Obsquatch On Ice - or - No Turtles All The Way Down

 

Letters From the Bottom of the Earth, Part 2 - or - There Isn’t a Song About How I Feel

Read Part 1 first for your own sake.

*Originally written on Feb 9, 2023 at McMurdo Science Station in Antarctica*

Hello again,

Fair warning.  This entry is long and isn’t written well.  It barely talks about interactions or events that have happened in my time here in Antarctica.  However, it does hint at prostitution without actually saying prostitution.  Whoops.  Now it straight up says prostitution, but it only hinted at prostitution before I wrote the word prostitution five times.  I also say “fuck” but not in any of the same contexts as the afore mentioned allusions to prostitution.  And now I’ve written prostitution seven times in a… journal entry?... that is going to be seen by my most of my family.  Hello family.  Hello Kai Bird, Zola, Della, Cito, Vanessa, and June.  Hello Dad.  I am going say the word fuck.  I don’t think that is a surprise to any of you.

It’s -22 °F right now.  I work in Antarctica as a Paramedic behind a desk with a banjo nearby at a clinic called McMurdo Medical and it’s -22 °F outside and the sun is shining like is has for the last two months non-stop and I may have already lost my mind.  Now we are all caught up.  -22 °F.  That temperature is dipping into the area of “I don’t know how cold it actually is but I can’t imagine that it can get much fucking colder anywhere in the Universe,” which, of course, is incorrect, and easily disproven while living on a science base on the bottom of the planet, except for the fact that there is no immediately available internet access for impatient arguing parties to immediately prove that I am wrong.  Also, no one here has a spaceship with an on-board thermometer to prove that it can’t be colder than the -22 °F mere footsteps away from my desk with a banjo nearby. Everyone that doesn’t have a spaceship also seems to lack the patience to wait for the low-speed internet to non-immediately load some actual historical temperature data, and therefor there is no colder place in the Universe for people without spaceships and/or patience.  If you have common sense, you just straight up know that there are places in the Universe that get colder than -22 °F, but there is a fundamental lack of common sense (and spaceships and patience) here at McMurdo Station, including within the weatherproofed warehouse walls of Medical.  I have patience so I, not so quickly, discovered that the coldest recorded temperature in Antarctica is −128.6 °F (−89.2 °C) from Vostok Station on the 21st of July 1983. I also discovered that the coldest known natural place in the Universe is the Boomerang Nebula, which lies in the Centaurus constellation, about 5,000 light years from Earth. Its average temperature is (-272 °C) (about 1 Kelvin) according to the European Space Agency.  Before using the slow internet, I knew, from personal experience alone, that it can get colder than -22 °F but that doesn’t stop me from thinking that it can’t get colder than -22 °F when I have to walk across the dirt road from the Galley to Medical.  And that is where I am and where my desk with a banjo nearby is: McMurdo Medical, the unconfirmed, and easily disproven, coldest place in the Universe.  One thing I have learned between living in Vermont, Chicago, and Idaho is that it can always get colder.  Of those three places, people in Idaho complain about the weather the most, and they undoubtedly have the best weather and don’t appreciate it nearly as much as they should.  By the way, fuck Idaho.  Just saying that makes me feel better.  Not warmer, just better.  No one complains about the weather here in Antarctica.  It’s understood that it will be cold in Antarctica rather regularly and noticing that it gets cold in Antarctica is not a solid conversation starter here.

Let’s review.  It’s a very cold and windy day and I am sitting at my desk with a banjo nearby at Medical and I’m at work even though there is no work to do currently… and I may have lost my mind.  The good people of McMurdo tend to stay away from Medical, and the good people of McMurdo make it no secret that they stay away from Medical.  There are Stickers here…

I stepped away from my desk for a second and as I stepped back to my desk and reread that last line I became very distracted.  

There are Stickers here…

There is more to that sentence, just follow me for a minute or two and we will see if I have indeed lost my mind.  

There was a whole thought locomotive, a “thought train” if you will, in which I wanted to discuss how being an active member of McMurdo Medical gives me the immediate outward persona of “The Enemy” to the working class as well as the science class (the scientific class?  Is that a class of people?  Scientists?) that live and work here in McMurdo, on Ross Island, in the Ross Sea, in Antarctica, where it is cold.  And to deviate just a touch further from that thought train that I just deviated from, the working class and the science class rarely agree on much down here, besides the fact that it is cold, so the unifying force here being that Medical = The Enemy is not something I am proud of.  The same, now almost fully abandoned thought train would have continued at this point from: “Medical = The Enemy” to discussing what the “There are Stickers here” Stickers actually say, but “There are Stickers here” was as far as I was able to type before a completely different distraction pulled me away from my desk, which ultimately caused this thought train wreck.  I would have tried, had the thought train continued unabated, to attempt to explain why Medical = The Enemy, which would include a description of the PQ process, and before you ask I’ll straight up admit that I’m not sure what PQ means anymore besides saying it is the process in which a USAP (United States Antarctic Program) applicant gets medically approved to come down to Antarctica for a winter or a summer or a full season… or for the rest of the productive years of their life until they can no longer pass PQ and are no longer approved to live/work/sleep/die here and are doomed to roam the populated, climate controlled, hospitable, civilized cities and towns of the rest of the Earth with all the conveniences, day-and-night cycles, and taken-advantage-of luxuries that modern civilization offers.  So, I was typing with these thoughts in mind, points of interest further down the thought-train-tracks, and I was going to complete that now broken and derailed sentence: “There are Stickers here…” when I was pulled away from my underutilized desk by the IT guy named Adam.  Adam periodically comes in to restart computers that have frozen; not temperature-wise, just functionality-wise.  

