Birmingham, Alabama
University of Alabama
I arrived in the deep South yesterday to snow storm shut down big chunks of Birmingham. While my hosts have asked me if I brought this weather with me from Upstate New York, I assumed that they arranged it for me to make me feel welcome. I never want to underestimate the power of Southern hospitality.
Read full blog post on our new website – Emancipation Again.
Nov 25 There is no shortage of video games and conspiracy novels these days that carve out just enough of Dante’s Divine Comedy for the purpose of legitimizing the use of his name in the marketing plan. Among those things that many get wrong about Dante’s poem is the image of Hell as a place…
Nov 23 Since Great Britain and Norway have dominated Antarctic exploration, Thanksgiving, a signature American holiday, doesn’t have a long heritage here on the icy continent. Americans were preoccupied with a decade or more of pre-Civil War turmoil when James Clark Ross arrived here in the mid 19th century to the place that would eventually…
Nov 22 My friend Yuki Takahashi let me tag along today on his daily trip to the top of McMurdo called “Arrival Heights.” It was a pretty brutal place. Today, this snow covered, lunar landscape boasted sustained winds of about 30 mph and gusts up to 60 mph. Yuki monitors six projects for scientists all…
November 20, 2016 The temperature soared over the couple of days to the low 20s Fahrenheit and some snow started to melt in the warmer spots at McMurdo. Worries of tracking volcanic mud into the dorms were quickly forgotten as the temperature dropped and the snow arrived yesterday. The station is hunkered down today with…
Nov 17, 2016 I spent the day out on the snowmobiles with Elaine and fellow NSF Artist and Writer, Maris Wicks. Maris is a science cartoonist (www.mariswicks.com). While I was recording their voices, Maris was sketching. The Weddell seals make a wide range of sounds both above and below water. Everything from guttural growls and…
Part 4 “The Ross Sea” Readers of my blog know that I have been reading Ernest Shackleton’s memoir South during my Antarctic trip. Had his ship Endurance been freed of the ice in 1914, Shackleton planned on crossing Antarctica and arriving here in the Ross Sea region. Instead, his ship was crushed by sea ice…