verstehen libre.
Monday, July 14, 2008
Village internets! Hooray!
Just a very brief moment of access, but it's something!
KVL is beautiful, and deeply crazy. I had no idea how truly perilous the situation is. Yesterday I stood on the very far north tip of the island, gazing at a beached Bowhead, and chatted with one of the old-timers about how much he's watched the island shrink around him in the eight decades he's lived here. I've heard harrowing stories of last autumn's evacuation, and seen little evidence to suggest that this year's storm season is going to be any easier. I have so much to say and no time to say it, but I'll write it all up with photos when I am back in ANC in a few days.
Of course, as I'm here talking to people about the relentlessly encroaching sea and the logistical difficulties of relocation, I come across this little news item:
Russian Researchers Rescued As Arctic Ice Camp Melts
Moscow, Russia (AHN) - Russian scientists cut short their research in the Arctic this year because the ice floe they were camped on melted more than a month earlier than usual this year.
"The 20 polar researchers and their two dogs climbed on board the 'Mikhail Somov'" research ship late Sunday, Sergei Bolyasnikov, a spokesman for Russia's Arctic and Antarctic Institute, told Agency France Press. "All scientific programs at the station have been stopped."
Researchers, their dogs, winterized huts and equipment had to be rescued from their floating, shrinking ice floe in the western Arctic Ocean on Sunday by a research ship.
North Pole-35 station was established in early September on a 1.2- by 2.5-mile ice floe near the Severnaya Zemlya archipelago. The scientists were scheduled to stay on the floe doing research until late August.
But the floe shrank to only 1,000 by 2,000 feet as it drifted westward more than 1,550 miles from near the Wrangel Island west across the North Pole. It was melting so rapidly that it was becoming too small to hold the researchers.
More soon. Over and out. ¶ 1:09 PM
KVL is beautiful, and deeply crazy. I had no idea how truly perilous the situation is. Yesterday I stood on the very far north tip of the island, gazing at a beached Bowhead, and chatted with one of the old-timers about how much he's watched the island shrink around him in the eight decades he's lived here. I've heard harrowing stories of last autumn's evacuation, and seen little evidence to suggest that this year's storm season is going to be any easier. I have so much to say and no time to say it, but I'll write it all up with photos when I am back in ANC in a few days.
Of course, as I'm here talking to people about the relentlessly encroaching sea and the logistical difficulties of relocation, I come across this little news item:
Russian Researchers Rescued As Arctic Ice Camp Melts
Moscow, Russia (AHN) - Russian scientists cut short their research in the Arctic this year because the ice floe they were camped on melted more than a month earlier than usual this year.
"The 20 polar researchers and their two dogs climbed on board the 'Mikhail Somov'" research ship late Sunday, Sergei Bolyasnikov, a spokesman for Russia's Arctic and Antarctic Institute, told Agency France Press. "All scientific programs at the station have been stopped."
Researchers, their dogs, winterized huts and equipment had to be rescued from their floating, shrinking ice floe in the western Arctic Ocean on Sunday by a research ship.
North Pole-35 station was established in early September on a 1.2- by 2.5-mile ice floe near the Severnaya Zemlya archipelago. The scientists were scheduled to stay on the floe doing research until late August.
But the floe shrank to only 1,000 by 2,000 feet as it drifted westward more than 1,550 miles from near the Wrangel Island west across the North Pole. It was melting so rapidly that it was becoming too small to hold the researchers.
More soon. Over and out. ¶ 1:09 PM
Wednesday, July 09, 2008
between terror and nausea
On Friday, I am taking a "plane" that looks very much like this:
To this strange little place in the middle of nowhere:
I don't know if I'm more afraid of having a full-blown panic attack or just barfing my guts out, but either way I'm a little...concerned. This will either cure me of my fear of flight forever, or make it much, much worse--just in time to take a much, much bigger airplane to one of the world's more fabulous cities. This sure is a weird summer. ¶ 12:19 PM
To this strange little place in the middle of nowhere:
I don't know if I'm more afraid of having a full-blown panic attack or just barfing my guts out, but either way I'm a little...concerned. This will either cure me of my fear of flight forever, or make it much, much worse--just in time to take a much, much bigger airplane to one of the world's more fabulous cities. This sure is a weird summer. ¶ 12:19 PM
Monday, July 07, 2008
between the city and the boonies
So I'm in Anchorage for just a few more days, and then I'm officially off to the Great Far North for village adventures. Kotzebue first for the day and some interviews with the corporation there, then Kivalina, then maybe a brief stop in Shishmaref before Newtok, and then back to ANC just in time for my Terribly Symbolic Birthday and this excitement. Life is good. Where's my bug dope?
¶ 11:13 PM
