Ice, White & Blue

Redhead Amok in Antarctica

Too Many Colours

This place breaks my heart.

 

 

This picture is from just before mainbody hit us, when I was allowed out of town to go Dive Tending. The snow and ice formations out there were beyond magical.  Sculptors through the ages have tried to put this into marble, and failed. This was carved by the wind and curved by the sun. It stood 15 feet above my head in the lee of Little Razorback Island.

A few weeks ago while walking back from the overnight camping trip, about which I have admittedly failed to write, the sun was such, the shadows were elsewhere, the sky was blue and I was walking along in just my undershirt.  This is one of those stark images I wish to have in woodcut...

 

Until I came here this season at Winfly, I, too, thought the world here a startling harmony of blues & whites. I was mistaken and this was a sunset Blake and Chagall would have understood.

posted by: coldwish at 17:02 | link | comments (4) |
housing 2005-06

Pet Peeves #2

Perhaps this is petty of me to complain about the toilets in Antarctica, when I could be shitting into a plastic-lined bucket or peeing into a Nalgene bottle out in a field camp with the Katabatic winds blowing up my hoo-ha, but I have an issue and I’m ready to go public with it.

I can’t get the toilet paper to flush.

Across the hall from my office, conveniently located, with multiple stalls, exceptionally clean at all times, is the bane of my peeing & crapping existence here. Because I am in this hallway for over 10 hours a day, including meals and work time, and it is the only toilet in this building that does not require traipsing through dorm hallways, I use it many many times every day. In fact, because I am all about being well-hydrated, and keeping it clear and copious, I am up from my desk and in there about 8 times a day.

Why the complaint? Why the irritation? Why the rant the other day at supper to an entire table full of confused men?

Let’s start with the shape of the toilet bowl. While otherwise resembling a normal toilet, it is entirely to low to the floor. What allows it to be so low in the seat is the fact that it is squat. No long elegant porcelain base on this thing. Then the toilet bowl itself is shallow and elongated. So when a woman sits on that toilet, unless she is extremely short, it’s a long way down to the seat. I’ve heard more than one woman land hard. I thank my lucky stars we don’t have those toilets in my dorm, because my mornings would definitely suck. Suck more than they do already.

But that’s not even the complaint I have.

I am sick and tired of having to flush two or three times after I pee. This is a waste of water, and a waste of my time. (Not to mention that I know there are other women in the toilet who are thinking, “Man she must have planted a huge one in that bowl if she can’t get it to go down with three flushes!”) Why is it necessary? The bowl interior is so flat & long that when the post-wipe toilet paper is dropped into the bowl--and I’m dropping it midway, not right at the front--it won’t flush. The water pressure is insuffiecient to push it down from that drop point. Three flushes later and it goes down, maybe.

So I’m standing there in the stall, aware of the line outside my door (specially just before lunch or dinner), about to embark on my second flush.  Do I just flush or do I grab another handful of toilet paper, mummify my hand in it, and PUSH the (now wet) TP further toward the back of the bowl? Thus adding more TP to the environmental conundrum I am in. Kill trees? Expend more water? What to do?

My other choice, an awkward answer to the issue of the too flat, weak flushing toilet bowls, is to make sure, post-wipe, that I reach further down between my legs into the bowl and TOSS the TP toward the back of the bowl, so it lands in prime flushing position.

This works. With hazards. Like, remember I said the toilet bowl was particularly flat? Shallow too. The risk of this maneuver is that of getting my hand wet. I toss too vigorously, with the extra effort, and my knuckles come back wet. I toss too closely and I punch myself in the crotch. I don’t want to have to do this. I’d like to just drop the TP in the bowl, stand up, pull up my jeans, and flush.

Gawd forbid I have to take a crap there. Then things get ugly.

This is what my season has been reduced to.

posted by: coldwish at 14:19 | link | comments (2) |
housing 2005-06

Pet Peeves

posted by: coldwish at 17:45 | link | comments (3) |
housing 2005-06

Lil Bits That Niggle

We had 6-10 inches of fresh powder fall over the weekend. We are pure and white and soft again, the sky is blue and our low clouds have lifted.

