Sunday, November 21, 1999

Cold Hard Queries

Published in the Antarctic Sun

In recent days, several people have stopped by the Sun’s office and posed intriguing Antarctic trivia questions. Here are the answers we’ve found:

Is there lightning in Antarctica?

Jeff Prucinsky of Mac Weather reports, “I do not believe that there has ever been a recorded case of lightning in the Antarctic.” The reason is that lightning requires clouds that are tall enough to have large areas of positive and negative charge. Because Antarctica is so flat and white, there is little convective activity, and no chance for clouds to form high enough, Prucinsky said. With no tall clouds, there is no lightning.

How did Amundsen and Scott know when they had reached the South Pole?

Both expeditions used a navigational instrument called a theodolite (the-AHD-oh-lite), which measures the elevation of the sun above the horizon, to map the track of its orbit. From the
path of the sun across the sky, Amundsen’s and Scott’s parties were able to determine their latitude. Longitude was of no concern, since longitude is meaningless at the poles. As well, Scott knew he was at the Pole because he found a Norwegian flag planted there.

Why is a Jamesway called a Jamesway?

This is a tough one. Though we’ve been unable to pin down an answer, we’ve heard several theories, including that the building is named after a person named James Butler Way, or
after a person or corporation called Jamesway. If you can shed additional light on
these ideas, or know of other theories, please contact us at the Sun.

Esprit de ‘core’: Teamwork takes Cape Roberts Project to new depths

Published in the Antarctic Sun

It’s the deepest bedrock hole in Antarctica. When the drilling at Cape Roberts stopped for the season on Thursday the hole was 3,084 feet deep—more than 650 feet farther than the previous record.

The two drillers, Malcolm MacDonald and Frank Tansey, took turns being the most important men in the Cape Roberts Project: the men who made sure the core kept coming up out of the hole and into the hands of climate researchers.

The drillers, though, couldn’t do anything without a lot of help of all kinds. The 40-person support and science team at Cape Roberts works around the clock, which makes for some odd situations.

“It seems a bit strange to see people in here having a beer at 8:30 in the morning, but it’s their night time,” said Colleen Clarke, who runs the camp during the day. Pat Cooper, the drill site manager, has been working in Antarctica since the early 1980s.

“The ‘Antarctic factor’ down here has a lot of influence on our drilling,” Cooper said.

Among the challenges this year was an April storm, which broke out some of the sea ice near where the drill site was planned to go. In August, a team flew down to check out the area and set up the camp.

“We didn’t really know for sure what was happening until we got down here at Winfly,” Cooper said.

But things looked good, and they decided to drill this year.

Now the project involves over 60 researchers and support staff. “It’s a mix of technology and science objectives,” said Peter Barrett, a member of the project’s management team.

A 60-ton drill rig sits on the sea ice, supported by the strength of the 8-foot-thick ice and under-ice balloons, which give an additional 11 tons of lift.

A 5-inch pipe, called the sea riser, provides the conduit in which the drill passes through the 980-foot-deep sea water. It must be freestanding and self-supporting to work properly. Suspending it from the sea ice only forces the ice to support more weight.

“It has to be totally independent of the systems up here,” Cooper said.

But it is impossible to stand a 980-foot-long 5-inch pipe on its end without help from above. The pipe is sunk 30 feet into the sea floor and is supported at the middle and the top by air bladders which pull up on the pipe to maintain the pipe’s rigidity and prevent it from bending or buckling too much.

They also have to deal with the movement of the sea ice itself. Under current conditions, the ice can move nearly 60 feet in any one direction before the angle of the drilling equipment will prevent it from working properly.

“To date we have moved off 6 meters (20 feet) from where we spotted in,” Cooper said.

The project has had the same drill crew for three years, which has made things easier every year, according to science coordinator Peter Webb.

“We’ve had amazing continuity,” Cooper said. “We’re a bit of a family, really, the old Cape Roberts team.”

When the core comes out of the hole, it begins a journey which will move it faster and further than ever before in its 40-million-year history.

It is removed from the core pipe and goes to the lab at the drill site for preliminary examination.
The core is examined, scanned, tested for physical properties, and split into an archive half, stored safely for the future, and a working half, from which samples will be taken at Crary Lab.

The working half is scanned again before the core goes on the helicopter to the camp and Crary. At $10,000 per yard of core, it’s worth a little extra time to photograph and scan everything in case of a helicopter accident or other disaster.

Some samples of the core are extracted at the drill site lab, to be used to determine more about the characteristics of the rocks being drilled, as well as to attempt to approximate an age for the rock layer.

The research is not just on the core itself, though. Some researchers are using the availability of a deep hole through many layers of rock to study the rock in situ.

Christian Buecker is one of these scientists. He does what is called “down-hole logging,” sending instruments down the hole to collect data about the rock around the hole, at intervals of a tenth of an inch.

The logging process takes a long time; 12 instruments run one at a time, at a speed of between three and 33 feet per minute, through about 1,150 feet of hole at a stretch. At the end of the last
logging run, Buecker had been awake for 44 of the previous 50 hours.

“We are looking for the physical and chemical properties,” Buecker said.

The data gathered helps them understand the core better, as well as the surrounding rock.

“It partly confirms our information and gives us new information about the structure,” Buecker said.

Among other things, Buecker has learned that the temperature at 2,500 feet down the hole (below the sea floor) is 68 F. It increases as they get closer to the center of the Earth.

But 3,084 feet is as close as the project will get to the Earth’s center. But in terms of both science and technology, this is not the end.

Camp manager Jim Cowrie has put in a proposal to the member countries of the Cape Roberts Project to set up a consortium of Antarctic drillers and researchers who use drilling as a method of gathering data.

Barrett is also making an effort to expand beyond just this three-year project. He hopes eventually to be able to drill through the center of the ice sheet, perhaps at Vostok, and into the
sediment below, to see what was happening in the center of Antarctica.

But even this work, in which the margins of the ice sheet are being studied, has been fruitful.

“It’s advanced the technology and advanced the science,” Barrett said. “We actually think this is fun.”

Sunday, November 14, 1999

Present at the creation: Geologist Peter Webb got in on the ground floor of Antarctic research

Published in the Antarctic Sun

When Peter Webb left Antarctica in 1959, he thought he’d never be back. Not only was he wrong, but he’s now in the middle of his 20th season on the Ice.

A geology student at Victoria University in Wellington, New Zealand, Webb cajoled his way down
to the Ice in 1957 on a U.S. ship as a cargo handler.

With a friend, Barrie McKelvey, accompanying him, Webb was quickly snapped up by New Zealand and U.S. field parties for the International Geophysical Year (IGY). Both countries’ expeditions were long on geophysicists but short on geologists.

Webb spent the rest of that summer season in the field.

The following summer he returned to continue research associated with the IGY, and became one of the first people ever to explore the Dry Valleys.

Webb himself corresponded with and ended up meeting some of the geologists from Scott’s and Shackleton’s expeditions, who were still alive in the late 1950s.

“We headed inland to all the places they could never go,” he remembered.

Webb said he feels like he falls between eras. His first year in Antarctica was only 40 years after the age of the early explorers. His four decades since have centered on the scientific exploration of the continent.

“I often feel caught between those early expeditions and the present day,” he said.

The first part of that gap he bridged in U.S. helicopters over the Dry Valleys. The best maps they had were from early expeditions, which were closely tied to the coast and their supply ships.

“It was a very strange sensation to be holding a 1910-11 map on your knees in a helicopter in 1957,” Webb said. The maps weren’t all that complete. To find their way back to McMurdo, the pilots climbed in circles until they saw Erebus and headed that way. They had no other way of knowing where they were.

The Dry Valleys were so remote then that the only time Webb saw a helicopter was when it dropped him off and when it picked him up.

Between those times, Webb and three others spent their time walking. They set up two base camps, at Lake Vida and Lake Vanda, and “radiated out from there,” Webb said. They would carry supplies to outlying camps and then take day trips from those sites. They would climb high points and take photographic panoramas, which could later be patched together into maps.

“We were doing reconnaissance, mapping, and geology,” Webb said.

Once a week they would make radio contact via Morse code, relaying only the most basic information.

“We could have been dead six days and no one would have known,” Webb said.

They ate surplus Korean War military rations and pemmican, and had a hard time heating water. “It was all very primitive,” Webb said.

They collected rock samples, too, and all of those had to be carried by hand. The researchers would spend time collecting rocks from various places and then take a few days to hike them all
back to the nearest base camp—making several trips per day if necessary.

“One season we calculated we walked 1500 miles,” Webb remembered.

His feet aren’t worn out yet, and over 40 years later, he’s still coming to Antarctica. Now he’s the science leader for the Cape Roberts Project.

He comes for the learning, he said. “This is very good training for students.”

One of Webb’s former students now has a graduate student of his own; all three are members of the Cape Roberts team.

With such diverse minds focused on specific questions, Webb said, “it’s been a great problem-solving environment.”

The exposure to new possibilities has just appeared again, with the discovery of fossilized wood in the Cape Roberts core.

“This is a serendipitous environment,” Webb said. When planning research here, he allots 20 percent of the time for things he doesn’t yet know about.

He’s also impressed by the people who are here now.

“Back in 1957 the people who were here didn’t have a lot of interest in the place,” he said.

