Part II: There are no roads to Chuchill

(Please start with Part I, if you haven't already, and work your way up!)
The next morning, we joined our group in a mini-van that delivered us, in caravan with other NatHab groups' vans, through the back gate of the Winnipeg airport, across the tarmac, to the foot of stairway to our Nolinor charter 737 that was to take us on a 1-1/2 hour flight to Churchill. The weather was gorgeous, but Sandra, our guide, cautioned that two prior flights to Churchill that morning had been cancelled due to turbulence, so we might expect our ride to be "a little bumpy." Well, whatever, it's a little late to back out just because of wintery weather up north, right? And besides, one can certainly not drive to Churchill, every single wheeled vehicle in town got there, in whole or in parts, on rails or on a ship. And in any case, I am here to tell you how fabulous it is not to need a boarding pass, to skip security, not to have to take shoes, watches, bracelets, and belts off, and not to empty water bottles before boarding. We lifted off expeditiously, but to my window-seat-loving disappointment, the scenery below, which I fully expected to be like nothing I'd ever seen before, was soon obscured by clouds. But the flight was perfectly ordinary, turbulently-speaking, from start to finish.
The territory below that I couldn't see was, initially, the flat cultivated surrounds of Winnipeg, then taiga (thick, boreal "Hansel-and-Gretel" forest), then tundra, which reminds one of nothing so much as being at 10,000 feet at, say, the 49th parallel (the north entrance to Yellowstone is at the 49th, but just a little under 6,000 feet in elevation) with a few scrawny trees (krumholtz) scattered here and there, osiers and even lower-to-the-ground vegetation, lots of exposed rock formations, rough terrain, and many places for water to pool and ice to form. This is exactly what the ground looked like as far as I could see when we finally poked down under the thick cloud cover at Churchill.

When we came to a stop on the runway, watching the folks seated ahead of us deplane we noted that they all walked across the rainy tarmac at a 45 degree angle. It turns out the wind was blasting at an unremitting 55 mph. The reason the landing was smooth is that the runway - originally built by the military - was aligned perfectly into the wind, and the wind was not gusting. But the irony of the name of the neighboring commercial aircraft, CalmAir, was not lost on me. 

Great White Bear Tours was our local transportation provider, and our  small bus was waiting as soon as our luggage was off-loaded. Our first stop was one of Churchill's two prominent inukshuk, this one overlooking Hudson's Bay.

Inukshuk

An inukshuk is a sculptural assembly of rocks that is used by native peoples as a place marker, a cache, directional aid, memorial, and so on. They have great significance to the aboriginal peoples all across Canada. This one was easily 20 feet high. If you click on the image to enlarge it you can make out the enormous rollers heading onto shore from the Bay behind it. 
Our group was then taken to the Northern Nights Lodge, situated right behind another of Churchill's large inukshuk, also a gateway to the port. 

Churchill's other major inukshuk, with the marine fuel tanks of the port visible in the distance. To the right was the Northern Nights Lodge, where we bunked.

We rather liked the Northern Nights, in spite of its motel-like decor. It was cozy and quiet, had a very good restaurant, and made a good home for us for four wonderful nights. We could see from our window that someone had, probably weeks ago, left their fishing nets hanging to dry out back. In the unrelenting wind, the nets became gossamer, punctuated by little blue weights.

The tundra view from our window; polar bears sometimes wander out there.

I just learned that the Northern Nights Lodge burned to the ground the night of November  18. There was one minor injury, everyone else was safe (though their possessions like passports and cameras mostly destroyed), and I would guess the hotel not full as the bears had already left for the ice and there are few visitors in town now. It's nonetheless very frightening to think about, as it could so easily have happened to us. And although bear-watching season was over for 2011, Northern Nights is among few employers in town and numbers of jobs went up in flames too. Northern Nights, may you rebuild and flourish again next season!

Go to Part III

Part I: What we thought we knew we didn't

The tiny, but mighty, town of Churchill, Manitoba, is located on the western shore of Hudson's Bay, about 500 miles south of the Arctic Circle. It is accessed by air, water, or train only - there literally are no roads to Churchill, even from near-by towns. Of which there are none. It is a unique inland deep-water port through which, historically, massive tons of produce, comprising 90% wheat from Canada's breadbasket provinces - Manitoba, Saskatchewan, and Alberta - is delivered by rail and shipped out: this in spite of the tightly limited season during which the Bay is ice-free, from July to early November.  But it is with the ice that the greater world's fascination with Churchill really lies. Each winter this ice, due to quirks of geography and climate, forms first along Churchill's shores. And the polar bears (Ursus maritimus) that have been on land all summer congregate there, starting in October each year, waiting nervously for the Bay to freeze.