I have taken up pool. It is remarkably like fencing. Is it a bad thing for me to have said that?

I realized that once mid-December rolled around I had begun to repeat my season from last year. The holidays, the ship dramas, the rugby game, the chilling of the weather, the NAVCHAPs, the transition from "Where are you from?" & "How'd you get here?" to "Where are you going after the Ice?" & "When do you leave?" is complete.

My roommate has flipped to the dark side, she is on nights in anticipation of the ship offload. We never see each other awake now and I miss her. There is not as much pleasure in farting alone in a room with no one there to giggle.

posted by: coldwish at 17:38 | link | comments (1) |
housing 2005-06

My Name Is Self-Doubt

I blame my recent inability to write on Chaim Potok.  A month or so ago I was working here in the library, shelving returned books. There was an older book in a black solid linen cover--one of those old books that are viscerally satisfying, because they just open up welcomingly to any page, nestled there in your hands, smelling like book and soft paper—lying on its side. I picked it up to read the author so I could put the returned book back to the correct side of it, The title My Name is Asher Lev was stamped in careful gold on the spine, and echoed familiarly to me. Curious as to why, I opened it up, standing there in the dim recesses of the Antarctic library. Ten pages later I am still there cradling this book in my hand, head bent in contemplation, a slight smile of pleasure and awe on my face. I was  completely absorbed into the 1940s Brooklyn, New York of this book.

That is the danger of working in the library. Though often it comes over me while I am checking in books that people I know have just handed in. I rarely leave a library shift without 6 books in my arms, promising unknown mystery and stories of adventure, physical, mental and emotional. I have little resistance. This is why I do not work in a book store.

It was a busy week and I was socializing more than usual, with obligations and volunteering in fuels and other things to do, other things than read. But during every activity I engaged in, those first 10 pages haunted my memory and pulled at me. I found myself by Friday of that week, on a “date” for coffee at the Coffee House, and I was glad when the crowds divided us and he drifted off to play cribbage, and I to hang out at a friend’s birthday gig. I mentioned the book to her, and she understood. Eventually I gave in to the story that had begun in my head earlier that week in the library, the main character seeking to move on from where I left him, and I went back to my room to read.

What can I say? This book is one of the best books I have read in a very very long time. The gentle, slow, clear way the author develops the character of Asher Lev from the age of 6; from a young Hasidic child in the throes of artistic revelation to an older boy struggling with the limits of his religious community and the need he has to do art, is miraculous. The description of the need to draw, and the need for God in his life; the contradictions and similarities are so delicately handled, I was stunned.

Stunned enough that I looked at my pathetic attempts at stringing words together and I came up very short.  There was no way for me to write about beautiful things without coming up against that memory in my head of Potok’s sparse, simple, declarative sentences building ineffably toward a short paragraph of description just vibrating with truth and light. Seemingly without effort he drew me in and through and on to the end of his narrative.

I wonder how he would handle the description of Antarctica ? I wonder if his wonder would contain more words, become as convoluted as my words do, in my efforts to capture the immensely intimate nature of this place.

Nonetheless, I was felled and mired in self-doubt after reading this book. I recommend it to you all.

posted by: coldwish at 14:21 | link | comments (1) |
housing 2005-06

Picture = Thousand Words

Am too exhausted to write.

I am cheating with a picture.

Done so much lately.

Leaving the Ice February 15th, heading to NZ.

posted by: coldwish at 16:21 | link | comments (3) |
housing 2005-06

Ice Styles of the Rich & Famous

“the things that i had not ought to
i do because i ve gotto
wotthehell wotthehell”

I couldn’t resist. I had to do it. I had to get my confrontation in while he was in town. His father disgusted me beyond belief with his right wing corruption. He is saddled with the same name: John Sununu. He said he likes to say  “I got my father’s intellect but luckily my mother’s personality.” McCain said of his father, whispered in my ear, “I didn’t like him. His father was a real pain in the ass to deal with.” He also mentioned something about Sununu’s mother being a really impossible woman.