There was a time when Antarctica was something most people didn’t know anything about. Disinterest in the early days was such that students in his classes who had spent time in the Navy would see his slide shows, recognize places they’d been, but not even known they’d seen Antarctica.

“People would come up after class and say, ‘I think I’ve been to Antarctica,’” Webb said.

Now, though, the people here know a lot about Antarctica. “The level of education amongst the total current population is pretty good,” he said.

He is interested in seeing what happens to McMurdo as a community over the long term. “It’s unusual to take a group of people who don’t know each other and put them in this remote environment,” he said.

As for his own future, he’s not sure of specifics, but he’s confident. “Something always shows up.”

NASA goes ‘bird’ watching

Published in the Antarctic Sun

In a small office in Crary Lab, talking to satellites is more common than talking on the phone.

From the outside, it looks like any other office—except for the NASA sign. Inside, the people call it the McMurdo Ground Station.

“We’re the only ones down here that can actually see satellites from this part of the world,” said Chuck Seman, a member of the team sent down by NASA to provide satellite communications service.

They work with U.S., Canadian and European satellites in coordination with a network of ground stations in Alaska, Norway and Virginia. The network monitors satellites on what are called polar orbits—the track circling the earth from pole to pole.

Most of what the McMurdo station does involves making sure the satellites, or “birds,” are still working properly. Data is usually transferred earthward from the satellites in the Northern Hemisphere, because of better access to high-speed communication links.

The technicians at the ground station are a vital link in the satellite support process. For some satellites, the process at McMurdo begins even before launch.

In those cases, they track rockets from the launch pad through the point where they release the satellite to fly on its own.

In most cases, though, the office gets a list of satellite contacts to make. Most links last between three and 15 minutes.

The connections involve incredible feats of behind-the-scenes electrical engineering. It takes a lot to track a satellite more than 400 miles high, moving so fast it circles the Earth every 90 minutes.

On the ground at McMurdo, computers and engineers are moving a dish antenna 10 meters wide in a huge arc to follow the satellite. At the same time, they’re receiving data at rates up to 105 megabits per second—about 3,000 times as fast as the average home computer modem.

One of the tasks that keeps McMurdo Ground Station busy is an upcoming rescue mission for a satellite that has its solar panels pointing the wrong way.

Its owners are hoping that the sunlight bouncing off the ice cap will power the satellite enough to move it into proper position.

The station will attempt to contact the satellite and then be a bridge between it and the satellite’s controllers back in the U.S. It’s not a regular task, but neither is it unheard-of.

“We tried that before ... it failed,” Seman said.

There are two other major projects on the calendar at the moment. The first is a new 13-meter dish, which will be arriving on the resupply vessel this summer. It will help the U.S. government get 24-hour weather coverage worldwide. It is unclear at the moment how that will affect the six-hour satellite blackout Mac Weather has each day, Seman said.

The second project is another Antarctic mapping project like the one which just finished, in collaboration with Canada’s RADARSAT satellite, gathering high-resolution images of the Antarctic continent even through cloud cover.

“We’re the only project down here year-round,” said technician Jaime Gallo.

A lot of what goes on in the office is monitoring and preparing equipment to do the work. This can involve repairing equipment, manufacturing new parts from old machinery in storage, or just making small changes to the process to weed out potential problems.

“We’re not beakers, we’re like tweakers,” Gallo said, laughing.

Sunday, November 7, 1999

Keeping the planes apart

Published in the Antarctic Sun

It’s a blue-sky day out on McMurdo Station’s ice runway, but the world’s turned upside down in the tower.

An LC-130 is leaving for the South Pole and the tower crew is thinking “north.”

“Planes fly north to the South Pole,” air traffic controller Heidi McCaffray said, watching the aircraft head between Black Island and White Island.

Here, that statement makes sense. Close to the magnetic poles of the earth, navigation by compass is unreliable at best and dangerous at worst. Navigation is by “grid,” based on calculations involving the longitude of a current position in relation to the 180-degree longitude line, explained air traffic controller Robert Virgil.

Since McMurdo is so close to 180 degrees of longitude, “grid north” is very close to true south.

Oddly, though, helicopters use true north and south for their navigation. It means the tower has
to keep straight not only the type of aircraft on the radio, but also its direction— in real space and on its map.

They manage to do this with ease, fulfilling their basic mission. According to tower manager Mike
MacLean, “We keep the airplanes apart.”

That’s may not seem too tough at an airport which deals with only about a dozen different planes all season. But it’s not all that easy.

Runways are busy places, even when there are no planes around. Surveyors are out on the runway checking the sea ice movement, snow plows are keeping the path clear, maintenance workers are checking lights and navigational equipment, and the decelerometer crews are measuring the braking qualities of the ice.

Any time a plane comes near, to take off or land, the tower clears the runway of all people and equipment and calls out the fire department’s crash vehicle in the event of a mishap.

It’s all done by radio, and largely without the aid of tower radar, except in bad weather. Then the machine in the downstairs closet goes to work. It’s the pilot’s eyes, connected to the airplane only by the voice of the tower controller, every five seconds during final approach in bad conditions.

Of the 15 controllers on staff, two are on duty at any given time. Sometimes there are more, if they’re training or checking equipment. There’s a bed in the tower, too, in case the controllers get stuck at the runway. They don’t go home until all the planes are in.

There’s also a weather person in the tower, taking readings on the instruments outside and observing conditions on the sea ice.

Sandra Lorenzana, one of the tower’s rotating weather crew, said she does hourly observations as well as special reports and more frequent full reports if the weather is changing rapidly. These are called into Mac Weather and Mac Center, she said, to assist them in determining severe weather conditions and informing the pilots of what to expect during approach and landing.

A bit later in the season, MacLean said, there will be two towers operating around McMurdo; one will be at the ice runway until it shuts down, and the other will be at Williams Field. Last year they just had one tower and were unable to move it and set it up again in time for flights to
arrive on schedule. Now, with an extra tower (which is presently at the ice runway, just next to the operating tower), Williams Field will be up and running with fewer delays.

Rock of ages: Cape Roberts project probes Earth’s past

Published in the Antarctic Sun

It’s almost the year 2000, but in McMurdo Station’s Crary Lab it’s closer to 40 million years ago. The Cape Roberts project, in its third year of research, is still in search of layers of rock laid down during the Eocene Epoch, 35-55 million years ago.

Cape Roberts is about climate change. Right now, climate pattern forecasts are made with only a few centuries of data. Cape Roberts researchers hope to add many million years to the known body of climate data.

But this is not Mac Weather’s afternoon forecast. Knowing how climatic trends have evolved over massively long periods of time can help predict what the climate will be like in coming centuries.

In this search back in time, they are looking at material drilled from beneath the sea floor. This seabed core was drilled to a depth of 1968 feet on Friday.

The drill site is at Cape Roberts, about 75 miles northeast of McMurdo, just south of Granite Harbor, in the southwest Ross Sea.

It’s a huge team effort, involving over 60 people, including researchers, technicians, and drillers, among others. They’re all looking at what they know about the earth’s structure and applying
it to the question of climate. At the same time, they’re taking advantage of this rare opportunity to look back in time to further their own studies.

The daily schedule in Crary is a mix of routine and adventure. They begin each day by doing a basic classification of the core which arrives late each night from the drill site. In the middle of the morning they report to each other on research progress.

“With a project like this, with so many specialists, you have to keep informing each other,” said project coordinator Peter Webb.

Each of the scientists working on the Cape Roberts project is a prominent scientist back
home. Here, though, they’re in among a whole group of high-power researchers. But they
share time and space well, and are good-natured about their interactions.

After lunch, the specialists look at the core which was explained in the morning.

They plant small toothpick flags at areas where they want samples taken. In total, the samples
number in the hundreds each day, according to Matt Curren, one of the core curators who
extracts the samples.

Each sample is taken for further analysis. Paleontologists look for fossils in their samples; scientists studying the magnetic field of the earth look at the alignment of particles in their samples; sedimentologists and stratigraphers look at the layering in the sediments.

When the samples have been analyzed, the scientists come back together to discuss what they’ve found.

They compare different types of evidence relating to the age of the core material. The evidence varies widely. Some of it—sedimentary and fossilized— shows what the climate was like, which
the scientists then match up with similar climate sequences from the rest of the world.

“We know what the climate was like in other parts of the world 30-40 million years ago,” Webb said. “The purpose of this project is to try to understand present climate and future climate by looking at the past.”

Antarctica is a special place for doing this type of work because it was the heart of Gondwanaland, the supercontinent from which all landmasses on earth eventually broke off and slowly moved to their current locations.

The scientists also look at the changes in the earth’s magnetic field. They already know the history of shifts in direction and polarity of the earth’s magnetic field. By finding out what the
magnetic field pattern is within the Cape Roberts core, they can match up core sections with periods of time.

After all this work, they learn what the climate was like millions of years ago. But, just as in high school, no science project is complete without a written report. Formal academic science publication can take a long time, sometimes even years. Submission to journals, review, and then actual publication are all both bottlenecks and opportunities for verification of results.

Not so with Cape Roberts. They’ve solved the problem of publication delay by bringing their own
publication to the Ice. Terra Antartica (sic) is an Italian earth science journal which publishes the results of the Cape Roberts Project team. An editor and a graphic artist for the journal are here at McMurdo working full-time to prepare the scientists’ work for release to the wider community of world climatologists.