We are amply familiar with the annual cycles of grizzly and black bear life. This October, KLK and I had to re-learn what we thought we knew about bears. You might be thinking, as did we, "winter + ice + bears = hibernation" but the polar bear's year is radically different. The great white bears in fact spend the winter quite awake, feeding upon, in the case of Churchill's bears especially, ringed seals. Yes, we have all seen zoo polar bears playing in water, but it turns out they do it to keep cool in warm climates like Chicago, and because they're otherwise bored silly in captivity.  They are fantastic swimmers, but they just can't nab an agile seal in open water. They wait on the ice, sometimes for many, many hours, near the seals' air-holes. When a hapless seal rises for a breath, the bear reaches down and grabs its head, hauling it onto the ice to gorge on its ample blubber. Or, if it's lucky and stealthy enough, it can sneak up on a seal basking on the icy surface. 

Unlike that of its black and brown cousins, polar bear metabolism demands a diet of fat rather than protein.There's even nice symbiotic relationship with little white arctic foxes that follow them onto the ice, cleaning the proteinaceous meat off the bones when the bears are done with the fat. Nothing goes to waste, even in this time of surprising plenty.

When the pack ice melts and hunting is no longer possible, the bears come back onto land to spend the summer. Though they avail themselves of the rare beached seal and other carrion, a little vegetation, kelp washed onto shore, and garbage when they can get it, they functionally fast for four to five months. By the time they return to Churchill, they're thin, hungry, and mostly indolent in a state called  "walking hibernation." This, it turns out, is the very best time to observe them.
Traveling with an organized tour was a first for us. We picked Natural Habitat Adventures (aka, NatHab), recommended by friends, and were well-pleased. In particular, our group leader, Sandra Elvin, was superior in every aspect of her job: she is a bear researcher, studying the impact of industrial development on the black bears of Newfoundland, but highly knowledgeable about non-ursine wildlife, geography and geology, climate, and local culture as well. She is especially skilled at graciously herding the cats that comprise 14-member tour groups in potentially dangerous environments.

Guide Sandra Elvin demonstrates the workings of a polar bear skull.

Our journey started October 15 with a direct flight, Chicago to Winnipeg, capital of the Canadian province of Manitoba. 

NatHab's "Vegetable Van" was there to take us from the airport to our hotel.

Our home for the night was the Fort Garry Hotel, one of the pearls in the transcontinental necklace of historic copper-roofed, fairy-tale-design hotels built by the Canadian railroad in the early part of the 20th century. It was full of NatHab groups and guides, gathering at the Fort Garry even as the bears were gathering around Churchill... 

The Fort Garry

  Go to Part II.

Life in the District

Click photo to see detail

Here's a snap from "within the Beltway" - it seems life in Washington DC might not be all it's cracked up to be. This is the real, official license plate for cars registered there. Who would'a thunk?

Crushed by the crazyness but not done in yet!

I'm a person who needs lots of downtime, during which I write, read, (a-)muse, play with my cat, dream of my future, take restorative naps, and plan trips in my head and with my heart. I've had terribly little downtime of late, first because of a big grant proposal hump (I worked every week and every weekend from early September to early October), followed by a week-long trip that was so fantastic it was richly dream-like (several blog posts to follow!), followed by one weekend in Chicago half spent shopping for the right clothes and accoutrements for a dear co-worker's wedding, followed by a day with an old friend and her family in the 'burbs of DC, followed by four days in the heart of the nation's capital at a conference, quickly followed the next Saturday by my co-worker's lovely wedding - in Chicago but consuming more than half of my Saturday - followed by the temptation to do nothing this dark and dreary November weekend, except that I have tickets to Lyric Opera's matinee performance of Boris Godunov (Mussorgsky) tomorrow. [YAY!] In between all of this is condominium association board work aplenty. Surely there is no rest for the weary? If the stars favor me, I will start posting on that mid-October trip over the long Thanksgiving weekend. I can hardly wait.