I know Adam the IT guy, he is kind and outgoing and wears glasses and has bad posture and ultimately fits the stereotypical description of a comic strip IT guy, so any further description of Adam is unnecessary because you already get it.  I like Adam.  He fixes things, or at least he tries to fix functionally frozen room-temperature broken things.  He is always busy because everything here is always a least a little bit broken.  Always.  Adam tries, but we all know that Adam can’t win.  He is friendly though, so when he walked into Medical, which no one does on purpose because Medical = The Enemy, I stood up from my desk to chat with him halfway through that fated sentence, “There are Stickers here…”

Adam and I joked about… something… I forget.  I forget what we joked about… I forget a lot of things and I am surprised that I even remember Adam’s name even though the name Adam is a name that I SHOULD be able to easily remember, but I can forget anything these days (this single long day) down here… probably because I am losing my mind.  I can forget anything quickly.  I can forget anything quickly.  Did I already say that?  I can forget anything including the point that I was trying to make originally, which I haven’t yet made.  I haven’t forgotten, maybe you have, but I could have forgotten my point because I can forget anything quickly, but I haven’t.  I am trying to make a point about a broken sentence, I haven’t forgotten, I just got a little derailed.  (Is there such thing as “a little” derailed?  It’s it an all-or-nothing kind of situation; derailment?)  I still haven’t gotten to the point yet, besides the fact that it is cold, I was at my desk, Adam tries to fix The Broken, and “There are Stickers here.”  All of these are valid and interesting points but not the point that I am trying to make, not my original train of thought.  I am currently fully off the rails.  Anyway, I have taken to calling myself a dry-erase-board because of how quickly and effectively I can forget anything.  The metaphor goes like this.  “Hello, my name is Roger, I am a dry erase board, one hand is writing down your name in my head while the other hand is simultaneously erasing it.”  And that is how I forgot what Adam and I were joking about.  I returned to my desk after joking around with Adam and I looked at my computer.  I read the last words that I had typed, “There are Stickers here”.

After reading that I suddenly got excited.  Very excited.  Because I read that there are Stickers here.  I think I probably looked around, like the words were a real time, third-person narration of me sitting back down at my desk unaware that there were Stickers here.  I might have looked around, I don’t remember, probably.

If there are Stickers here, I want them.  I want the Stickers that are everywhere.  I want to know where more Stickers are.  If there is the possibility of more Stickers, then I would do just about anything for those Stickers.  I would do… I’m not sure what I would do because there are no Stickers available as a prize for accomplishing whatever it is I would do for more Stickers.  But if that Sticker exists, and if you have one, then I will tell you what I would do to get the Sticker that states what I will do for more Stickers.

You might be asking yourself why I am so into Stickers.  You might want to know why I keep capitalizing the word, Sticker.  I would hope that you would like to know why, otherwise this is a pretty uninteresting… email?  Journal?  Memoir? Still not sure what this is, or to whom this is addressed, but I’m pretty sure I will send it to my family who are patiently waiting for a simple list of things that I have been up to at the bottom of the Earth.  We are way off the rails right now, fully derailed.  I bet that you noticed.  

Here at McMurdo, money doesn’t really matter.  We are utterly and completely removed from the world of strip malls and shopping centers.  McMurdo has no banks, no convenience stores or gas stations, no car dealerships or movie theaters or billboards for auto accident lawyers with large untrustworthy smiles.  There are no restaurants of any variety; from Taco Bell to Gastro fusion experiences to international sub-par steak houses with fancy ways of serving a deep-fried onion; the entire pallet of food options is empty save for the Galley, which will never get a write-up, good or bad, in a culinary review magazine.  There is none of all of the things that are everywhere else where people be (yes, I meant to write that like that).  There is an ATM machine here that works… maybe 30% of the time.  In the real world, I usually don’t carry cash, but here I’ve been holding onto the same $100 in 20s and 5s for a little over a month.  There are places to spend cash, there are two weatherproof warehouses that we call “bars” where there is beer for sale; they are named Gallagher’s and Southern Exposure.  They both sell cheap beers, PBRs and Coors, expensively.  $5 a can.  Or at least they used to, before the giant cargo ships pulled into McMurdo’s port to resupply the Galley and all the other places that are not McMurdo Medical.  When a cargo vessel pulls into the port, it activates a station-wide prohibition.  No alcohol will be sold while a vessel is loading, unloading, or refueling.  People are not happy about that, the not-selling-of-the-alcohol.  I usually don’t go to the bars here, but I have been going recently.  I play banjo in the weatherproof warehouses that, currently, don’t have beer for sale in them and I continue to carry around my $100 cash in 20s and 5s.  Don’t get me wrong, there certainly are things to buy.  Sweatshirts and T-shirts and hats and vests, water bottles and onesies and deodorant and Q-tips and three types of vaginal cream.  There is a store on base.  It is off Highway 1, which is a hallway, not a highway.  The store is called the McMurdo Store.  Highly effective name, no billboards necessary, you can’t miss it, it’s the store on Highway 1.  They sell everything except beer right now.  They definitely sell clothing with the McMurdo / Antarctic Logo and you initially might think, as I did, that some of these items for sale are ugly.  It’s easy to think that while there are stacks and stacks of them, whatever they are, in-stock, and you would be right: olive green, mustard yellow, hot pink, and Galley brown (don’t ask) shirts and hats, boring, ugly, unnecessary, no big deal… but it has words “United States Antarctic Program” written in bold caps on it somewhere, or a map of Antarctica on the back, or a McMurdo insignia on the sleeve.  And soon the stock dwindles down, and as it does that ugly olive green sweatshirt gets cooler and cooler.  And once the store is out of stock, someone will be offering to buy yours for $200.  So buy two of each size while they are ugly and unpopular.