My first interaction was all charm and flirtation on my part, I couldn’t quite bring myself to attack him immediately on his regrettable Republican politics. It had been hard enough to get his attention, he was zoomed in on a beaker and talking science talk. A graduate of MIT, it made sense he’d be a geek that way too. But still, the reception had been presented as a chance for them to meet with their constituents, and I and the fellow next to me both had tags reading New Hampshire on them. Constituents. Also known as voters? As in pay attention to me now or I’ll vote your ass out of office? The beaker? Not so much a voter. But no, I had had already heard that he was the master of the disinterested social encounter and the quick dismissal or pass down. His body language was such, when approached by an actual constituent with a concern or a question, that he immediately leaned his body back and crossed his arms in front of him. So my NH companion had already been dismissed, eliminated from the conversation. Sununu had no interest in us.

I stood there a good five minutes, feet away from him, not even on the periphery of his vision, but within a foot of the beaker upon whom he was so focused, in front of Sununu. Eventually, I stood there so long he could not ignore me any longer. So he read my tag, and did the smile handshake greet me by name thing. Luckily I had decided to place my name tag on my left arm, as opposed to on one of my breasts. I do not need a man, let alone a politician, spending several hours reading my left breast just to remind himself of my name. No need to encourage bad behaviour, or excuse it. It also made it much more obvious when they had scanned my name, as their eyes had to travel further away from my face than normal.

He talked about all the souvenirs he was bringing home for his children, and within a few sentences had looked behind me and grabbed my elbow, turned me around and was introducing me to John McCain. What could I say? Had he noticed I was headed for a question? If so, I wasn’t aware of it. Was the polite banter fading and the dark clouds of my liberalism were beginning to show?  What the fuck? But bang! There I was shaking hands with an incredibly frail-looking but charming as usual John McCain.

But y’know? I’d already met him. I was from NH fer cryin’ out loud. We’ve all bloody met him and every other presidential candidate of all parties at Town Meetings and Speeches. These guys crawl all over NH for TWO YEARS before an election. So I reintroduced myself and McCain stumped for Sununu. Yeah. Thanks dude. But, short as he was, pale as he was, unhealthy-looking as he was, he still had a certain je ne sais quoi about him.  Not quite of that Clintonian je ne sais quoi that caused a shiver to run down the spine of most women who met him, and caused most men to grin like fools. But good enough to compete as a politician. That’s why he was a national politician, and Sununu not. McCain has it. The smile, the wit, the attentiveness. He’s also got integrity and honesty and the willingness to change his mind and learn from his errors, if not apologize for them.

We talked about Dover, my mother’s home town. Of course, he’d been there dozens of times. We get them all.  But he was all about Sununu, and I wasn’t interested. At least not in Sununu.

He got pulled away, passed me off and I was back to the party floating politico-less, passed off passed down by both men.

So I went and found Senator Susan Collins of Maine. There I found several other NH constituents surrounding her (having been sloughed off by Sununu too) charmed, fascinated, and laughing. Collins had fallen in love with Antarctica and was excitedly telling us about her adventures to the Dry Valleys (the ventifacts blew her away) and the South Pole. She had been affected by the altitude of the Pole, and during a speech welcoming them she had noticed blue spots floating on the Big Red parka in front of her. She thought it was odd, looked off to the side and noticed that the same blue spots were floating on her neighbour’s face. So she stepped back out of the crown where the flight nurse noticed her and took her blood pressure. She was fine, just altitude sickness. But she was bound and determined, largely because she is one of only two women in the delegation, not to be the one to faint.  I can understand that.

When she finally wound down her stories, blissfully excited by her trip, none of us were anything but envious of Mainers, and enchanted by her complete & utter FNGness. She was pulled away and we stood there looking at each other.

“OK, so we all move to Maine.”

Damn right. We were having Senator envy of our neighbouring state.