Meantime, these are two photos snapped with my pocket Panasonic Lumix. It's a little embarrassing to get such good pics from such a cheap little camera, when by preference I lug all over two SLRs and assorted lenses of far greater price with not-always such great results.These are Great Falls of the Potomac: who knew the Potomac River had such a magnificent heritage upstream from where Mr. Washington purportedly heaved his silver dollar across? It was nothing less than stunning on that perfect early November day.

Celebrating Norman Bradburn

Friday night I attended "A Tribute to Norman Bradburn: 50 Years at NORC" at which the contributions of this great scholar, academician, administrator, teacher, and consummate colleague were recognized by the organization I work for, NORC at the University of Chicago. Pleasantly enough, the event coincided with NORC's 70th birthday. Congratulations both to Norman and to NORC!

The exquisite quote below, reprinted from a letter printed in The Saturday Review (1963), capsulizes Mr. Bradburn's philosophy about the meaning and significance of two broad areas of intellectual pursuit. In the use of the word "beautiful" he reminds me of no one so much as another beloved Norman in my life, Norman Maclean, about whom I have written several times.

"Specifically, I believe that the humanities are concerned with defining, illuminating, exemplifying (and guarding) what is good and beautiful, not what is true in the world. On the other hand, the sciences, including the social sciences, however imperfect may be their methods, are properly concerned with what is true about the world and not about what is good or beautiful except insofar as conceptions of the good and the beautiful are basic facts about people living in society."

Need I add that Mr. Bradburn is renowned for his studies of human happiness?

Why American health care costs so much

I've been waiting about a year for this post. On October 9, 2010, I had the pharmacist at Osco Drug (one of our local chains, similar to Walgreen's) administer my annual flu shot. The charge, in sum, was $26.99. I paid this out of pocket and submitted a claim for it to my health insurer, Blue Cross-Blue Shield of Illinois. It was rejected outright because Osco is "out of network." I knew that would happen, and was reimbursed instead from my health care flexible spending account (a handy little arrangement by which working persons can arrange for their employer to withhold an elected amount of pre-tax money from their paychecks from which to be reimbursed for certain out-of-pocket health-related expenses).

This year I decided the best revenge would be to get my flu shot "in network" and I just received my statement from the in-network University of Chicago Medical Center for $121.00 for services identical to those provided by Osco Drug. Of course the Medical Center had initially sent the charges to Blue Cross-Blue Shield. According to the statement, BC-BS paid the Medical Center $85.72 of that total. Compare that to the approximately (allowing for a little inflation since last year) $26.99 they could have paid had they been willing to reimburse Osco Drug. Or perhaps BC-BS would have preferred that I not have a flu shot at all (no cost to them!) and taken the chance that I wouldn't contract a case of the flu severe enough to require, say, 5 days hospitalization.

Oh yes, and the amount I owe the Medical Center is $35.28. By playing this game, $8.29 more comes out of my flexible spending account. It is worth it just to prove a point about the state of our medical insurance system in this country.

Go! Mommy Go!

The 34th annual Chicago marathon was today; it was bright and sunny, the turning trees sparkling in a gentle breeze, and, alas poor runners, warm. Moses Mosop, of Kenya, won in a stunning two hours five minutes and 37 seconds; the first woman to cross the finish line was not far behind: Russian  Liliya Shobukhova ran 26.2 miles in two hours eighteen minutes and 20 seconds. Athleticism like that really excites my admiration. And by "like that" I mean anyone who can run, trot, walk or crawl, 26.2 miles in a single stretch at all.

In Chicago, all roads to the center of the city, where the marathon is run, are blocked off for hours and hours. I hadn't noticed the coincident date when I bought a  ticket to my first matinee in Lyric Opera's 2011-12 season, Jacque Offenbach's Tales of Hoffmann. The opera house is one block from Franklin Street, an appreciable stretch of the course of the marathon. Although Lyric avowed that the street closures surrounding the house would have been removed by the city a good two hours before the curtain was to rise, and they were, farther away from the house, between it and my route up Lake Shore Drive, plenty of real estate was still totally inaccessible by car. So I had to go all around Robin Hood's barn to get to the my favorite opera parking garage (also on Franklin), but it worked out in the end. This car was parked there along with the opera fans'. Go Mommy!!