Yes, for real, someone offered $400 for an XL IceStock 22-23 tee-shirt.  And yes, they bought that sold out shirt for way too much money because it was no longer for sale.  The shirt is undoubtedly and unanimously agreed upon as ugly.  I wish I had one.

That brings me to Stickers.  Stickers are the effective currency of the McMurdo population.  They don’t “have” monetary value, Stickers are a monetary unit.  Stickers are proof that you did a thing, or saw a thing, or know a guy that saw a thing that had cool Stickers and that person wanted you to have one.  Stickers are usually free here, but you gotta work for a Sticker.  No one just gives them away, but someone with Stickers will instantly get more attention that someone without Stickers.  Every department down here has Stickers; Helicopter Operation (Helo ops), Vehicle Maintenance (VMH), Waste Management (Wasties), Food Services (Stewies), Janitorial Services (Janos), even Medical (the Enemy) has Stickers.  There was a scientist that lost a bet and had to stand in the middle of “Highway 1” and answer questions while wearing an Ask-Me-Anything sandwich board, and if you asked him a question he would do his best to answer it, and then he would, of course, hand you a Sticker from his science team’s ice core carbon dating project.  That was the only way to get that Sticker.  That’s a good Sticker.  My current favorite is the only one that I have put on my laptop.  It has a skull inside the outline of Antarctica and in blood red letters it says, “It gets worse, before it gets worse.”  

Other notable Stickers include last year’s Helo Ops which is a florescent green helicopter carrying a crate.  The Sticker fits perfectly over the Antarctic map on the official USAP (United States Antarctic Program) Nalgene bottle that is sold in the store.  There’s a seal wearing a hard hat for the Carps.  Carps are not fish, they are carpenters, but, just to make things confusing, there is a Carp that has the nickname Fish.  I have no idea what his real name is, but he is the fellow in the NASA spacesuit and the silver sombrero in my Ice Stock photos.  Fish, the Carp, is a funky dude.  There’s a ‘Rosie the Riveter’ Sticker that says “A Stewie will do it”, that’s a real good one.  There is a Sticker of an Astronaut with a chainsaw.  There are Stickers of hand drawn caricatures of Ivan the Terra Bus, Pickles the Forklift, and Dawn the Delta 2.  And then there is McMurdo Medicals current, small run, limited edition addition to the Sticker community.  Okay, hear me out.  Patches are different than Stickers.  Patches are an echelon above Stickers and usually have a more official connotation to them and are “worth” more.  In fact, I think that the hierarchy is something like this:

Challenge Coins

Sex

Drugs/Gummies

Helicopter Rides

Erebus Crystals

Prehistoric Ice Core Samples (for alcoholic drinks, of course)

Alcohol and Alcohol Rations

Patches

Stickers

Freshie (fresh fruit and/or veggies)

Out-of-Stock McMurdo / Antarctic Logo Clothing

actual money

Medical Advice

For clarification:  

Challenge Coins are ornately designed precious metal coins that are selectively given out by commanding officers to servicemen and women and/or civilians for exceptional service.  It is a physical “Thank you for your service” coin.  If you are lucky enough to get one, you hold onto that thing until about 5 minutes before you die and then you give it to your great grandkid who has no idea what it is and will pawn it off for $20.  I have one from the Polar Star US Coast Guard Ice Breaking Vessel and it makes me smile every time I look at it.  Nobody sells Challenge Coins.  Nobody.  

Erebus crystals are Feldspar Crystals formed by only 2 active volcanos on the planet; Mt Erebus (Antarctica) and Mt Kenya (not Scandinavia).  I have 2 Erebus Stickers after winning “Roller Derby” which I absolutely guarantee is not what you think it is.  Every time I look at my Erebus crystals I smile, and my guts hurt.  Maybe I will explain in my next… whatever the fuck this thing is.  

Sex is not for sale here.  Buuuuut the 75%-25% male to female ratio in a total population of about 800 people makes sex one of the most valuable activities / commodities / bargaining tools on the base.  I do not have sex here, I didn’t expect to have sex here, and I don’t think I would want to if I could partly due to the harshness of the continent and partly due to the caliber of women that volunteer to spend months on said harsh continent.  I believe I might be… destroyed.  That being said, it seems that everyone else in my dorm does have sex, a lot, non-stop, vigorously and unabashedly, at all hours of the day, every day, for the whole 2 month I have been down here.  I am happy for them, and exhausted by proximity.  

Medical Advice.  No one wants, or for that matter, follows medical advice here, or anywhere on the planet, and we all know that no matter how much you might pay for medical advice, it is not worth any amount of money no matter how much advice you actually get.  Thus Medical Advice is worth less than money.  

Notice that “Patches” are higher on the list than “Stickers”.  Yes, I am getting somewhere, really.  Patches are usually department issued and are official enough to be attached to jumpsuits or uniforms.  Stickers are more or a free for all.  Last year, a PA at Medical wanted to reorder some Patches that are given out to the volunteer McMurdo Mass Casualty Incident (MCI) response team; a group of non-medical volunteers that come in once a week for medical training and can be deployed in case an “Event” happens.  Examples of an Event would be a plane crash, or an overturned Ivan, or a riot due to the closing of the bars and the prolonged prohibition of alcohol sales on the base.  Events don’t happen and MCIs are historically not activated.  People sign up to be part of MCI partly for the medical training, partly for the group activity, but mostly for the Patch.  It is a woven patch of a penguin in front of a red cross superimposed over a map of Antarctica with the words “Antarctic Medical Operations” around it in gold thread.  It is a badass patch.  Fuck yeah, Medical has a badass patch.  Medical was running low on PATCHES stock and the PA, we will call him Mike… because that is his name, Mike wanted to order more PATCHES.  So he took a picture of the PATCH and emailed it to the company that makes the PATCHES… that company also make STICKERS.  Mike received a box of 200 Stickers of a photo of a badass woven Antarctic Medical Operations patch that are historically given to members of MCI.  This round of Stickers is the equivalent of a Baseball Card collectors prized “Error Card”, where they spelled the Pitcher’s name wrong or print the wrong stats on the back.  These Medical Stickers are priceless because of a big ol’ fuck up.  