We dispersed, many of us Ice folk hovering lustfully by the food, possibly the night’s biggest draw. I heard about blueberries, saw none. Saw someone walking away with a cherry and the broadest grin on her face, saying “Look! A cherry! I have a cherry!” I had a strawberry. They had smoked salmon, too, which was my biggest vulnerability. Last year smoked salmon used to be a regular Sunday Brunch item, but this year I’ve seen it MAYBE 3 times since Winfly. Brunch has been my least favourite meal as a result of that absence. So I nearly fell over imagining the leftovers from this event.  Scoped it out carefully, but was not yet so bold, so early in the evening as to go behind the galley curtain and fetch plastic wrap and wrap it up in front of non-Ice strangers and politicians.

Not before I’d had my say with my damn Senator. Slippery little fucker.

Finally cornered him as he tried to slide by me again, but his mistake, he paused to acknowledge me and he was caught. He asked me if I had enjoyed meeting McCain, and I said certainly yes of course but I had come here as HIS constituent and I wanted to speak with him. He laughed and made some self-derogatory remark about being afraid to bore me, but I didn’t let him get away with that and made quite clear to him he wasn’t to do it again. I was HIS constituent and I had met McCain before. But as a NH resident I wanted his attention. I think I startled him somewhat, because I was being very charming but also very direct. He perhaps was also somewhat shamed into remaining there with me for a few more moments.

We talked about Dover, and the resurgence of the downtown area with the new restaurants after such a hard decade. He mentioned people in Dover he admires (Jack Buckley of Dover Housing) and a few members of the Avis Goodwin Health Center (where I once worked) Board of Directors, and the owner of Red Shoe Barn. But perhaps that was just his smarmy politic nature, mentioning names to make a listener feel commonality. Because I cannot imagine him giving any more face time to them than to me unless they had money for him.

Another NH resident started the political discussion and lobbed him a question about the education system. He tapdanced authoritatively but not very clearly, touching on the base of NH Republicanism which is "government interference." Everything he said was about not legislating change, not imposing change. I have to think, why not? The private sector has proved no more successful (if you refer to success as anything other than private profit) than the government, and in fact with less oversight by the government there is less need to be beholden to the people they serve.

But I digress.

When Sununu wound down I asked him about the high cost of prescription medication and the lack of affordable health care, specially for the working poor. He began the entire thing with, “Well, of course I don’t believe in socialized medicine.” At which point I damn well should have stopped him and asked Why The Fuck Not? But I let him go and He Waffled. He slipped & slithered & tapped & wobbled and in that inimitably inarticulately pointless but intelligent sounding way of politicians had absolutely no answer for me. Trying to get him back on point was like herding cats. He’d feint that way and I’d have to pull him back, he’d bring out a statistic that smacked of lies and I’d have to correct him (he backed down when I did, which I respect). He was blowing smoke out of his ass and I wasn’t amused. I told him to take a good look at some of the efforts Maine has made and he HAD NO IDEA what I was talking about. I told him to talk to Susan Collins about that, after all, they had a long flight back. He said he would.

I bearded the lion, and he stood still for it. My discussion was watched by the other NH constituents and they all recognized that his body language was not that of a man who was enjoying himself. Crossed arms, leaning away from me, unsmiling. I think he was shocked to be contradicted. I have watched so many politicians asked hard questions where the questioner would then fall silent as if the politician were somehow an expert on the subject. I was not there to listen to him hold forth as if he knew better, I was there to engage him as I would any other person with whom I may disagree on a subject. I was looking for a conversation, not a canned speech. I wanted to have an impact on him somehow, without having to throw a drink in his face.

As I stood there engaging my senator, I felt an arm go around my waist familiarly, a slim body about my height snug up against me and a head pop onto my shoulder next to mine to speak privately closely in my ear. I was a bit startled, and assumed in the split second before I heard that voice, that this had to be a woman to be so close to me, to be holding me so, one who knew me well, or perhaps a slightly drunk man taking liberties. But the quiet voice in my ear, the head on my shoulder touching my face, the hand all the way around my waist squeezing me just above my hip was that of Senator John McCain, once more saying how much he loved this man Sununu. Then he slid by behind me after a last squeeze of my waist, his hand falling somewhat to pass across one ass cheek, perhaps accidentally. Gracious me. He said goodnight and moved on. On his way out the door.