Oh, and the performance was fantastic too. You may not think you're familiar with the music of Tales of Hoffman, but you are. Click and listen through the snippets of music!  And speaking of athleticism, this was a performance very demanding of the cast (and very entertaining to watch). I can hardly imagine projecting one's beautiful singing voice to an audience of 3,500 people and dancing vigorously (and gracefully) around the stage at the same time. 

Lots of aerobic capacity around this city today!

Do the math. I dare ya!

OK, so how much do three"Coca Cola Fridge Mates" of soda cost? How about one pack? Let's see...buy two, get one free. But how much do two cost? Three, says the sign, cost $4.00 each, or, if I'm figuring that right, $12.00 (far from a bargain). But if you buy two, and get one free, that's not the same as buying three, is it? 

What's your best guess?

Swirling down a black hole...

Working very hard night and day on a big grant proposal -- by this weekend it'll be as good as it's ever going to be and out the door. Then I will return to my normal routine, including posting a blog now and then, even better, having time to read favorite blogs of others! (I miss keeping up with ya'll!) But meanwhile I do have a new camera and lens, and took a brief walk out to Promontory Point, a little spit of parkland that sticks out into Lake Michigan just at the latitude where I live. Here's KLK (dressed for jogging, not for fall weather) enjoying an autumnal late afternoon, the City of Chicago beyond. I have also taken time to notice that leaves are changing--how could all that be happening with me too busy to notice? Fall is my favorite season, I'm so glad it's here again!

I adore you Adorama, but...

...I had a few camera supplies to buy, including lens cleaning tissue, so I checked the big two or three on-line sites for cameras and photo supplies. The cheapest on Adorama's website was this 99ȼ packet. But before plunking down 99ȼ, though, I wanted to know what I was getting for the money. A reasonable question, and I took advantage of an "Ask a Question" button that took me to a form into which I could insert my question, which was: "How many sheets per pack?" I assumed someone at Adorama would respond, but over the next three or four days, this is what my question yielded in my email box:

You asked: How many sheets per pack? BORIS H: There are 30 sheets You asked: How many sheets per pack? ALBERTO P: I recommend you to buy microfiber for lens cleaning instead of paper tissues. Each pack has 50 sheets but I don't use it any more. You asked: How many sheets per pack? ANN H: I doesn't say on the package - but it looks like about 50 sheets. You asked: How many sheets per pack? STEVEN G: The package does not say. They are very thin and a little tricky to count but it looks like about 40. The measure about 2 7/8 x 4 inches. You asked: How many sheets per pack? JOHN P: There are 50 soft lens tissues per pack. I purchased these tissues because of their strength and softness. They are great to use because they do not wear away the protective coating found on many high end lenses. I would also highly reccomend (visibledust) brand lens cleaning fluid. It is streak free and the best that I have used to date

You asked: How many sheets per pack?

DENNIS S: I didn't count them, I guess around 40.

You asked: How many sheets per pack?

STEVE B: Hi - I'm not sure how many sheets were in the pack. I've used some; there are still about 40, so I'm guessing there were 50 sheets. Not much help.
It's a small pack that fits neatly into my pack, which is why I bought it.

You asked: How many sheets per pack? 

KEVIN F: There are 50 sheets per pack, I'd buy more than one pack though and its a great price. Just buy some other stuff since you're paying shipping, like lens solution.

As far as I can tell, these are all from other customers whose attention was somehow brought to my question, not from Adorama customer service staff, who might have been expected to have the answer, or at least, to answer consistently. 

Since all those "helpful" answers weren't forthcoming immediately, and I found all the things I was shopping for at Adorama's biggest competitor B&H, I ended up buying a pack of 100 sheets (clearly marked), plus all the other items on my list, from them instead. I paid more than 99, but at least I knew what I was getting.

The other day I had a rare few moments to descend four stairs from the sidewalk down into one of my neighborhood (Hyde Park, Chicago) icons, 57th Street Books, a local branch of the Seminary Coop Bookstore, and a semi-subterranean candy store for bibliophiles.  I not only like the books, ample selection of sophisticated magazines (Nature, Science, Economics, many other more or less well-known titles in science, nature, literature and the arts) and classy note cards, but also the blank books, journals and calendars, and especially, the address books, where I focused my attention that day. What went through my mind was the happy question, “could it be time to buy a new address book?” since for some reason I’m not only very picky about my address books, but, also, very fond of the ones finally choose. Acquiring an especially nice new one is a treat. 