There are a lot of great Stickers.  Everyone here wants all these Stickers at all times.

Including me.

So, when I saw the words, “There are Stickers here…” on my computer screen, which I myself had written only moments prior to reading it, I got excited and now, finally, you know why I was excited.  Because Stickers are more valuable than fresh fruit, which is more valuable than money, but not as valuable as a Helicopter Ride to the crater of Mt Erebus to collect Erebus Crystals.  And if there are Stickers, I want them.  

Here is the problem with this… memoire?  This epic poem?  This literally display of collapsing mental fortitude?  I was distracted and I was mistaken.  The words “There are Stickers here…” were not an indication of where Stickers were actually located.  The rest of that sentence I was attempting to write would have been: 

“There are Stickers here that say, ‘CAUTION: Never go to Medical’ in big yellow and black block lettering.  The ‘CAUTION: Never got to Medical’ Stickers were printed years ago and are highly sought after to this day.”  

There.  That’s what I meant to type.  I wanted to show how untrusted Medical is by showing that there were Stickers made about how untrusted Medical is.  Let that sit for just a second; there were Stickers made to remind people to never ever enter to doors of Medical, where my desk it.  That is proof that we here at Medical are The Enemy, we were The Enemy, and we always will be The Enemy.  Someone, years ago, spent time designing these Stickers, spent money getting them printed up off-continent and then shipped to the bottom of the Earth, and all this effort resulted in a widely accepted entry in the unspoken competition for the “Best Stickers of McMurdo.”  The ‘CAUTION: Never go to Medical’ stickers are legendary.  Their popularity has risen to the point that even some of the Doctors and PAs on staff at McMurdo Medical (Mike included) have this Sticker on their water bottles.  And I want one, because fuck Medical.  You can’t trust um.  You wanna know why?  A Sticker told me so.

Letters From the Bottom of the Earth, Part 1- or - Proof That Ice Numbs Everything

 *Originally written on January 20th, 2023 at McMurdo Science Station in Antarctica*

Hello,

I’m not entirely sure how to write this.  I’m not even sure what it is just yet, a letter, an email, a journal, a way to spend time while doing nothing.  I am not sure what it is or how to start it, but I have to start whatever it is somewhere, so I am starting with, I’m not entirely sure how to write this.

It’s gonna sound like I am complaining, which I guess I am, but there is a point, and I should be able to get to that point somehow, and I will end up somewhere, somewhere good I hope, but… fuck it, here goes.

The running joke here is that Antarctica is “a harsh continent” and it is used to simultaneously validate and dismiss any and every challenge, complaint, or criticism.  For Example:  It’s -30 degrees and the wind is blowing and you will get frostbite on exposed skin in 5 minutes. It’s a harsh continent.  Your flight has been delayed for 4 days and now the plane has fused with the ice runway and they are using a flamethrower on the landing gears to free then and there is no way to fly you out for another 4 days?  It’s a harsh continent.  You have frostbite on your nose, sunburn on you cheeks, and cracked skin on your elbows and eczema on your hands, a sinus infection, a bloody nose, an upper airway infection and a lower airway infection, a cough, and headache because the air quality in the dorms is equivalent to an airborne toxic event?  It’s a harsh continent.  The proximity sensor on the orange juice dispenser is broken and only gives you 2 squirts of reconstituted powdered OJ so you have to continuously move your cup around to find the “sweet spot” while a line is forming behind you but you keep trying even though no actual sweet spot exists and the sensor and the machine are just broken but you really want a cup of juice so you say sorry to the line behind you and keep moving your cup around under the broken sensor of the broken OJ machine for some fake OJ?  It’s a harsh continent.  

So it’s a great retort to anyone’s problem, and everyone has problems, and most people arrived here with problems, but most of the problems people have here stem from the fact that Antarctica really is a harsh continent.  Full circle.

I currently have a sleeping problem, I have a very hard time going to sleep when the sun is up… which is all the time here at McMurdo Station.  I’m starting to realize what time it is by the location of the sun, which doesn’t help one bit, because, light-wise, as in sheer volume of light, it looks the exact same outside at 3am as it does at noon but now that I know it is 3am because the sun is over the Hut Point cross, I know that I should have been asleep hours ago.  Knowing that I should have been sleeping only makes me a bit more concerned that I am not sleeping, which keeps me up for another hour until I notice that it is 4am and that I should be asleep.  And if I do get to sleep, I wake up every two hours like clockwork with a dry cough and a sore throat because the air quality is terrible in the dorms.  But it is warm in my room on this harsh continent, and there is a think black sheet that has Velcro to cover the window so it takes more effort to see which way the shadows lie.  And even though I can see through the black sheet over the window and can tell what time it is by the shadows of the rocks and the telephone poles, and I know how many hours ago I should have been asleep, and no matter how gross the air is an no matter how gummed up my sinuses are, I want you to know that I am happy here.  It’s a harsh continent, but I like it.