Before leaving the Ice in mid-December, each researcher must complete an initial report, describing their work on the core and preliminary results. Within 6 months they put out a
final science report, which is also published in Terra Antartica. Less than a year after they begin a season of drilling, the results of research and examination are available to the science world.

What these results reveal is of great import to determining climate change trends.

“The cores are really a proxy for the climate, plants, and topography,” Webb said. Sea level,
average temperatures, plant and animal life, and other information are contained in the core, a cylinder of rock just a few inches thick.

The Cape Roberts Project is a multinational collaboration, in which the U.S., New Zealand, and Italy are the major shareholders (and major funding sources). Also participating are Australia, Germany, and the United Kingdom. The project is going well, in its third and final year of drilling.

“Cape Roberts is successful,” said Italian researcher Marco Taviani, speaking of the time and energy spent, as well as the money and international collaboration efforts.

The project expects to wrap up work and leave the Ice in mid-December. In the meantime, though, they’re hard at work inspecting, marking, analyzing, and collaboration. The phrase Webb sometimes ends meetings with seems to run their lives: “Okay, let’s go look at some more core.”

Monday, November 1, 1999

Peace place

Published in North & South

Wellington's Stokes Valley begins at a busy motorway and ends at a bush-covered ridge. The only sign there's anything up there besides the requisite possum horde and occasional pole house dweller is a white and gold spire rising 10 metres out of the trees. A string of fluttering prayer flags stretches from it to a hidden anchor point away from the possums' sharp teeth.

It's the yellow AA road sign - "Buddhist Monastery" - in a quiet cul-de-sac that directs seekers of truth and tranquillity up Rakau Grove to a giant wooden gate and behind it, Bodhinyanarama, the garden of enlightened knowing.

Beyond the gate is a scene of unexpected exertion and industry: two men - one shaven-headed and in saffron robes, the other in jeans, a T-shirt and gumboots - building a set of dirt-and-log stairs up a bush-covered hill. The monk, Sucinno, directs the visitor further up the hill to see the near-completed stupa, or reliquary. Numerous relics and treasures, gifted by Buddhist faithful, will be enshrined in the stupa to help the donors on their journey to enlightenment.

Donations to Bodhinyanarama are generous and by no means limited to special projects like the stupa. The monks are not allowed to cook food or to take anything which is not freely given; so in exchange for the laity's support in worldly things - clothing, shelter and food - the monks offer guidance along the path of the Buddha. It is part of the Buddha's design for an ideal society, with interdependence between laity and monks and nuns.

New Zealand's Buddhist community numbers nearly 30,000, and it is this web of support that keeps Bodhinyanarama's four monks and one postulant supplied with food, clothing and special projects manpower.

The monastery also hosts retreats and classes on meditation, Buddhism and other spiritual activities, paid for by donation to help cover the cost of lodging and food. Once a month, a monk travels to Auckland to meet people at the city's Buddhist centre. There is also a retreat centre on the Coromandel peninsula and other meditation centres throughout the country.

Anyone can park their preconceptions at the gate and hear the monks explain the principles of Buddhism - a religion "without a god" founded more than 2000 years ago by Siddhartha Gautama (the Buddha) in northern India. In Thailand, where Sucinno was a monk for 14 years, his role seldom called for teaching Buddhist history and tenets. Here, he says, he spends much of his time explaining the Buddha's "four noble truths": all existence is suffering; the cause of suffering is desire; freedom from suffering is nirvana; and the means of attaining nirvana is prescribed in the "eightfold path" that combines ethical conduct, mental discipline and wisdom.

Sunday, October 31, 1999

A trip back in time

Published in the Antarctic Sun

A small prefabricated wooden house, built on the coast of Ross Island, home for several Antarctic explorers over a couple of winters. No, not the lowercase dorms, but the Cape Evans hut.

The hut was used by two expeditions to the Antarctic. It was built by Captain Robert Scott’s 1910-1912 expedition to the South Pole. The building itself, built from pre-constructed parts, was erected in two weeks.

The hut was a base for groups to lay supply depots on Scott’s planned route to the Pole. They also explored the coast of Antarctica. On May 13, 1911, the group settled down in the hut for the winter.

That winter the hut was the base for the winter trek to Cape Crozier to get emperor penguin eggs for research. That voyage, covering 130 miles over 36 days, became an ordeal written about by Apsley Cherry-Garrard in his book “The Worst Journey in the World.”

The three men, Cherry-Garrard, “Birdie” Bowers, and Bill Wilson, man-hauled sledges 65 miles across sea ice and the Ross Ice Shelf to a penguin rookery, freezing and starving most of the way.

After retrieving six penguin eggs and killing several penguins for food, the men broke three of the eggs on the precarious return to their camp at Cape Crozier.

It was a trip of which Cherry-Garrard wrote, “We on this journey were already beginning to think of death as a friend.”

But it got worse, and they weren’t dead. A storm blew away their tent, wrecked their stone shelter, and nearly killed them. After the storm, they were lucky enough to find their tent—their only shelter for the return journey. They regularly fell asleep while walking back, frozen and exhausted. Their clothes froze solid, making movement difficult; upon their return to the Cape Evans hut, their clothes were cut off them, too frozen to remove normally.

The three remaining penguin eggs survived the journey to Britain, where they languished in obscurity, useless to science and lost to archivists of polar curiosities.

A later party also used the Cape Evans hut: part of Shackleton’s famous failed expedition. While the leader and his men were stuck in the Weddell Sea, another group was supposed to lay supply caches between the Pole and Ross Island. They were unable to find a safe place to winter elsewhere on Ross Island, so they used the Cape Evans hut. They thought they had secured the ship carefully for winter, using two anchors and seven steel cables to hold it securely in place.

They began to off-load the ship, leaving the main part of the stores on board. Before many supplies could be put ashore, though, a huge storm kicked up and blew the ship out to sea, stranding 10 men on Ross Island—four at Cape Evans, and six at Hut Point. The rest of the group were still on the ship.

The 10 men on the island soon joined forces and began to improvise for the winter. Fortunately for them, Scott’s expedition had left a lot of basic stores, like flour. They made clothes out of canvas tents, and began to lay supply depots, unaware of the disaster befalling Shackleton and the others a continent away. Survival was by luck; during the setting up of supply caches, two men became unable to walk, and the others were so weak they only made headway when there was a powerful wind at their backs.

Upon their rescue in January 1917, they discovered that the world had “changed almost beyond recognition” between their last word from the outside, in December 1914.

To find out about trips to Cape Evans, call the Recreation department at 2443.

Highway 1 revisited

Published in the Antarctic Sun

Steve Bruce has been coordinating the renovations to McMurdo Station’s Building 155 since the beginning of February. Tomorrow, the day the new offices will be repopulated, Steve is leaving town.

He leaves behind a major section of the million-plus dollar project, complete except for the finishing touches. The renovation work will continue during next winter, and extend into other parts of the building.

Though the improvements to Highway 1—McMurdo’s busiest hallway— are obvious to anyone who saw the area before last winter, a lot of the changes affect more than the appearance.

Mark Neeley, the head of engineering at McMurdo, is quick to note other improvements. “There’s probably at least that much work that you don’t see.”

The work was part of an effort to bring Building 155 up to par with modern construction standards. It was built by the Navy in the late 1960s. “This building’s been here a while,” Neeley said. “Bringing a building like this up to existing codes is really a task.”

The first stage of renovations saw improvements to the kitchen’s food preparation area. The second phase, gutting Highway 1 and redoing it entirely, was this winter’s work, along with the kitchen’s dry storage, and freezer units, including refrigeration compressors.

The changes provide a laundry room, new computer training room, new barber shop, and increased office and storage space. It also makes the hallway more spacious and offers what
Bruce called “parka parking,” as well as a handwash station for people to use before meals.

“Very nice,” said the first new occupant of Highway 1, hairstylist Kim Fabre. “We’ve made it a little bit our own here with the palm tree,” she said, referring to the decorations already up in her shop.

“The walls are brighter,” said recreation coordinator Liz Evenson. Housing is enthusiastic, too. “It’s going to be wonderful,” said Heidi Kampe.

A large part of the work involved the infrastructure and building code changes. Plumbing was torn out and redone, as was almost all of the electrical wiring. Walls were replaced with more
durable, as well as more fire-resistant, material.

“This was half of the job—maybe the larger half,” Bruce said. And it wasn’t the only thing happening in town.

“We had quite a bit of work going on this winter outside of this project,” Neeley said, mentioning as an example the new Cape Roberts core storage facility in Crary Lab.

Over a dozen workers took part in the winter project, organizing and using materials delivered on the supply ship Greenwave in February. The staging area was in a small building called the Playhouse.

“We don’t have a good large warehouse where you can store stuff,” Bruce explained.

Major changes are in the works for the serving and eating areas of the galley next winter, too. The plan is to open out the seating area to the exterior walls, add windows along the walls, and put in a cathedral ceiling—including skylights.

Bruce is happy with the way things went over the winter, and is looking forward to his departure for warmer climes.

“A good thanks to all the hands that worked on it,” he said.

Sunday, October 24, 1999

Forrest's Path

Published in the Antarctic Sun

Those crystal-clear blue eyes. They’re the first thing you notice when Forrest McCarthy sits down in front of a group to give his opening lecture at the Field Safety Training Program. One-on-one, they lock on to you and never let go, like a visionary to a dream.

