Well Fueled

"What if you put a thin line of lipstick over my eyebrows?"  This is not something I've ever suggested before, but it was fantastic.  Between the two of them, Carissa and Scout devised a vaguely Egyptian look to complement the gold sequin skirt and rainbow leggings I wore for Ice Stock.  There was a frigid wind, and I was lucky not to need dexterous fingers and could dance as hard as possible to perform.

Toby, you are a funk goddess.  Liz, you make the best faces.

This weekend was a two-for, as the annual art show was scheduled a bit earlier than usual in the season.  I spent my Monday volunteering with the Fuels department to get more familiar with their work.  Various pipelines snake around town, disappearing under roads and buildings, and congregate in Rube Goldberg-esque neetworks of crazy.  With my helpful instructor, I crawled around ditches and behind buildings to check that appropriate valves were open or closed, then we let fuel flow by way of gravity downhill to the tank we wanted to replenish.  It was a pretty nice day but I was tuckered out after lunch.  I managed to help a bit with cleaning the barn up for the art show that night, but I did have to evaporate away and sneak in a nap.

MAAG (McMurdo Alternative Art Gallery) is always a delight.  My dear kitchen friend re-purposed some of the 1000(?) pounds of erroneously ordered mint chips that have haunted station inventory for years into a replica of Machu Picchu and one of our most beloved childhood memories:

Everyone's anxiety on the Oregon Trail.

My roomie helped make a semi-mechanical bull-penguin that you could ride.  And there was a forest.  Well, about as good a real forest as we can get down here -- fake hanging plants and vines, a projected video of rain forest footage, and mist falling and dripping from the leaves.  Four of us sat in awe in the dim light of the canopy and just breathed quietly.

And after all that excitement, I found a nice new place today.  Not really found, and not really new, but I walked out to, technically, a glacier terminus just beyond station.  A creaking, slow-motion waterfall of packed ice flows to the edge of what will be the open sea later this year.  The sun has melted impressively long icicles that drip-drip-drip like a light rain, and occasional chunks calve off the face with a satisfying guunsshh into the snow below.

I'd estimate it's 30-40 feet high.

Uncontrolled Arrivals

I can take no credit for this awesome band name.  My friend Toby chose it for her funk band (in which I sing backup vocals).  It's a term from the airfield: since there's no air traffic controller and so few planes, someone loosely announces when planes take off and land.  ("Uncontrolled arrival announcement" sounds pretty scary the first time you hear it on the radio.)  We are attempting to be as raucous as a group of 30s-ish white folks can be while covering "Super Freak" and "Brick House," with the help of sequins and a dose of carefree abandon.

Playing carols over the HF radio to deep field camps.

I wish I knew who took this amazing photo of the Waste Barn show.

Things have been increasingly uncontrolled lately.  We partied good at the helicopter hanger a couple weeks ago, me with a slew of glittered and taught-dressed ladies scoping out the "second round" -- guys either overlooked or newly available after the early-season pairings-off have faded.  It was fun dancing, and (perhaps luckily) I limited myself to water that night attempting not to worsen a cold or act too rashly.  And just days later, two of the best events of the season: the acoustic pre-Christmas show at a transformed and decorated Waste Barn, and solstice silent dance.  You get lost in the whimsical ambiance of Wasteozoic Park, forgetting for the evening the relentless, harsh landscape in a cozy den of blanketed couches and sock-puppet dinosaurs.  And dancing overlooking town with the wind filling your jacket-arms like a sail, your sweat washes away some accumulated murk. 

My first penguin of the season, tobogganing away.

Christmas was cheese and bread and apples and almonds and coffee followed by beef filet and lobster tail and crab legs and chocolate truffles and chocolate cake and lemon cheesecake and a touch of pastis and then scotch.  And good people.  There are many kind and generous people here.  Aside from the penguins and unlimited free lunch meat, the best part of life here is the feeling of dumb luck upon meeting and getting to know and appreciating and building friendships with wonderful people.  Thanks to you, near and far, who help with and enjoy alongside.

The flowers in the garden know/just how they need to grow

Carissa leads the charge, and I'm camouflaged in green.

Patrick elicits a renaissance-y sound from the guitar as we

practice the traditional early music piece "The Middle."

Dreams really do come true: I was able to get through performing Lizzo’s “Juice” without just laughing at myself, and we had a super fun semi-secret party at an empty dorm.  The dancing got a little intense and we lost some of the beads from the shaker, but everyone got home in one piece.  It was a school night so that meant just hot chocolate for me( “eight hours bottle to throttle”), and it was about the most fun sober dancing I’ve ever had.

A massive snowstorm started a few days ago, trapping people here with short contracts from leaving, and providing ideal conditions for a post-brunch snowball fight.  Usually it’s so dry and cold you can’t pack the snow, but it’s a balmy 25F and we’ve got eight or so inches of beautiful cannon fodder.  There were no teams; occasional white-washings were perpetrated; random charges were rallied; and a BBC crew filmed and participated.

I have thus far evaded the second round of illness, which has morphed into a swift-striking and long-lasting strep-laryngitis.  Fingers crossed that my mix of voodoo and fresh ginger will keep me healthy and able to continue with xmas concert band, choir, and vocal harmonies with a banjo player friend.