I work a lot, everyone works a lot, we are all on the same schedule and are at work at least 60 hours a week, the starting times just differ between the “day shift” and the “MidRats”.  Terrible name but it stands for Midnight Ration.  I believe the term MidRat is used because “night shift” doesn’t really work here considering there is no night.  For us day shifters, the whole place fires up around 5am for breakfast and then everyone goes to their respective work at 7:30-17:30 with an hour for lunch.  I compare it to what I think limbo would be like, everything is dusty and dirty, most machines are functional but broken in a way that doesn’t require repair but just makes the functionality slightly annoying (see the above mentioned OJ machine).  The ever constant shades of blue sky, brown rock, white ice blending into white clouds on the white horizon create an unshifting background to volcanic dust covered trucks and giant construction equipment.  So much does actually depend upon a red wheel barrel when you never see colors.  I am at work a lot, but I would not say that I am busy.  I am just AT work a lot.  The internet is slow and there is no Wifi which I gotta say is nice.  I read and do crossword puzzles and play banjo.  It is time alone at the bottom of the Earth, but at the same time I’m in a small village where there is no privacy.  You can hike alone to a small locked hut or the top of a look out hill called Obs (short for observation), but the big hikes, the ones where you get away from the din and whirr of the village generators, the hikes where you have all the potential to get lost on the ice and start to understand just how harsh the continent is, those hikes require a partner.  Someone who has done the stupid thing that you want to do, before.  It’s almost designed discouragement.  I asked someone to lead me and a coworker on an ice hike and he said, “I’ll do it, but, man, it’s just more ice out there, it doesn’t get better, it just goes on forever.”  Group housing, roommates, no personal kitchens, galley style dining room, common computer labs, everything is group access and there really is no alone time.  Strange to think about, one of the most inhospitable climates on the planet and I can’t pass gas without making a bunch of people’s lives a lot worse for a few minutes.  And yes, everyone is constantly farting here.  Everyone.  All the time.  There is no escape.  Anywhere.  Canned, salty galley food.  It’s a rough continent.

 

I have found a small group of people who want to learn and share bluegrass tunes.  We are the only vegetation on the continent… bluegrass.  It’s been a few weeks and as I start to recognize people and as I am recognized, I have noticed that people here smile at strangers, shake hands, wave from the driver’s seats of trucks and heavy loaders, people are goddamned friendly here.  Folks are just personable enough to ask you about what you do here, but very few people ask about what anyone does “back home.”  Could be that asking about “home” is a kind a torture knowing that we can’t go “home” until the contracts are done and the sun sets for winter.  Could be that people don’t care to begin with and knowing what someone does in the community of 800 matters more than what someone does in a small town outside of a slightly larger town in a state that is known for cities that are far away from where anyone here actually lives.  Some people stay here year round and are patiently waiting for the “tourists” to leave so that things get back to lonely normal again.  To clarify, there are no tourists, everyone goes to work from 7:30-17:30.  The “old crusties” just complain about the new folk and all the hustle bustle, and the sun, and the dust, and the food… and then they choose to live here because it has become home and they can’t deal with “the real world.”  It’s a rough continent, but much better than the alternatives.

 

Like I said, I am AT work but I do not do a lot of work.  Today, for instance, my paramedic counterpart is being trained on how to run the front desk of the McMurdo Medical Clinic.  He has the not-as-unique-as-I-wish-it-were ability to act as if any activity in which he is involved is a high stress, time consuming, highly complicated activity and requires immediate attention, more resources, quick answers, and fast hand movements.  He is good at making this very laid back responsibility of answering the door for no one, picking up a phone that isn’t ringing, and scheduling the 4 practitioners with the none patients that are waiting for appointments, seem like a soul crushing responsibility that he, and only he can just barely take control of and yet expertly handle while sighing deeply and saying things like “back to the grind stone” and “now, what did you need again?  Sorry, got tied up.”  The rest of us look around at the empty clinic and quiet phones and we shrug.  There are currently 4 practitioners, maybe more.  There is a head MD who does not see patients because I think he is constantly in planning meetings with administrators that have the same skill set as the guy being trained at the front desk who makes everything impossible but somehow pulls it off.  These administrators keep Chris, Doctor M, the lead MD pretty busy with meetings, so he rarely sees any of the none patients that come in to the clinic regularly.  There is a resident MD who is finishing an MD and PhD at the same time.  She works for NASA and University of Texas, plays piano and violin, runs ultra marathons and rock climbs (she planned and ran the McMurdo marathon here and then was not satisfied when she crossed the finish line so she decided to run the 10 miles back to the base from the finish line which was out on the ice.  That level of crazy exists here in abundance, as does the opposing level of lazy, but that’s a different story), and draws daily cartoons of the day’s events and interesting interactions she has with USAF (armed forces) and NSF (science) crews.  She do everything… twice…  There are 2 PAs on staff during the summer, an RN who is the clinic manager, a complete US Air Force crew with a flight surgeon, flight nurse, and critical care flight medic, last week saw the addition of a MD Dentist and an MD radiologist.  The winter crew (which is much smaller than the summer crew) arrives tonight and the summer MDs and PAs begin the handoff which takes a few weeks.  So it is madness, but that doesn’t mean that I am busy, it just means that I am at work and most likely in the way of someone accessing one of the hundreds of oral suction machines that are charging behind my best at all times.  I have a desk.  I can’t remember the last time I had an actual desk at which I had to do work.  I am currently at my desk writing this letter.  There are many like it, but this one is mine.  