It’s been a long journey, through Boy Scouting, on road trips as a Deadhead after high school, on rock climbs in Colorado, treks in Nepal, and beyond. Forrest lives the dream, and made it back to the Ice this season after three years away.

Recently, he helped start a program to prevent drug and alcohol addiction among Inuit youth near Nome, Alaska. “The white guy from Wyoming was taking the Eskimos into the wilderness,” Forrest laughed. He even got to make the Eskimos do Eskimo rolls while teaching them to kayak, a traditional Eskimo skill which has been lost over the past couple of generations.

He said they were enthusiastic learners, but they had some wisdom to impart of their own. “My background is ‘leave no trace,’” he said, “and these people have been part of the ecosystem for thousands of years.” Modern backcountry methods weren’t the norm for his students.

“I’d tell them to filter their water, and they’d just look at me. They’d been drinking it all along,” he said.

Forrest has been drinking the water of Antarctic lore for years now. “I remember asking my mother if all deserts were hot, and she found an article in the encyclopedia on the Dry Valleys.” He was about 5 years old at the time, and ever since, has been interested in Antarctica.

Over the years he learned more, getting a big picture book for Christmas the year he was 10, and, later, meeting clients in the Tetons who had been grantees on the Ice. He even met Buck Tilly, a longtime sea ice safety instructor, who helped Forrest get an interview for the position at FSTP.

He didn’t come back after that first season, choosing instead to finish his college degree in outdoor education with a minor in human ecology. But his return now, older and perhaps a bit wiser, gives him a rare perspective on changes around McMurdo.

The Field Safety program has a bigger role now, he said. “No one goes out in the field, except maybe the National Guard, without going through training.”

Also, he finds that people and offices throughout the U.S. program are using the expertise of the Field Safety staff more, for planning routes over sea ice, or scouting potential deep-field landing sites. “We’re being used more as a resource,” he said.

But Forrest is not just a nice guy who teaches you how to get along in the cold. A member of the search-and-rescue team, he’s one of the people who will show up in a tracked Hägglunds vehicle in whiteout conditions, pick you up from your feeble snow shelter, and get you warm and dry and home in bed.

One day a week, Forrest and his colleagues on the SAR team train. They alternate between practicing scenarios with the primary team and helping to prepare the secondary team for the winter, when they become the primary team.

There’s more high-tech gear available to them now, and more experience with the equipment, which Forrest said leads to better training. He’s very happy with the capabilities of the new SAR vehicle, a Hägglunds outfitted with GPS and radio direction-finding equipment, but warns against feeling overly confident in bad conditions just because there’s a great rescue team with good equipment.

“It’s an incredibly powerful tool, but it shouldn’t be a crutch,” he said. It’s a lot like your town’s first aid squad getting the Jaws of Life: You don’t drive faster and more recklessly just because they can get you out of the wreck when it happens. Forrest encourages safety, and he teaches people how to practice it in the outdoors.

He does so by combining the best outdoor-equipment technology with traditional skills, choosing FDX boots, the government-issue boot modeled on the Eskimo mukluk, and building snow-dome huts with lightweight snow shovels.

Every so often it goes a bit far: At McMurdo Dome, he said, “We made an igloo once cutting the snow blocks with chainsaws.”

His Antarctic experience, while broader than most, is still limited to the official U.S. Antarctic Program. He’s never done any commercial expeditions in Antarctica, but has a client who hopes to climb Mount Vinson, the continent’s highest peak. Maybe Forrest will get to help with that trip.

Antarctica’s a tough environment in which to live and work, but Forrest still said, “I truly believe the world would be a better place if more people got outside.” He helps make it possible for that to happen safely, even here.

High society, Antarctica style: Wine tasting draws connoisseurs to Coffee House

Published in the Antarctic Sun

Vivaldi was on the stereo. Golden light glowed on the polished wooden walls. The McMurdo Coffee House was warm with cheer and conversation over wine Thursday evening. The recreation department sponsored a wine tasting of six “regional” wines: Australia and New Zealand have excellent wine-producing regions which supplied the evening’s beverage samples.

“Six wines to go!” cried one eager taster before walking up to the first of six tables.

All the wines found fans in the group, who happily held out their plastic wine glasses for more. The wine tasting itself won great fans.

According to an enthusiastic Coloradan who called himself simply Kyu, “You have to have certain things that keep you in touch with the outside world.” His favorite was the Church Road Cabernet Merlot, a New Zealand red wine. “I wish they had more wines, so they could do this every week.”

The old Quonset hut, the type used during the Korean War, was jammed with people taking advantage of the free wine, as well as the shop-price bottles available only during
the tasting.

Even a soon-to-depart McMurdo winterer braved the crowd for some quality wine. Liz Muck, from Steamboat Springs, Colorado, is a Merlot fan whose favorite among the evening’s selection was the Villa Maria Cabernet Sauvignon, though she also liked the Delgats Reserve Merlot. She said she was a bit intimidated by the number of people, but was glad she’d come.

“It’s a very good idea,” said Christine Foreman, a Dry Valleys research grantee from Toledo, Ohio.

Another fan agreed: “I think it’s a great idea; I love wine,” said Kenda Andersen, a construction general assistant from Montana.

“It’s fun opportunity for a new person to meet everyone,” said Vicky Miles, a recreation finance clerk from Denver. She didn’t taste all the wines, but while she was busy serving samples, she overheard lots of comments about the wines, among which there was no clear winner. “There was no consensus among the tasters,” she said.

Bill McCormick, from the Field Safety Training Program, liked the Penfolds Bin 389 Cabernet Shiraz. The wine tasting gave him hope for McMurdo’s future. Remembering that the wine bar was to be torn down for lack of use a few years ago, he said, “I toast the actual place itself.”

Cold Hard Facts

Published in the Antarctic Sun

Captain John Davis, aboard the Huron out of New Haven, Connecticut, may have made the first landing on Antarctica at Hughes Bay, on the Antarctic Peninsula, on February 7, 1821, on a sealing trip. The next known landing on the continent was at Cape Adare in Victoria Land on January 18, 1895, 74 years later.

Jules Dumont d’Urville, in addition to exploring the coast of Antarctica, discovered the statue Venus de Milo and brought it to France.

The South Magnetic Pole was east of Ross Island in 1600. It has moved roughly northwest at the rate of 6-9 miles per year, and is now in the Dumont d’Urville Sea.

The first people to winter on the Ice were in a British-funded team under the leadership of Carsten Egeberg Borchgrevink, a Norwegian. The 10 men(three British, five Norwegian, and two
Finns) lived in two huts (called Camp Ridley) at the base of Cape Adare from March 1899 to January 1900.

On March 12, 1842, the Erebus and the Terror, James Clark Ross’s ships, collided in a storm in a field of icebergs, crippling the Erebus. Three days later, both ships were repaired enough to continue the voyage.

Robert Falcon Scott’s first voyage to the Antarctic, in 1901-1904, began poorly: The expedition’s ship, Discovery, was found to be leaking on the voyage from Britain to New Zealand.

The first newspaper on Antarctica was the South Polar Times, published by Scott’s expedition each month. Ernest Shackleton was the editor and printer. Submissions were solicited from
all members of the group.

Source: Antarctica: The Extraordinary History of Man’s Conquest of the Frozen Continent
(New York: Reader’s Digest, 1988).

Monday, July 12, 1999

Planned tavern brings hope

Published in the Otago Daily Times

On the route between Central Otago and the West Coast, the Clutha and the Hawea rivers pose a massive barrier to travellers, goods and animals. They flow together at Albert Town, beginning the chain of confluences which power Central Otago's electric appliances.

On the banks of the Hawea River, there is a nohoanga site, one of several in the area traditionally used by local Maori for camping and gathering food on trips from the east coast to the greenstone-guarding glens of the West Coast.

Soon there may be a new re-supply site, not just for Ngai Tahu, but for all travellers and residents in the region. Alison and Bruce Hebbard, great-grandchildren of early residents of Albert Town, are planning to build a tavern just south of the bridge over the Clutha.

Near where the bridge is now, Henry Ferris Norman, the grandfather of two of Albert Town's current residents, set up the first licensed ferry across the Clutha in 1863. It immediately became a stopping point for travellers and locals. The early settlers were well-known for their hospitality and willingness to help farmers and miners solve any problem that arose.

The tavern has the potential to change Albert Town as it will provide the town's first social space where everyone can gather at any time. With a shop and a takeaway/restaurant, Albert Town's residents will no longer have to drive all the way to Wanaka to remedy a moment's inattention at the supermarket.

There are some arrangements still to be made. The Hebbards are negotiating with Transit New Zealand over the location of a traffic sight line restriction on the property.

The traffic negotiations and the request for a smaller, cheaper building than the one they originally proposed have held up the council's final go-ahead. Worse, the delays mean more delays. There is a time limit on development and subdivision of the property and the Hebbards have applied for an extension, which means more paperwork and more waiting.

"We don't like setting deadlines when we don't know if we'll be in a position to make it," Bruce Hebbard said.

They have sympathy among the community. "The bureaucracy those people have put up with is absolutely disgusting," said Ida Darling, one of three surviving grandchildren of the first Albert Town ferryman.

The residents are impatient for the tavern to get the go-ahead, which is a departure from the usual reaction of small towns to change. Ethel Templeton said: "It would be very good for the area." This favourable reaction from newcomers and old-timers is not just because the people building the tavern are locals, it is because residents see it as a growing, changing area which has opportunity for future projects.