Perhaps I should have placed my name tag on my ass instead.

I left that night having done what I could to get my voice heard, but with many questions unanswered, or unspoken. Time was short and my prey was slippery. I wanted to ask Sununu and McCain and Collins why we pay state and federal taxes on our wages down here, while not being covered by the rights of employees in respect to overtime and many other things we lack. I wanted to ask Sununu about so many things, I had been tasked with asking him on behalf of those people who did not have the access I had. I was lucky to be there. Though this was a reception for constituents it was full to bursting with management folks and beakers and even the Kiwi priest. After all, it was still politics, wasn’t it.

At the end of the night, the best part, the politicians had left, and we Ice people were still hanging around. In a land of rationed alcohol, beer and wine will certainly keep us together at the free bar. The food trays, after they were moved off the table, were swarmed; bearing plastic wrap, tinfoil, paper plates we descended like skuas. We were there for the food. Even our illustrious station manager, Eric, was found putting together a take away plate with hunger and freshie need glowing on his face.

Today at lunch I saw Sununu, he recognized me and nodded, eating lunch with Collins. He yelled over two tables to me “Susan is telling me all about it.”

They have flown. They are gone. We are shut of them for the season.

And I’m not absolutely sure if I really really had my ass touched by John McCain.

*shrug*

“the things that i had not ought to
i do because i ve gotto
wotthehell wotthehell”
  --the song of Mehitabel (the cat) by Don Marquis

posted by: coldwish at 17:00 | link | comments (6) |
housing 2005-06

A Slither of Senators, A Dither of Russians

We have been invaded.

We prepared for this invasion in ridiculous ways. We picked daisies, we groomed the dirt, we hid the recycle waste bins around town. We found towels that matched, we cleaned like mad. We even had it snow so the dirt would not be quite so egregious.

And still they came.

Yesterday the Russian Ice Breaker Krasin finally docked, after turning endlessly in circles outside of town, tearing up the Ice Runway into tiny ice cubes, for about a week. Every day we thought they’d be here. The Russians are coming! The Russians are coming! Nope, not this time. It broke a channel into Winter Quarters Bay, freeing the Ice Pier of its solid ice pack, it backed back out, it wiggled its hind end at us, bumped up against more ice, broke that too. We trotted out to Hut Point en masse to watch it work, and it parked itself there for the entire hour, unmoving, not smashing so much as a plate of ice for us. Occasionally it would belch its signature cloud of black oily smoke out the smokestack. It was close enough to us there we thought If Only We Had Golf Clubs and Some Golf Balls. Well, we didn’t all think it, just some of the guys. We could ping those white balls off the hull and the Russians would think we were shooting at them. Start a whole new war in Antarctica. Okay, so we were sorta hopin’ it’d move & break some ice for us.

Then, after we stopped paying attention because every time we looked up from town it was still turning in circles, it docked.

The Russians had landed.

How did we know that? Well, the black leather clad Nureyev-cheekboned pale dudes, the ubiquitous smell of smoke inside the buildings as there was a bevy of Russians smoking outside every door you opened to the outdoors, the cheap black shoes, the bleached blond women in three-inch spike heels and long black coats, fully made up. Oh, and the language. Not English. Hordes of them. Lining up outside the store in Highway 1. Shopping.

My luck would have it that I was handed the task of sweeping/vaccuming/mopping Highway 1 in 155 that afternoon. My luck continued in that it actually snowed and accumulated in town the night before for the first time in weeks. So, dusty dry dirt town, meet fresh new coating of light snow. Beautifully decorative, cleaned up town really well for our myriad pending visitors. Turns into nothing but gritty mud all over the floor.

Those Russians were not in the habit of noticing me as I swept and vacuumed, unless I was pushing our beloved Zamboni. A misnomer, in that it is not a buffer nor a polisher, but a fancy vacuum cleaner with attitude. That moved them along. But reduce me to a broom pusher and I was invisible to them.