So maybe McMurdo is a bit like the island of broken toys, but that isn’t stopping me from being the me that I knew existed before I came down here.  I was only allowed 50lbs of clothing and personal items and I brought a banjo.  It took up a significant chunk of my weight allowance.  Best decision I could have made.  I bought my banjo in July of 2020 as a response to the world shutting down because of Covid.  At the time, I sat on my porch in Boise and clunked/plunked/flunked out simple two-or-three chord progressions until I no longer clunked or plunked.  I brought that banjo with me on shift at Ada County Paramedics and sat on the tailgate of my ambulance between runs playing the same songs faster and faster.  So of course I am going to bring it down to the bottom of the Earth with me.  The remained 35 pounds of my personal items along with duffle bag in which they were being transported were lost by the capable hands of the baggage dept in Australia.  I made sure that my Banjo was carry-on even though it did not fit into any overhead bins, in my lap, or under the seat in front of me.  It just kinda worked and got all the way to ChristChurch with me where as my underwear and the rest of my clothes did not.  Priorities.  Anyway, the banjo is here with me in McMurdo and is currently in its hard case behind my desk chair in which I am sitting while writing this ever expanding note at my desk, did I mention I have a desk?  I have a desk.  Having my banjo and my desk seriously adds to the oddity of the entirely already peculiar adventures.  The point is that the banjo has become a travel companion.  I lean on it during down time… and I constantly choose time with my banjo over time at the bar quite often.  That has resulted in me being the anchor of a bluegrass night on Tuesdays at the weatherproof warehouse that has an espresso machine in it, thus resulting in the warehouse being named “the Coffee House.”  I guess I run bluegrass night at the coffee house.  Weird.

The other night I was in the one long hallway in the main public building where everyone bumps into each other, literally.  Kiwis make up a good percentage of the population here, Kiwis being people from New Zealand, not the awkward bird, which also fits as a definition of most folks here at McMurdo, and Kiwis drive on the opposite side of the road than drivers in the US and, thus, walk down the only hallway on the same side that they would drive and then run into Americans walking with the same driving instinct.  We call this hallway Highway 1.  I was walking Highway 1 and someone broke their leg while playing basketball in a weatherproof warehouse with a basketball net in.  We call that building the “big gym”.  So I called 911 which activates an alarm in the weatherproof warehouse that we call the firehouse.  Then a grabbed an EMS jump bag from the Medical warehouse and started walking past all the weatherproof warehouses towards the one we call the Big Gym, which is the warehouse with the basketball net in it.  His leg wasn’t broken, his knee was temporarily dislocated, subluxation if you want to be specific.  It had reduced already, but he was US Coast Guard so I knew he was going to Medical for evaluation.  The sun was out at the time, so I knew it was… sunny.  My watch said 21:00 (9pm and sunny).  The PA and I evaluated the knee, took some x-rays that showed no fractures, did some ultrasound examinations of the tendons, the ACL, and check the meniscus.  It was rad.  He was fine, his commander gave me a “challenge coin” from the Polar Star Antarctic Ice Breaker Vessel.  It’s a giant gold coin with a Polar Bear one side and the Coast Guard crest on the other that basically means that I did something good for a serviceman.  It’s just a coin but hot damn am I excited about owning it.

Tonight is Karaoke.  Maybe, just maybe I’ll sign “Everything I do, I do it for you” by Brian Adams because that song is ridiculous.  Probably not.  But maybe.  (I didn’t go.  Well, I guess I did, I walked in, but it was really crowded, smelled terrible, and was loud and obnoxious, so I left without singing any 90’s ballads).

This place is strange.  This place is uncomfortable and everything is slightly broken, dinged-up, damaged, but everything necessary, still working hard, limping along as best it can, useful.  This place is off-putting, dusty, dirty and simultaneously breathtakingly beautiful and serene.  This place hides its treasures inside beat up identical warehouses, an espresso machine invites strangers to sit and sip coffee together.  An out of tune guitar hanging on the wall invites a terrible rendition of “Wagon Wheel” to be sung as loud and as discordant as possible.  The community reflects the landscape.  The people mirror McMurdo in both its obvious and its hidden components.  We are ugly and broken and dusty and dirty and useful and happy and beautiful.  It’s a harsh continent and I couldn’t be happier anywhere else today. 

Family Reunion 2014 - or - Four Generations In One Creek

It's been at least 15 years since all 7 of the cousins got together.  Can't stress how important it is to do things like this as often as possible.  Not a frown to be found at the Mill.  Cheers, y'all.

Broken In The Summer But Working In The Winter - or - I Can (Not) Fly

I fell over 30 feet this summer.  Broke my foot in seven places, and broke 2 lumbar vertebrae in my back.  I'm mostly fine now, just a little slower than I was before.  I can't fly.

Every Day I Wake Up - or - A Poem For The Last Class With My Students

Everyday I wake up...

Every day I wake up I feel the grind of the gears in my head, in my back, in my shoulders, in my knees, in my past, present, and future, begging me not to throw off the covers, not to get up on my feet, not to start moving, not to face the sun because yesterday beat me down so effectively.

Every day I wake up I promise myself that I will not make the same mistakes I made yesterday, and the day before, and the day before that, for days and days and weeks and weeks and years and years and years. Today I will be better. Today I will break the mold. Today I will walk a different path.

Every day I wake up I know I will see smiles on friend's faces. I know I will see my own versions of  inspiration surrounding me, if I can only look at them right. I will be flipped off, honked at, and sworn at by the worst driver in the world who happens to be around every corner, driving to close behind me, cutting in front of me, swerving into my well protected bubble, and following me around everywhere I go.  But I will keep driving and get to where I need to go, undaunted.

Every day I wake up I know that I have a chance to reinvent myself, show off my skills to those willing to see them, polish up my flaws for those exposed to them, scream at the heavens on high, laugh at the untold jokes around me, and show the world just how good it is to be me.

Written in a fire storm during a 5 minute free write session with my south side students during the last day of class.
 