Albert Town was once the only town in the district. The first school in the area, though called the Wanaka School, was at Albert Town. The school building once used at Albert Town is now part of the Wanaka Primary School in Wanaka. Three grandchildren of some of the founders of the town still live there, along with some of their children and grandchildren.

This is still the kind of place people grow attached to, even if they are spending only small parts of the year here. Tourism is having a mixed impact on Albert Town — there are large numbers of visitors to the area year-round but since there is only one storefront business, there is not much economic impact. The tavern may change that.

In the summer, the camping ground across the Clutha from Albert Town fills with holidaymakers from all over New Zealand.

Over the past 20 years, one family has perfected the art of summer holidaying by the Clutha. They have a generator, a water pump, a water tank on a scaffold, a wood-fired water heater and a shower tent. They even run a washing machine in the camping ground. The kids have a water slide set right on the river bank.

Some of the group don't come anymore: the ashes of two of them are scattered in the reserve, and a tree and an inscribed rock in the corner of the old, disused historic graveyard speaks of the memory of those two and three others.

The five names fit neatly on one sone. They are connected in spirit to this place, and to the people who gather here to build their temporary village for the summer, but are only distantly related by blood and marriage.

The townspeople may yet adopt the tree (planted there at Christmas 1998) as part of their history, though none but two know about its meaning. Those who live and holiday in the permanent structures don't mix much with those in tents and campervans across the river. But if there is a tavern across the river, they might begin to.

Albert Town is a mixed-age down with residents from newborn, to those in their 90s. It attracts the 20-and-30-something set with cheaper housing than nearby Wanaka. The increasing number of lifestyle sections in Albert Town attract retirees and affluent families seeking a relaxed place to live. Others come in search of peace and quiet, a place away from the madness the world can sometimes become.

The community association gathers twice a year. Many newer residents are being drawn because their friends and neighbours are long-time town residents, so they feel comfortable in these groups. On weekends, neighbours help with various household and outdoor tasks.

There are informal gatherings such as the winter solstice outdoor barbecue hosted by Rae and Ngaire Benfell.

The new tavern will provide a purpose-built place for get-togethers. The living room and back garden gatherings will continue but will be broadened by contact with others in town.

Albert Town residents share concerns about the future of the town and its services and amenities. Most of them love living here, preferring Albert Town to other places they could have lived and worked.

Gary Templeton, who grew up here and is raising his children here, thinks "there's nowhere better to live." Moira Fleming, who has been here for 10 years, agrees. "The people who live in Albert Town love living in Albert Town," she said.

Residents are specially concerned about road sealing, sewage treatment and speed limits. As local government priorities change and national governments chance policies and regulations, Albert Town is caught in the resulting turmoil. But the community association is promoting Albert Town's interests in discussions the Queenstown-Lakes District Council has about funding and resource allocation.

The separation between the people on each side of the river may subside with the arrival of the tavern. The separation between neighbours and those on opposite sides of State Highway 6, which bisects the town, is also likely to improve.

As Moira Fleming put it, "The tavern is a wee hope sign for lots of things."

Thursday, July 1, 1999

Onward from Bodhinyanarama

Published in Inspiration Input

I had left Wellington without a destination. Late at night, in the condition others call "lost" but I call "exploring," my headlights shone upon a massive wooden gate and a sign reading "Bodhinyanarama Buddhist Monastery."

It was clear to me that, though I had not intended to end up here, it was no accident. In the morning, the gate was open when I awoke; I dressed and walked up through it.

I found two men building a set of dirt-and-log stairs up a bush-covered hill. One of the men had a shaved head, and was wearing golden-coloured robes and sandals. The other had on jeans, a T-shirt, and gumboots. The monk - I later learned his name was Sucinno - told me to talk a walk further up the hill to see the stupa, or reliquary, which was under construction.

The walk to the stupa was the beginning of a set of discoveries within myself which I hope will continue for the rest of my life. I had had no previous contact with Buddhism, though I had heard of it and read Hermann Hesse's Siddhartha. So I sat, and listened, and read in the library.

I discovered that the Buddha, who was a real person of whom there are historical records, taught four Noble Truths: the existence of suffering, the causes of suffering, the alleviation of suffering, and relief from suffering. His main idea was - and is - that the issues which most concern humans (enumerated as birth, death, aging, separation from the liked, and association with the disliked) all result in, and cause further, suffering in the world.

The more I read, the more I was convinced the Buddha had it inside out: life was not suffering but joy; suffering was caused by human imperfection and behavioural flaws manifested in search of joy.

The Buddha further taught that Enlightenment, relief from suffering, could be had only by individual searching of the inner and outer worlds. He taught that inquiry and investigation were the way to seeing the world as it truly is, which is how he defined Enlightenment. This involved detachment of emotional ties from people, places, and things. The monks chant, "All that is mine, beloved and pleasing, will become otherwise, will become separated from me." The impermanence of things, beings, and feelings is key in Buddhism. What is is the only constant, and it lies behind the veils of what we think is.

I agreed with a great deal of this thought process, particularly in its encouragement to see through the smokescreens we create around ourselves, changing who we are into who we think we want to be, or who we think others want us to be. But I also felt that the push for individualism was a bit overdone.

Beyond the basic belief structure, I also had some problems with the lifestyle. There is lots of sitting meditation (2 hours a day), not much eating (only before midday), and an incredibly intellectually rigorous environment (the hard part is figuring out how to ask the many questions which arise). My legs like moving too much, my stomach likes eating too much, and I sometimes need a break from inquiry to recharge my mental batteries.

I found a passage in a book by a Buddhist monk, Ajahn Munindo, which said that he felt joy and suffering were inseparably linked; that breaking through suffering resulted in joy. I reflected that none of the thing which had ever made me feel joyous were without a share of suffering at some stage. However, it was not the acceptance of suffering but its rejection which drove me through and beyond the hard parts and, ultimately, to joy.

And so the journey continues, with much more to think about than before; I go forth in search of joy.

Thursday, October 1, 1998

Soldiers in training

Published in the Columbia Missourian

A man in a camouflage military uniform hunches over a desk and grips a marker tightly. He quickly traces the outline of a map and its legend and looks up, wryly remembering his days as a full-time soldier. "I used to have privates doing this for me," he says. This is Sgt. 1st Class William VanZandt, a master's candidate in business administration at MU. Tomorrow his National Guard unit's drill weekend begins.

Ads for VanZandt 's group are everywhere: "One weekend a month, two weeks a year, the Army National Guard." The ads don't say that many National Guard members have only two weeks of vacation from their jobs every year - and they spend that vacation training with their Guard units. The ads don't say that one Saturday morning each month, the men and women of the Guard roll out of their beds at 5 a.m., drive to their local armory and stand in formation at 7 a.m. to wait for the day to begin. The ads don't say that the following day, they do the same thing again. And, the ads don't say that some members of the Guard do this routine for 20 years or more.

These people are not the full-time Army, which does "more before 6 a.m. than most people do all day." They are not the Army Reserve, which is on call only for the Pentagon. The National Guard has a dual mission: federal military service and state emergency service. They do more in one average drill weekend than in a whole week. Map tracing is only the beginning.

Seven a.m. Saturday. VanZandt stands in formation on Stankowski Field with the rest of the headquarters battery of the 128th Field Artillery Regiment, Missouri National Guard,
Battery 1st Sgt. William Carney announces the order of the day. Arrayed in front of him are a little more than 100 men. No women are present. This is a combat unit; women aren't allowed here. Ninety percent of their training is for combat duty. They are the headquarters unit for the regiment, which is made up of National Guard batteries all over Missouri.

In time of peace, these men are ready to serve Missouri for disaster relief, riot control, maintenance of public order or, most recently, flood control. Staff Sgt. Melvin Wriedt remembers the Great Flood of 1993. "A lot of inventions came out of that flood," he said. "One was the automatic sandbag-filler. It has a hopper and a spout. You hold the bag up and pour. It's better than 'one man hold the bag, one man dig.' " Ten percent of their training is for this type of public service.

This morning, though, their routine is very basic: They must do a certain number of push-ups and sit-ups and run two miles in the time the Army allows. The requirements vary depending on the men's ages. It is their physical training, or PT, test. The men, in sweat clothes clearly labeled "Army," are in varying stages of readiness for the test. Some are taking this "for the record" to be noted officially in their service log. The rest are taking it to see how they measure up to the more rigorous Army standards, which take effect in October.

They do their push-ups six abreast, each with a sergeant keeping count. Sgt. 1st Class Dave Robbins is the most vocal of the bunch. "Give me 65, sir! 65, SIR!" he bellows, his voice splitting the early-morning air. He attracts stares from the few civilian runners out for a jog around the track. In a pressed camouflage uniform complete with extra-shiny combat boots, Robbins is the genuine article.

Some of the soldiers laugh, but most smile quietly. He is respected around here; he's been in the Guard 20 years, after serving in the Navy in Vietnam. This morning he is all military, but tomorrow will be his last official day in camouflage.

He's retiring.

Robbins coaxes, chides or forces the best out of the men doing push-ups in front of him. He does the same when the sit-ups come around. The run gets under way, and in a more subdued tone, he urges the men to run faster. As they get close to the end of the two miles, he's bellowing again, demanding performance from his friends and fellow soldiers.