We're All Friends, We're All Friends

Things friends do:

- drink coffee with you
- pet your hair
- physically block your view of people you don't like
- write you entertaining letters
- share the good cookies
- indulge each other's enthusiasm for 80085 texts
- knit together
- awkwardly dance in sympathy when the music is bad
- reveal the secrets behind card tricks
- find out if that guy is single
- lend their dresses
- watch Beautician and the Beast
- work out barbershop quartet harmonies for that Jimmy Eat World song
- take cool seal photos (see photo)
- trade books
- wait

photo credit: Brian Gershon

Lounge Singer

my favorite cargo sled (for loading pallets of stuff onto planes)

A chapter title I wish I had written, from The Career Woman's Cookbook,

in the NZ lounge of the historic Hillary Hut.

I'm afraid to jinx it, but I'm pretty excited about all the music happening.  My roomie has insider status at a building I've eyed for years but never been in: the Paint Barn doubles as a rehearsal space after business hours.  This week, I played piano and clarinet and guitar and cello (barely) and sang.  Yes, there is a nice new cello here, and I can scrape the bow across with some satisfying resonance at least half the time.  It was a fun discovery made possible by repeated power outages.  All is not well with our electrical supply, and we went through three of five back-up generators.  (Don't ask me why or how the generators failed mechanically; rumors abound of bolts sheering, fan blades expelled, and improbable gremlin destruction.)  Decades of delayed maintenance and power overdraw is finally catching up with the system, thankfully during summer while sunlight shines in the windows.  Still, it's a challenge to peer at mysterious food in the gloom of a de-powered galley, let alone cook it.  Oh yeah, and we desalinate our drinking water from the ocean, so no electricity means no water, either.

And so with limited lights, rationed water, and no intra- or internet, music folks wandered around until we found each other.  Joe and Patrick and I had the cello, a guitar, and a banjo, and I knew just where to go.  There's a small dorm on the far side of town, as yet uninhabited this season.  The lounge of the Mammoth Mountain Inn (I have no idea why it's called that) has large windows that look out to the ice shelf, two long couches, and decent acoustics.  It's the perfect place to pass around a bottle of wine, sing some love songs, and speculate about who we should eat first if the power completely stays off for good.

Sweater Song

Shuttle Jake unconsciously posing at emergency apple #1.

You can't actually see the amazing ice fog glitter,

but this picture ended up looking neat.

old film canisters from the NZ Hillary Hut

No, not the Weezer one -- my new favorite thing to sing is a playful and exquisitely longing song that employs a sweater as an improbably sexy metaphor ("I Wish I Was," by the Avett Brothers).  This year I finally brought an aux cable, so I can listen to my own music while I drive.  If there's no one to shuttle, I can repeat a song over and over and over, and in such fashion learn it, all during work hours (shhhh, don't tell).

Every year I give myself a talking-to about how I should really learn guitar so I can accompany myself, and skip over the ingratiating and bowing and scraping that I perform in order to wheedle people into playing music with me.  Luckily my Fuelie friend is obliging me for the time being, but really, I swear, I'll learn to strum and pick...this summer...or next season...sometime.

Unseasonably warm and sunny weather has followed me from Alaska to Antarctica.  Everything's melting, I hiked in a sweater, and sunblock is my constant companion.  The sea ice is quite thin this year, only having formed in late July.  Already large cracks extend from the rocky point just beyond town, and our days of exploring pressure ridges and skiing around the cape are numbered.  The seals seem to be thriving, though, and a slew of doe-eyed pups are adorably writhing around.  

Speaking of writhing on the ice shelf, I started doing push-ups and sit-ups on every drive to the airfield.  No, that's not me suffering a stroke behind my van; I'm just trying to be inconspicuous, in a bright red jacket, with a neon safety belt, in a broad, open, white plain bustling with heavy equipment and airplane mechanics.  I eeked out 20 push-ups in a row once, but the following set, two hours later, I could barely finish my usual 10.  I'll get there soon, though, and my sweater will be waiting when it get's too cold.

Stockholm's cold but I've been told/I was born to endure this kind of weather

abstract lenticular clouds atop Erebus

den + dresser

The window frame in my room is not quite true, and even mild winds whistle mournfully; the drafts stir my bed curtains.  I have what technically passes for a four-poster: the metal corners of the frame reach up a foot or so, and the sheets I tacked to the ceiling enclose my small sleep-cave.  

I elected to work the day shift first this year, which will hopefully grease the wheels for doing lots of music.  But I felt significant pangs as a crowd of good people departed for the night shift this weekend.  We'll always have Saturday night...

A set of drawers contain my minimal and tidy possessions, yet incongruously sprouts an increasingly unwieldy collection of hoarded luxuries and scavenged detritus.  There are notes on Post-Its on notes, a teetering pile of books and old magazines, a gnarled chunk of ginger root, wine glasses and colored pencils and maple syrup and balls of yarn of varied autumnal hues.  The raw materials of my temporary domesticity are close at hand, uncannily like props on a stage in their organic disorder.

Training is nearly complete, and soon I'll drive those regular runs out to the airfield, this time with an aux cord and my own music.  I'll still tune in to the Armed Forces Network radio broadcast of awful Top 40 for entertainment and to keep up with the kids these days, but not until after I've listened to First Aid Kit's "Emmylou" 147 times in a row.