True Love - or - Sleep Talking Man

This is just too good to pass. The moment you find true love

Why You Haven't Heard Much From Me - or - The Paradox of Posting

There is a certain fear in realizing that you’ve written too much, which is always followed by a certain thrill in holding down the “delete” key and watching that jaunt of truth, no matter how objective or subjecting it might be, vanish before your eyes, word by word. It's fearfully thrilling. If you don't hear from me then someone should break my delete key.

How To Learn Secrets

"She talks. People talk easily to me. They think a bald albino hunchback dwarf can't hide anything. My worst is all out in the open. It makes it necessary for people to tell you about themselves. They begin out of simple courtesy. Just being visible is my biggest confession, so they try to set me at ease by revealing our equality, by dragging out their own less-apparent deformities. That's how it starts. But I am like a stranger on the bus and they get hooked on having a listener. They go too far because I am one listener who is in no position to judge or find fault. They stretch out their dampest secrets because a creature like me has no virtues or morals. If I am "good" (an they assume that I am), it's obviously for a lack of opportunity to be otherwise. And I listen. I listen eagerly, warmly, because I care. They tell me everything eventually."
excerpt from Geek Love by Katherine Dunn

Lacing Up My Therapy Again - or - Don't Worry, That Noise You Hear When You Are Me Is Just A Bunch Of Brain Midgets

“The little people in my head” is no way to start any kind of story that you want people to take seriously. That being said, the little people in my head that tell me when things are good or when I’m in trouble or if I might have stepped in dog shit are all having a convention right now. They all have reverbed-out, squeeky little voices that pierce though my thoughts as I try to get stuff done. It’s getting kinda loud up there these days.
“Quit smoking, God damn it.”
“Why are you sleeping on the couch again?”
“It’s really time to get your taxes done, slackass.”
“I like this new scruffy beard look on you, bub. Makes you look a bit wild. Like you don’t give a shit. Yeah, put on that green head band too! Now were are talking serious oddball. Fuck yeah.”
“Thanks for taking us all to the conservatory the other morning. We like tropical field trips.”
“I think that carrots are sweeter than candy, does that alarm anyone else up here?”
“Yes, you did just get a big old paycheck but you gotta pay off that credit card. If you don’t you’ll never be able to afford anything fun this summer, like a root canal.”
“Get off yer keister and go for a run, you damn smoker.”
“That’s a lot of dirty laundry, dude.”
“There is nothing in the fridge for the third week in a row. Brown rice and cauliflower is good and all but damn, mofo, changing hot sauces night after night isn’t the same thing as actual variety.”
“Did you hear that? I think it was the neighbors having sex. Wait. Nope. Spin cycle.”
“Buy a plane ticket somewhere. We don’t need leg room. We are just little people in a bigger person.”
“This whole thing makes me want to scream into a glass full of bourbon. Or maybe just drink a glass full of bourbon. Or maybe just scream. Anyone got a lighter? I need a smoke.”
“Quit smoking, dumbass.”
“Maybe getting a dog is the best idea you’ve had in years. So why don’t you have a dog yet? I bet having a dog would be a lot more helpful to your situation than not doing laundry.”
“I wanna grow some veggies. Hot peppers. Tomatoes. Carrots. Morals.”
“Where are your running shoes anyway, slackass. Do you even know?”

I kinda like it. So many conversations going on up there. So many views of my little world from further inside my little world than I usually care to admit. I like to think of the little people in my head all jammed up in a cosmic fish bowl that is floating through the void of space somewhere in my skull. Almost like a Gary Larson comic strip combined with a Monty Python skit with a good slathering of self loathing undertones to it. Now where are my damn running shoes. I gotta go for a therapy run and listen some more.

...

...while we were having that dreaded conversation about not seeing each other anymore, I remember finding a hair of hers tangled in the fabric of my jacket. At the time it meant nothing, but I gently pulled it off of my sleeve, rolled down my window, and let the breeze whisk it away. It means a lot more to me now.

Windows In March - or - Cold Toes And Green Thumbs

For the first time all winter, I am sleeping with the windows open. Actually, only one window, at the foot of my bed. I like the feel of cold air blowing over me when I sleep. I don’t like air conditioning. It has an industrial feel to it. Manufactured cold air. And quite honestly there is no way that I am heffing that monster of an air conditioner out of my closet at 1 am on a Wednesday morning in March. That just sounds stupid. But tonight I am sleeping with the window open. The window in question is behind a seven foot cactus, so closing the window in the middle of the night might bring about a new set of scars.
Have my days been so full of fluff and busy work and distractions and lunacy that this is what gets me to sit down for a minute and think? Opening a window in March? It seems that way, doesn’t it.
I hope the temperature drops tonight and I wake up cold and search for my slippers. I am excited about a hot shower in a matter of hours. I am excited about getting my hands back in the dirt and tending some plants that I planted in someone else's yard years ago. I am excited to get on a plane at an ungodly hour on Thursday and fly down to South By Southwest to play music for 45 minutes and then jump back on a plane hours later to get back Chicago and go to work at an ungodly hour Friday morning. I am excited to celebrate this weekend and drink and laugh with old friends and slam my fingers against my bass strings. I am ready for something. That something just might just be cold toes, but my guess is this window means more. So bring on the Fire Truck sirens, the mufflerless cars in the ally way, the gusts of wind from the lake, the restaurant’s roof heater buzzing away at 4am. Tonight, I’m sleeping with the window open.