When the last man crosses the line, it's back to the armory and onto the scale one by one. Weight and height recorded, they hit the showers. Finally, they emerge from the locker room in their camouflage uniforms.

Some of these men have worn other uniforms before in the Navy, Army or Marines. "We collect all types. We're not picky," says battery commander Capt. Harold Spies, who did 67 sit-ups. This unit dispenses with the traditional armed-forces rivalries. They're all artillery men now.

But this weekend they don't get to fire "the big guns," as they do during their two-week annual training. Sgt. 1st Class Joe Reddick, who did 99 push-ups (his personal record is 150 in two minutes), works in the impact zone, where the shells come down. He's a full-time member of the Guard, meaning he also works 40 hours a week in the armory helping the unit stay organized.

The full-timers are a smooth office team. They get their work done mostly on time, banter extensively and keep abreast of each other's personal lives, just like any other office staff, except they wear camouflage to work every day. And their workplace is vacant most of the time. On drill weekends, though, the place is hopping with what the Guard calls "traditional soldiers," meaning citizen-soldiers.

The military and civilian worlds combine in curious ways in the National Guard. Students, young and old, are in this university-town unit. Some, like VanZandt, are getting advanced degrees in accelerated programs. Some are working on their college degrees. The newest members haven't yet graduated from high school.

Civilian life appears elsewhere, too. Staff Sgt. Paul Hegg's daughter is a Girl Scout. He sold over $400 worth of cookies to members of the unit, hand-delivering them out of a huge cardboard box during breaks in the weekend's events. Specialist Steven Walker collected his four boxes, saying, "I'm so happy. I've got my breakfast now."

The day passes slowly as the men wait for tomorrow's field exercises.

Some men check out weapons and equipment for tomorrow. It's a "Warrior Weekend," when some members of the unit head out to a local training area for a mock battle. It's not just a bunch of guys jumping in Jeeps to go play laser tag. This is the military.

Like civilians, though, they enjoy a cold beer at the end of a long day. Robbins supplies a half-keg for the unit in honor of his final drill. It's gone before the men go home for the night. Those whose homes are several hours away bed down in the armory.

Seven a.m. Sunday. First formation. Some soldiers are late because this is the weekend the time changed one hour forward. Carney forgot to mention it at yesterday's final formation. He's fuming. Most of the men checked out their weapons and MILES gear the day before. "MILES gear" is the Army's term for laser tag equipment, which consists of a laser gun and receptors that register hits from the gun. The men wear receptors on their helmets and on their chests and backs. The equipment is heavier and bulkier than the commercial version; each man's total burden is 60 pounds.

Carney is trying to get the laden men together for their safety briefing before the ride up to the Macon Training Ground. He had planned to start the meeting at 8 a.m. It's now almost 8:15.
Spies is waiting for the briefing, too. He's in charge of the detachment going up to the training area. "My unit hasn't been in the field for a while," he says. "They're a bit rusty. But I refuse to get agitated. I'll just let the first sergeant sweat a bit. That's his job."

Carney is definitely sweating. He's about to start the safety briefing and now he can't find Spies. Everyone else is almost ready. At last, all the Humvees have enough gas, and the ones that don't start have been exchanged for ones that do. Carney begins.

"I'm going to forget that I planned this briefing for 0800. I'm going to forget that it's now 0826. I'm going to forget that you were all supposed to get gas for your vehicles yesterday afternoon. I'm going to forget ... " The litany of the morning's errors continues. Discipline here is military mixed with civilian: harsh criticism tempered with positive group-dynamics techniques. "We move on from here. This is a safety briefing."

It is not about the dangers of playing laser tag with M-16s while wearing full camouflage (including face paint) in a wet and wooded area. Instead, Carney delivers a lecture on the hazards of getting to the training ground. "We're going to be traveling on highways varying from two lanes to four lanes, with speed limits varying between 60 and 70 miles per hour." Vehicle-
following distances are carefully specified, in meters, of course - this is the military. If any vehicle can't see the one behind it, it must slow down.

Everything is prescribed: "You assistant drivers are there to keep your drivers alert and awake. Make sure you do this." Everybody wears seat belts. Vehicle headlights are on for safety. Even plans for vehicle breakdowns are outlined. The convoy is registered with the state National Guard headquarters; the registration number is chalked on the side of every vehicle.

The Humvees and trucks pull out onto the highway. Though the speed limit is 70 mph, the convoy's top speed is 50. Other drivers take every opportunity to pass, leapfrogging dangerously up the convoy between Humvees. Civilian drivers almost cause two accidents as the convoy lumbers north.

Exiting the highway onto a dirt road, the convoy finds the going wetter and tougher by the mile. Soon the Humvees' massive wheels are thickly caked in mud. Civilian cars don't have a hope of making it; the lone pickup truck venturing down the road slides and spins for a bit before proceeding. The mud-spattered convoy parks in a clearing for lunch.

Food in the Guard is completely a military affair. Meals ready to eat, or MREs, are standard fare. Though the soldiers have to pay a little more than $3 per MRE during drill weekends, if they are called into service, food is provided for them. Most pay and then complain about the quality of the product. They choose their meals, paying careful attention to the labels: beef stew is good, ham-and-cheese omelets are awful.

"Eat. Don't eat. Eat. Don't eat. Don't eat. Don't eat. Oh, these are good," Sgt. 1st Class Chris Jones, the unit's recruiter, says. He sorts the contents of his MRE. When he's done, there's as much discarded food and plastic wrapping as there was food he ate. The rations aren't terrible; each meal contains 7,200 calories - enough, the Army calculates, to sustain a soldier in the field on one meal pack per day. One of the unit's ex-Navy guys remembers fondly his days of "C-ratch," canned food, the Navy's version of an MRE. But he grins and eats, too.

As the MRE aftertaste wears off, the exercise begins. Some of the men learn to use a new mine detector, like the ones in Bosnia now. A squad goes down the road to test it. One man holds the mine detector; two others walk behind him with weapons held ready for potential attack.

About seven of the group fade off into the woods to prepare for the exercise. They're called OPFOR, opposition forces, and will attack the main group at some point in the afternoon. The rest of the men will practice moving into a new location and setting up a headquarters base there. First they sweep the road for mines. Then they secure the perimeter in a silent operation, using only hand signals to communicate. The men move quickly, though not that quietly, through the forest. They are on the lookout for enemy troops and booby traps. It's eerie - a silent defense against unseen aggressors. It's almost possible to believe there's a real enemy out here, somewhere in Macon.

When the perimeter is almost secure, OPFOR attacks. Two men move in from one side of the road; three others appear farther down on the same side of the road. But where are the rest? The defending men open fire, running, dodging and diving through the brush to get better views of the aggressors while still protecting themselves.

The rest of OPFOR opens fire now that forces are committed away from them. They are next to the road, in a clump of trees, on relatively high ground. Spies and Carney hang back, letting the men fight. They're commanders who need to stay alive as long as they can to coordinate the counterattack and communicate with other units.

Some of the men who were scouting the other side of the road come over to help in the fight. Others stay where they are, guarding against any other possible attacks.

The fight lasts about 15 minutes, but it was compressed in the minds of the men who want to do it all again. "Let's play more!" a couple of them say. OPFOR has been defeated, their position overrun by hard-charging, fast-firing defenders. Despite how much they train for war, weekends like this are really the only time these Guardsmen get to be soldiers in a combat situation. Most of their time on active duty is helping civilians in Missouri.

They took a break to talk a bit about the exercise, but now it's time to clean up. This is the 1990s Army - environmentalism is important. The brass shells expended by the M-16s are valuable. They're easily recyclable, but making new brass is expensive. The Army has also found a military reason: Leaving behind signs of your presence gives valuable information to the enemy. Never mind that the "enemy" that has successfully captured this Midwestern training ground already has a good idea of what kind of ammunition M-16s use.

Back the men go, revisiting their locations during the recent battle. They pick up as much brass as they can. One soldier notices that he's missing something more than just brass.

Specialist Anthony Ash had strapped a radio to his chest when the fight began. It's not there now. After a few minutes of searching, they find it in the place Ash first hit the dirt to fire his M-16 at an intruder. He's chagrined and refuses to carry the radio back to the vehicles for fear of losing it a second time. "He's got it, and I'm not going to touch it, sir," Ash says dejectedly to Spies.

Despite the mistake, Spies gives Ash a break. The unspoken feeling is that a "real soldier" wouldn't have dropped the radio in the heat of battle, even though it is the sort of thing that could very well happen in combat.

Spies and Carney are happy with the way the exercise turned out, even though the group experienced several problems with the laser tag equipment. The convoy packs up and returns to the armory the same way it came: in order, creeping down the highway. This time, though, they're spraying mud everywhere. Even after the 60-mile trip, some mud is still coming off of the tires in the armory's parking lot.

Final formation begins after everyone has returned their weapons and MILES gear. Various announcements are made before the real event begins. Spies' voice rings out in the immense room.

"Sgt. 1st Class Dave Robbins, front and center."

Robbins leaves his place in the ranks and marches up to stand at attention in front of Spies. It is his last day in the Guard, his last few minutes. Spies speaks again.

"Gentlemen, before me stands the example of the citizen-soldier." Spies talks briefly about Robbins' service to the Guard and the level of performance the veteran demands from his fellow soldiers.

