the place, history is consoling.  The writings of Antarctic legends like Amundsen, Scott, and Siple try to describe an undecipherable land, but at heart are the stories of the men who have come to this frozen world, their accomplishments, their trials, their hopes and their fears, their thoughts on life and at times their approaching death.  While the land may belong to the ages, the stories are strictly ours.

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It’s about 2 AM on a Monday morning.  I can’t sleep so I took myself for a walk outside, my usual lap around the Station with stops at the Ceremonial and Geographic Pole, taking care to make a loop at least thirty feet behind the latter to insure I rounded the world.  It’s sually about a 20 minute sojourn, but tonight I lingered outdoors taking in the views.  It’s –101.2 F but the wind is down, so with walking to keep you warm it’s not too bad outside at all.

It's quiet, although as you round the far corner of the Station you can hear drone of the powerplant, a noise which is only noticeable to you with the absence of other sounds.  Sounds don’t carry well here because of the thin air and the terrain doesn’t generate echos, so just a few steps and it’s gone.  The sounds of the Pole are few. There’s the sound of the wind and the fluttering of nearby flags, but most of what you hear is you.  It’s the slight hiss of your breath, in and out, within your balaclava; it’s the soft and subtle crunch under your feet from minute changes in balance as the ice and snow shift from your weight.  Turning away from the Station you gaze onto an endless plain of white, although now there’s a slight orange glow on the horizon heralding sunrise in less than a month.  This bothers you.  You realize you were in love with the night, for the novelty, for the adventure, for the stars and auroras, and even for the fear.  Soon it will be just another endless day.  And so while you long to be home you dread the end of September, hoping your memories will be enough to last a lifetime.