Pock: A True Story

I was young and stupid. I needed to learn a lesson, any lesson. There is a point at which you learn the consequences of your adventurous naïve curiosity. I hit that point while digging a hole in the woods.
Mac lived on Town Hill Road. That’s where the rich folk of my hometown live, or at least that is how it seemed to me at the time. The winding streets that snake off of Town Hill Road, which connects the homes perched above the so-called city, all end in cul de sacs, not dead ends. Tennis courts and two car garages and finished basements with track lighting and pool tables and riding mowers and American flags and perfectly placed, ornately ornamented Christmas trees are common trophies for most of the houses. It was the summer of who really-knows-what-year and I found myself on Town Hill Road. Mac was there. So was his brother, a straight-out-of-high-school Marine on leave, who loomed over us like a wall of muscle and chin bone. There was the three of us and an air rifle; the kind with an air pump on the barrel. The more you pump it, the more force the BB has.
“If you're gonna shoot someone, only pump it once. After five pumps, you will break the skin and we will have to dig the BB out.” There was more said than just this; some jokes about something I didn't get, some swear words I hadn't heard yet about parts of a girl I hadn't seen yet, some brotherly advice spattered in between. There was more said between all of us than, "we will have to dig the BB out," but I remember being pretty quite.
"If you're gonna shoot someone..." No one said don’t shoot anyone. No one said don't shoot your brother as we were hurriedly tromping out of the house, rifle slug over the shoulder, to hunt down a way to fill the summer afternoon. No one said don't shoot the kid who just biked all the way up Town Hill Road to hang out in woods. I figured that as long as no BBs were being dug out of any part of me, we were going to be just fine. I wore glasses so I knew I wouldn’t lose and eye. Safety first. No one said don't shoot your friend with glasses. I wondered what BB stood for. I still do.
Everyone lives close to the woods in my hometown. There are trees and fields and slate quarries and sledding hills and bonfire pits a minute’s walk out of anyone’s door. “Protected by a wall of wood” is how I describe my hometown to this day. “Nothing gets in or out that doesn’t wear an I’m-Not-A-Deer-Orange hunting vest.” Even the cheese is wrapped up in plaid.
Mac, his brick and bone brother, and I went into the woods with an air rifle and a milk carton of BBs. The barrel makes a “pock” sound when you pull the trigger. After pumping the rifle ten times, my arms were sore and my adolescent muscles shook. I hit a can from 20 feet away. The BB broke through one side of it and rattled around at the bottom when I picked it up. Pretty damn cool.
“Shoot it,” someone said. Maybe it was me. Maybe it was Mac. Maybe no one said it but we all thought it. “Shoot it.” The wall had the rifle nestled behind his chin, pointed up to the trees. Pock.
“It’s not dead. What should we do?” Chickadee. Upside down. Back on the ground. Flapping. Still. Then flapping again. No sound. “Pump it more. We can’t leave it like that.” “Yeah. I guess not.” Pock. Nothing. I feel cold looking down at the bird. We start to walk away.
I say, “I’m digging a hole for it.”
“Why? Something will eat it. That’s how it goes.”
“Cause I feel like we took it away.”
No one felt good after playing in the woods that day. Lesson learned.

Swimming Pandas and Jesus Lembas Bread - or - I Shared This Link On Porpoise

This is the best YouTube wideo ever uploaded since God created YouTube and subsequently, the rest of the world, which took seven days.



Side note. The Creation of the World in Seven Days actually took six days, but for some reason we count God's nap time. Any mother will tell you that nap time is the most efficient time to get stuff done, so, yeah, seven days.

Blank Pages - or - An Unmaned Bicycle Ride In A Snowstorm To The White Castle Drive Thru

It is snowing in Chicago. It is cold and quite and crisp. I wore my boots tonight. The big honking winter boots that take ten minutes to get the liners situated and the laces tight and the pants/sock threshold worked out so that no snow will touch flesh and no folds in the pant-leg cuff fabric will leave crop circle marks on my calves. I wore three shirts, two pairs of socks, my wool pants over my cargo pants, my blue fuzzy vest, my snow-ball-proof jacket that I've owned since the early 1990s, my rabbit fur hat, my scarf that matches the hand knitted mittens made by mother, which I wear over thinsulate gloves even though the calluses on my hands are so thick that I couldn't tell if my fingers were frost-bitten or sitting in a pot of scolding water, and my boots. I don't get to wear those boots very often, so it is worth the ten minutes. I wore all these layers and ventured out for dinner, for laughs, for the recounting of memories with friends, and the destruction of new memories by the glass full. On the slog back home many of these layers were either unzipped, unbuttoned, or jammed into pockets while I battled snowbanks and White Castle temptation. At one point I wished I had my bicycle. That thought was quickly followed by the realization that I still couldn't get service at the White Castle drive through on my bike. To me, Sliders get more magnetic the rougher the weather is. Bourbon also helps.

Someone once wrote that a blank page is intimidating. I agree. So many options, so many collisions of inward and outward thinking, so many people to piss off, or impress, or brush aside. The blank page is intimidating. But a blank page has a unique beauty. All the things that have happened since the last blank page was filled up are just waiting to be written down. All the emotions are crawling out of memory, brushing off the cobwebs, and lining up in a cue right behind my eyes, waiting for my fingers to let them return to the present. All the fleeting elation, all the incarcerated fits of rage, all the soft-edged dreams, the nail bending failures, the heart wrenching realizations, the unexpected successes, the gravity-laden guilt, the intrinsic wonder, the bold arrogance, the scaring beauty, the pedestrian complacency that otherwise goes unheard outside of my brain pile. All the 5am twitches that make falling back asleep so much better. All these things beg to get out of us, all of us, anyway that they can. That was what a blank page provided to me once. No doubt, more than once. I haven’t filled a page in a long long time. I haven’t opted to destroy the seemly endless void, the abyss that the blank page presents, in, could it be, years? I have different outlets now.

I don't think they are getting the job done.

I miss the blank page.

Rather, I miss the full page. With all the spelling mistakes and poor grammar that a full page boasts once I have filled it up.

Maybe tomorrow, when the snow is melting, I'll fill some pages.