Robbins' wife has already been given an award for her support of the Guard and her husband's career. Now Robbins gets a service medal and letters of commendation from President Clinton and Missouri Gov. Mel Carnahan. He is trying not to cry. Spies is trying not to cry. Carney, who is reading the letters aloud to the men, is trying not to cry.

When he is permitted, Robbins runs back to his place in line so the men don't see his tears. The new medal falls off while he runs; he stops quickly to pick it up. When he gets back to his place,
the man next to him slips him a handkerchief.

The battery is dismissed, and most of the men crowd around Robbins to congratulate him on his service. When the crowd has just begun to die down, another section of the unit drives up. Robbins is back on the job only five minutes after being told he's done. He checks quickly to make sure the situation is under control, then heads out the back door of the armory with a few of the men. In the bed of Robbins' white pickup truck is a cooler of beer.

Robbins doesn't quite know what to think, but he's smiling and puffing away on his cigar, laughing with his comrades in arms. Spies reminds the group that most of them are here not for the money - though the money is nice - but for the company, the comradeship. Rich says that of his 10 best friends, he met seven in the Guard. Robbins promises everyone he'll be back to visit; they assure him they'll miss him when he's not around.

This is the Guard. Friends will be nearby, not far away on some Army base. Robbins can visit the public armory any time. He can go home to his job and his family.

For the first time in 20 years, Robbins won't be back next month to be a soldier again, even for a weekend. The rest of them will be back. Some will see each other tomorrow; others will have to wait the full month. They part ways smiling and waving, their ambivalent goodbyes indicating they're not quite ready to return to civilian life.

Sunday, July 5, 1998

Lincoln rebuilds

Published in the Addison Independent
LINCOLN - The clean-up effort began even before the water receded. Volunteers who had been up all Friday night ensuring residents' safety were back at work on Saturday and Sunday dealing with the aftermath.

In addition to the town residents, the Starksboro Fire Department was on the scene quickly, setting up road blocks and helping direct traffic around washouts. Also responding quickly was the Army National Guard from Vergennes.

The biggest turnout for a single effort was at Burnham Hall, where the Lincoln Community Library lost 80 percent of its collection, despite a desperate midnight rescue effort mounted by town residents.

"When I got there it was already up to the windows," said Lincoln Constable Art Pixley. He had been out helping residents evacuate from their threatened houses.

The library was a lost cause. As daylight broke Saturday, residents - already awake - came out to assess the damage.

"The first book I saw was Sidney Sheldon's 'Nothing Lasts Forever,'" said Reed Prescott of Lincoln.

Floating on the lawn was a copy of "New England's Weather Disasters," he said.

Liam and Ike Mulqueen-Duquette were among the children helping clean out the library. They put the books in a trailer which would be hauled to the dump, but not before the kids had had last looks at the pages of their ruined treasures. Kids went through the children's book section, saying "I remember this story!"

Ike Mulqueen-Duquette sorted the books, throwing the "Haven't read it" group into a different area of the trailer than the "Read it" group.

Bill Purdah was a volunteer helping with the book disposal. He said he initially felt bad throwing them all away but realized that they weren't really books anymore.

"It's a sodden mass of mud and paper," he said.

Charlie Piasecki of Bristol Insurance came up to look at the damage to the library and to help the clean-up.

"They're very fortunate that they had the foresight to take out flood insurance," he said. The insurance adjuster was scheduled to come Monday morning to survey the damage.

Burnham Committee member Nancy Stevens was saddened by the fact that the flood coverage for the contents of the building was not very high, but she was optimistic about the future of the library.

"The town of Lincoln will come forward," she said.

Up at French Settlement, the road was mostly washed away. Anne Parfitt and Don Brumfield made it down to the Lincoln General Store on foot.

"The river came, swirled around and took a new course," Parfitt said. "We're totally wiped out up there."

Several residents, including drivers from Atkins Trucking, as well as Bill Jesdale and Bill Masterson, helped the repair work by dumping and spreading dirt over where French Settlement Road had been.

Gerold Kandzior, who lives at the bottom of French Settlement Road, had some friends helping to clean out the 6 inches of mud on the floor of his barn. He suspected at least one septic tank upstream from him had ruptured because of the stench from the mud. The yard he used to mow was totally covered with stones from the river and roadbed. The river, which had flowed past his barn, has a new course now, about 10 feet further out.

Saturday morning, though, the whole place was filled with water. Only an old rusty holding tank, which floated over to the house from beside the barn, saved the house from being demolished by the rocks and branches.

Kandzior was evacuated by the fire department early in the morning on Saturday because there were propane tanks further up the road which officials feared might float down and explode. The tanks didn't end up on Kandzior's property, though a neighbor's motorcycle was upended and covered in mud and grass next to the barn.

"Messy, messy, messy," Kandzior said.

Central Vermont Public Service crews were on the scene Sunday, driving in from Rutland and Middlebury. The damage to the power lines was surprisingly light, they said. They had brought several bucket trucks as well as other equipment to repair the damage.

"We had no idea what to expect, so we came loaded for bear," one crewman said.

Ed Trombley, a crew chief, said that the power was ready to go on in the Lincoln area. All that remained was for the connection to be made by the Twin Bridges and then some small areas would be brought on later. He said that power could be on the Lincoln area by as soon as Monday. Two poles by the Squirrel's Nest Restaurant were the village's link with the outside power grid. When those gave way, Lincoln was darkened.


Monday, May 11, 1998

Making weekend war

Published in the Columbia Missourian

The Headquarters Battery of the 128th Artillery Regiment, Missouri National Guard, trains one weekend a month and two weeks a year to stay ready for their two main tasks: 1) to serve the state of Missouri in times of civil distress, like floods or other natural disasters; and 2) to serve the United States in time of war.

During the rest of the year, the members of the National Guard have regular jobs like most other people: working in offices, teaching, doing various kinds of skilled work, and so on.

But on their training weekends, they prepare for war. It's not just a matter of being physically ready, but also of having plans for events that might happen. They plan a lot. Each weekend they go home having planned a little more. The next month, they come back and pick up right where they left off.

The men in the upper right photo are officers preparing for a mock battle they will fight in a couple of months from now. The man in the upper left photo is a soldier practicing combat maneuvers with his squad.

SHAKE RATTLE AND ROLL IN YOUR ARMY-ISSUE HUMVEE
Humvees are the military's main method of moving people around during exercises and combat. The trucks are built with large tires and high ground clearance, so they can get through almost any type of landscape. They're still nimble enough, though, to drive on regular roads.

The inside of a Humvee has room for about four people to sit. (In a Humvee, everyone wears a seat belt because it jolts around so violently!) There's also room for a lot of equipment on the floor and in the rear storage area.

When they're not in motion, the vehicles can be used as tables, desks, or chairs. The tough metal can take it if soldiers sit on the vehicles or put weaponry or other things on them. Humvees are built to be rugged.

Sunday, February 15, 1998

Entangled in expansion

Published in the Columbia Missourian

On the wall above the kitchen counter in Jim and Helen Judah's house is a 30-year-old aerial photograph of their property. Open fields and clustered treetops dominate the scene. Taken today, the photograph would look very different.

At the northwest edge of their property, middle-class houses in the Georgetown subdivision spring up from the fields. Nearer the Judahs' house, across Gillespie Bridge Road, residents of the Longview subdivision mow lawns in front of their duplexes. And although a proposal to rezone the land just downhill from the Judahs' lagoon was rejected a couple of years ago, the possibility remains for subdivisions to creep closer.

Southwest and northeast of Columbia, land like the Judahs' is under pressure from the expanding city. As the city's population grows, homes and land to build them on are in high demand.

Many northeastern landowners seem ready to sell their properties. But in the southwest, few landowners say they are interested in selling despite the money they could make.

Meanwhile, shops and houses are going up all along the perimeter of the Columbia, wherever land can be bought and developed. Growth to the southwest of the city has been curtailed, however, because holdouts in that area own more than 3,000 acres of development-ready land.

But even in the southwest, residents' lives are changing because of Columbia's growth. Civilization is banging on the door. Roads bring more traffic; zoning and subsequent building alter the views from people's homes.

To sell or not to sell
Jim Judah says he knows all about selling land. The family farm on which he was born was sold and became tract housing. Three years ago, he and his wife, Helen, sold a 320-acre parcel on Coats Lane. The new owner isn't a developer, and the Judahs rent the land from the new owner to produce hay. Jim says this is the only way they can support 110 cattle on the 175 acres they have left.

What of that last 175 acres?

"We're not going to sell," he says.

The Judahs are holding on, even without much help. One of their two part-time farmhands is unable to walk, but drives a tractor. The other helps in the afternoons. Jim does the morning and evening feeding alone.

Land prices and the production costs make farming for a living difficult - even for longtime family farmers such as the Judahs.

Surrounded by growing developments and "hobby farmers," Jim and Helen live on their investments. "It has cut farming clear out," Jim says.

Over on South Coats Lane, John Sam Williamson says he too worries about the development happening nearby. He says he is watching valuable soybean fields turn into grassy lawns for subdivisions.

"This land is all zoned agricultural," Williamson says. "As we have urbanization of the area, because of the growth of Columbia and outside areas, this land has changed from agricultural to residential."

State, city and county governments are also developing land. Near Williamson's house, the land is river bottom and flood plain and is unsuitable for residential development. The city of Columbia has 10 wells and three sewage treatment sites, with a fourth in the works. The Missouri Department of Conservation owns the nearby Eagle Bluffs Conservation Area.