Address books & personal journals shelf, 57th Street Books

There have also been times–most likely at the approach of holiday card season, since I otherwise hardly write old-fashioned letters any more–when I’ve thumbed through whatever address book I had at the time and noticed how many people have moved or passed away since the book was new.

When I do that and decide it's time to start afresh, the other thing I do–neither conscientiously nor even consciously in the early years–is save my address books. This has proved to be invaluable as I try to reconstruct past times, places, and people, and especially during the several months I devoted to writing my (currently languishing) life story. While I can’t date them, I can order them by who is in them and who is not.

The oldest one I have, from all the evidence within, was acquired during my college years. I certainly had it during grad school, given all the Arizona addresses in it. I then got a new one around the time I met my (now ex-) husband, because his family and friends, some in his handwriting, show up. The next one after that has all of those people and many more, and survived my divorce and early acquaintance with KLK because he, but not his family, are there. 

After a while it too got filled with too many cross-outs and sad reminders of those gone before us, and arrows to the next blank page for my mobile friends’ next, and then their next, addresses. Another one, the “Victoria and Albert Museum CATS Address Book” has KLK's family and friends plus all of mine. It too was eventually filled up and I went on to the next, and the next. 

There are eight oldies altogether, plus my current fun Nancy Drew Address Book: Nancy’s Mysterious Letter, in which each alphabetic division is named for an appropriate Nancy Drew book: “G” for The Secret of the Golden Pavilion, and “S” for The Secret of Shadow Ranch, and so on.  The illustrations are picked from the earliest editions–those are the ones most familiar and pleasing to me–and what I consider to be undistinguished and generic latter day editions. No mind, I still love it. 

I like the picture on the left!

But to return to my question: Could it be time to pop for a new address book? The disappointing answer came to me right away: No, Veronica, you don’t need a new address book. This is what your address book looks like now:

(Regular readers might note the irony of this.) 

Sigh...

I jumped (or did I fall?) off the cliff!

I did it. Since you last heard from me, we (KLK and I) set up my new computer. It's running on 64-bit Windows 7. To boot, I installed some seriously updated software, and downloaded new drivers for my beloved old Canoscan 8600F scanner and my equally old HP Deskjet 9800 which I love because it has a duplexer.
I feel like I landed on a new planet. Nothing looks or acts familiar. The machine is stupid. I'm stupid. Or both. It's so frustrating: the printer won't double side; Photoshop doesn't see the scanner!...I need Valium!
For years I've been using various versions of PhotoShop to manage my digital images as well as to digitize print images. All of a sudden PS CS5 won't "just do it" from the Canoscan, while it's little brother, Adobe Acrobat, does just a fine job. Except using Acrobat instead of PhotoShop takes several extra steps because it expects the image to be PDFs and not JPGs. It took me at least an hour to get to the point where I could make it work. This is eating my life! Giving me headaches! I'm in withdrawal!!

The images I was intent on scanning are photos from Hurricane Carol that whipped up the eastern seaboard all the way to Martha's Vineyard in August of 1954, the first summer my parents rented a little cottage there.  I have no  specific memories of the experience, only vague impressions (I was 4 years old) and nothing concrete to tether them to, other than these photos my mother took. Here they are, with thoughts of Hurricane Irene, that bitch who might just do it to the Vineyard again. 
In any case, here at last are the photos:

Menemsha

Edgartown

Here's hoping the Vineyarders and all the summer vacationers fare better this time around.

Wordless Wednesday on Saturday

Sometimes, time does stand still

Digital image of the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone River, Yellowstone National Park, June 2011:

Scanned Kodachrome 64 slide of the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone, July 1981:

The tall burned brown and yellow-spiraled snag stands on the canyon shelf to this day. How long it had already been there the first time I saw it? How many years was it a vital living tree, and how many decades--or centuries--will it remain an upright monument to some wildfire fire that made it half-way into the canyon?

Attention lovers of the West, bears, nature, mountains and hiking!

Amusing Musings recommends a new discovered blog, Ecorover. Check it out!