Perhaps if I were to engage in this most frustrating of janitorial tasks, that of keeping Highway 1’s floor clean, on a regular basis, I would get a little less precious about the dust I accumulate. But when I have spent an hour collecting this fabulous pile of dust & grit & stones & dirt and you walk in from the outdoors with snow-laden boots on, right past me as if I’m not there, and you STAND IN MY DUST…

I don’t care what language you speak or if you’re bloody Boris Yeltsin or the bleedin’ ship’s captain, you’ll understand when I poke you in the boots with my broom and say “Hey!” He jumped, said sorry & ran off with his friends. I didn’t have any issues after that. Word musta got around.

I don’t think any complaints were lodged. But I also don’t think anyone in HR speaks Russian. So the gesticulating excited clot of men outside her door could have been exclaiming over the fact that we couldn’t restock them with vodka as they had hoped.

Today they are nowhere to be seen. Because today we were invaded by Senators and Representatives. Ech. All week long we had had our lives disrupted by the expected arrival of these DVs (Distinguished Visitors). Aw hell, in the Housing Dept we were dumbfounded several months ago by the initial rooms request associated with these people. Because, y’know, this isn’t Antarctica and we aren’t already stuffed to bursting with the population density reaching maximum bed capacity on a regular basis and everyone short of the station manager and the more delicate upper management from Denver has a mandatory roommate, one minimum. They wanted 16 SINGLE ROOMS. Because we put mints on your pillow too. Even on the top bunk.

We bargained them down to fewer than that, put more beds in the DV Huts, and the staffers accompanying them agreed to take roommates amongst themselves. But still, there was disbelief and hyperventilating in the office, but Marisa the Goddess of Rooms prevailed over the spreadsheet and forced the issue. She found the rooms. Miracle worker.

But, my goodness, this town looks like an open pit mine, a gravel pit, a desolate dirt bowl of ugly buildings and blowing dust! What can we do? So upper management arrives last week from Denver, and ohmigawd we have to Clean Up Town. Sure as shit town needed it, because you would not believe the crap that accumulates in the snow over the winter, blown hither, frozen thither, until it gets warmer and the drifts melt away, revealing it all: cigarettes, unpopped popcorn, nails, cardboard, sheetrock, broken bottles, full bottles, clothing, keys, sunglasses, wood, plastic bags, nuts, bolts, bamboo poles, storm fencing, paper, gloves, bio-waste bags full of used tampons, etc. You name it, if it can fly by you in a Condition One, it’ll show up after the melt. It makes sense to do this. But what we call it doesn’t: Daisy Picking. Town wide, for several hours, every department participated, we all went out and did our Daisy Picking duty.

But that was not enough for our beloved leaders, because, oh lordy, the waste bins!! Labeled Bio-Waste, Skua, Plastic, Paper, Burnables, Glass, Aluminum Cans, Cardboard, Construction Debris, etc. They were sores blotting the landscape of this lovely town!! We MUST hide them! We must remove them! What if the Senators see that We Recycle? They would just fall over in shock & horror. Which I can understand, given that the slithy trio who arrived were all Republicans. A pox on their house. Your tax dollars at work. This is the boondoggle to end all boondoggles for the 12 or so politicians who showed up. A “research trip” for whatever committee funds the NSF.
So, the janitors, instead of removing the garbage bags from the carefully labeled recycling bins in the dorms & buildings and trotting them outside into the easily accessed bins of the same names, now have to place them outside the dorm by 9:30am each morning for a garbage truck to pick up. All bags placed willy-nilly in one truck to be sorted into categories by the Wasties.

Well, they are here now: John McCain (AZ), Susan Collins (ME) and John Sununuke (NH) and a covey of Representatives also.

We have been invaded.

At least the Russians understood being poked with a broom. I’m not sure I can get away with that with these folks.

So, I am fleeing town.

I am going overnight camping to Castle Rock tonight. In Antarctica. Just in case you forgot where I was. Because Raytheon and the NSF seem to have.

posted by: coldwish at 06:34 | link | comments (6) |
housing 2005-06