Williamson says he has had several offers to buy his land, but he has turned them down. "At some point I probably will, because it would be stupid not to. I'm under pressure, but I'm not letting it bother me."

Williamson, who is president of the McBaine Levee district board, owns 1,400 acres of Missouri River flood plain. He says he maintains the fences at the edge of his land because neighboring developers didn't want to build them.

Florea, who owns 430 acres on Coats Lane, says he has had no purchase offers, but he is wary about the idea of selling: "Anywhere within 20 or 30 miles of Columbia, you want to be careful offering your land for a price, because someone might take you up on it."

His son and daughter-in-law also live on Florea's land. He says he doesn't plan to sell.

These landowners recognize that they are still part of the community. They can't just hold onto their land, blind to issues of expansion. Their own quality of life, land use patterns and financial security are in question. Like everyone else, when they talk about the future, they talk about zoning, roads and sewage management. These, they say, need to be addressed no matter what.

Florea, for example, is always present at county meetings. He and other farmers go to make their opinions heard and to keep the county mindful of obligations to its citizens.

Two sides of the coin
County land wasn't always governed by zoning ordinances. Now, however, land is zoned several different ways, says Stan Shawver, director of county planning and building inspection.

That is both good and bad, farmers say. The Boone County Planning and Zoning Commission is helping control expansion by preventing landowners from doing whatever they want. The Judahs, for example, now have to get a permit if they want to build even a shed on their land. Folks no longer can "just go out and put a trailer up," Jim Judah says.

The city's southern expansion over the past 30 years has also brought mixed results, Williamson says. Besides more crime and traffic, there is a lag between support and growth: "The infrastructure has not kept up with the development in this area," he says. Old roads carrying new traffic, for example, are a problem.

Florea says the city should improve its road maintenance. He says that during the 1993 flood, a bridge on Coats Lane was under eight feet of water. Ten families had to use rowboats to cross between their homes and their cars parked on the other side of the bridge.

The county is finishing a five-year program to upgrade roads. The half-percent sales tax extended in November will sustain the project for an additional 10 years. But residents say it is hard to know where the next improvements will be made.

When Jim Judah moved to his land in 1944, four miles of gravel road led from there to the Columbia town line. Now, cars back up on the blacktop in front of his home every day during rush hour. "I don't even go to the mailbox without having to wait for the traffic," Helen says. On the other hand, Jim says, the paved road is more driver-friendly.

Florea says the county could influence where development occurs with its road-paving plans. While the county can't force developers into particular areas, a blacktopped road is certainly more attractive for development than a gravel one.

"The concentration of higher-cost housing is along improved roads," Shawver says. But the impact of the five-year road-paving project has yet to increase development rates significantly, he says. "At this point we haven't seen a lot of that. Development takes a long time."

Jim Judah says he is used to managing the waste from both his household and his farm animals. Now, however, the city's waste also is being treated near his home.

City sewer standards are strict, and new subdivisions are required to comply. But because the city requires annexation before extending privileges to residents, most current owners have either a septic tank or a sewage lagoon. However, Boone County's primary soil contains a lot of clay, and this prevents septic tanks from percolating properly, Williamson says.

Lagoons smell bad, and neighbors can see the waste. Some houses use combination systems, such as septic tanks piping effluent to secondary treatment plants.

The city sewer plant near the Judahs' place is built on land the Judahs used to own. The city used its power of condemnation to buy the land, Helen says.

The fourth sewage-treatment wetland to be created will use part of a 100-acre parcel that Florea sold the city last year. He is concerned about the possibility of odor.

Florea says he doesn't notice any odors from the existing wetlands, but his house is a quarter-mile upwind of those areas. The new treatment wetland might be closer to his home.

The city's impact has not been entirely negative, residents say. After the 1993 floods, the city helped river-bottom landowners organize levee maintenance. And Florea says he appreciated the city's helping residents form a levee district: "They've been a prime mover on that since the word go."

The future
"The city's really changing," Williamson says. "It hurts me to see the change, because this is my heritage. This has been agricultural land for generations. People are selling it. But you can't blame them for doing it."

He is quick to add that these kinds of changes are happening not just in Boone County, but all around the country.

"There's no more agricultural land being made. It's all that we're ever going to have," he says.
Even Earth City, a St. Louis suburb, used to be an agricultural area of river-bottom farmland, he says. Now it has hotels, factories and warehouses.

As the world's population increases, the demand for food grows. The United States is the most efficient producer of agricultural products, Williamson says, adding that other countries don't have the same combination of infrastructure, know-how and technology.

"I'm not going to be like Don Quixote, out fighting windmills," Williamson says. "There's just one thing after another, and it's not going to end - it's going to be more."

At a recent meeting about the county budget, Florea was the only resident in attendance. "I've tried to be very active in influencing (the commission) - not with a very high degree of success," he says. "I keep nipping at their heels."

Florea says his main concern is that the county is spending too much money on construction of roads and too little on their maintenance. But bad government, he says, is the fault of citizens who don't participate. The opportunity is there, he says, even for a farmer who still loves his independence: "What do you lose by trying?"

Sunday, January 18, 1998

Instilling knowledge

Published in the Columbia Missourian

Think back to when you were in school. Chances are, your teacher had a list of assignments to get through in a given year. Those that didn't get covered were left for the following year or skipped altogether. That's all very different now.

School districts now use academic standards to design effective curriculum for science education. The result is teachers have more focus in the classroom and students benefit from improved continuity.

State and federal funding sources require school districts to adhere to their recommendations yet they each have different guidelines.

Competing for district attention are the national standards, backed by the U.S. Department of Education.

There are the Project 2061 standards put forward by the American Association for the Advancement of Science. And there are the Show-Me Standards, designed by the Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education and mandated by the state legislature.

They are similar. They all have the goal of improving K-12 science education. They all split curriculum levels the same way: K-4, 5-8 and 9-12. They all stipulate that science education is vital preparation for the world beyond academics. They all cover similar topics somewhere in the curriculum.

The problem for the school district comes in assessment. While the state's goals for learning are to be achieved by the fourth, eighth and 12th grades, the tests are administered in third, seventh and 10th grades.

For example, the third-grade test asks students about food chains and food webs. In Columbia, those subjects are taught in the fourth grade.

While in the primary grades, this forces teachers to cram an extra year of science learning into the K-3 years. Those are years when literacy education is vital. There is not enough time for both, said Becky Litherland, district coordinator of science education.

In the middle grades, the state of Missouri requires the teaching of genetics and natural selection in seventh grade - a subject difficult even for high-school sophomores, Litherland said.

In high school, teachers are left with two years to fill after the final state assessment. Subject matter originally intended for those years is tested before it is ever taught.

The competing sets of guidelines, together with the state-mandated assessment schedule, give Columbia schools some hard choices and, Litherland said: "Local control is costing us more of our education dollars."

Curriculum development has been an ongoing process far longer than government standards have been in place. "We have been changing the science curriculum for 14 years," Litherland said.

It's only in the past two years that she has been working with the national standards to create a Columbia curriculum unique to the district.

Gentry Middle School teacher Laura Jackson helped design the national standards for K-12 science education. Litherland said there is "a real sense of pride" with the local connection, and the local district tends to favor that system over the others.

The national standards, she said, are the result of years of hard work by some of the nation's best science educators and their recommendations make sense to her when others do not.

Teachers are, on their own, doing very good assessment of student performance. They have left behind the multiple-choice tests used for years, but the district's teachers are stuck. They want to teach well. They also want students to do well on tests which adhere to the state standards.

"It's hard to sell at the local level," Litherland said. "You're sitting there with a bunch of teachers and they say, 'Give me what's going to be on the test.'"

One particular national standard of importance to Litherland is "science as inquiry." It used to be called "designing and doing experiments." In Columbia, these experiments are integrated into classes where possible, giving students experience in exploring science for themselves.

A big difference now is the concept of the science fair. In the past, a student may have been told to do a science fair project without much additional help. Now students learn how to think about experiments, how to build them and how to interpret results. It's working. Columbia schools win Missouri Science Olympiad awards year after year.

Although Litherland said she believes standards renew the commitment to teaching excellence, she said she fears that the state testing system asks too much of students too early. She said she isn't happy with the current timetable.

When the state was planning education schedules, Litherland and other science educators asked the department of education to schedule science testing in fourth, eighth and 11th grades.

As all of the state's standards and assessment guidelines are developed, there will be too many tests to have all of them in any one year. The state decided to split testing between third and fourth grades, seventh and eighth grades, and 10th and 11th grades.

Science testing was the second standard implemented in Missouri, which should have given it free choice in the timetable, Litherland said, yet the state decided against the educators' request.

This spring, the first state tests will be administered. Litherland is hopeful but not optimistic. "I think our scores are probably going to be pretty poor," she said. "Our kids aren't going to do as well as I think they could because of this misalignment."

She explained the scores do not measure the quality of science education in Columbia, but merely Columbia's adherence to the state-set curricular time table. In this world of change, though, the legislators are the only people who can help Litherland ease the transition.

The people who set the standards often have a poor grasp of early childhood education, she said. That means they don't understand how much growing and changing occurs from year to year. They don't see the trade-off in primary grades between time spent on science and on literacy education.

"I hope that we'll be able to have good test scores without sacrificing our children," she said. "I want kids to come out of our elementary schools loving science, being successful at science."