Images of

ANTARCTICA

Palmer Art

Photos © 2004 Seth White

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During my year at McMurdo I found a lot of interesting little things that people had left on station over the years...paintings, sculptures, jokes, and so on. Eventually I got enough photos of this stuff and made a webpage, which is here. I also noticed a few things like this at South Pole and put some pictures on my South Pole pages, although I didn't run across enough for a whole webpage...probably because people are too damn busy working. Pole is a work camp, plain and simple. But anyway, I found some of the same kind of things here at Palmer too and figured it would be nice to photograph them. This fireplace is in the corner of the dining room, and there is a beautiful metal sculpture of a whale sitting on top. And during his stay here, sheet metal wizard Nick Majerus fixed the stove's flue...so it's usable again. I was very surprised to see this stove when I walked in the door for the first time. This corner of the galley area is a cozy spot for sure. Palmer has an 802.11 wireless network as well, so you can plug in your laptop, crack a beer, and sit here by the fire if you like. Not bad at all.

Off to the side of the galley is the dishroom, where everyone washes their own dishes. You rinse them in the sink and then put them in a rack, which when full, will be slid into a sanitizer by whomever comes along. Then, when the dishes are done being sanitized, the next whomever will take them out and put them away. Like many things at Palmer, the dish routine is very informal and unregulated. This relies on the responsibility of the crew, and here it seems to work. In part, this is certainly due to the small numbers of people. It is much easier to maintain a level of responsibility and accountability in a small group, no doubt about it. I think this is one of the reasons so many lazy rude people get away with doing so many lazy rude things at McMurdo...because nobody will find out you did it, and besides, somebody will come along and clean it up. Or nobody will find out that you ripped off this such-and-such from so-and-so, and hell, that bastard probably deserves it anyway. It's much more personal here at Palmer, and everyone seems to get the message that we're here together on this little bit of rock in the middle of absolutely nowhere. But on the other hand, wouldn't some of the current Palmer crew probably act a little less responsible if they were at McMurdo in a larger group? Well probably some of them, in some ways. This includes me...I was a reasonably well-mannered occupant of McMurdo Station, but I find that my consciousness is somewhat elevated being here at Palmer. It is easy to lapse a little when there is nobody looking, or when nobody will find out, or when somebody else will come along and clean up...this is just human nature. But even accounting for the differences in peoples' behavior just due to the small numbers, I have gotten the impression that Palmer crews tend to be a bit better overall. Take the current group...there are a lot of extremely experienced people on station right now, and there are very few examples of ego or attitude. From meeting and talking to Palmer types, I had developed the impression that the USAP tends to hire people for Palmer with their attitudes in mind, i.e. looking for the more relaxed, agreeable people to come here. And my limited experience supports this...although since I am a "grantee" this doesn't really apply to me (science groups are outside of the RPSC hiring structure and pretty much send down whomever they wish...imbecile or not). But back to the dishroom: this is a little painting of a flowering vine that someone left on the wall. Nick tells me it was done by a woman named Cherie who is at McMurdo this winter.

Down in one of the labs in the Biolab building, I found a whiteboard that one of the beaker groups left...touting their noble and chivalrous deeds.

And speaking of the sanitizer, here are your instructions on how to clean this thing...you know, just follow the happy little elves. You may wonder after reading the sign...what the hell is "gash"? It is the term used here for the nightly after-dinner cleanup of the kitchen and dining room. You sign up for this once per week - another example of how Palmer works on the honor system. Well, it's not completely on the honor system...if you don't sign up the station manager will (gently) remind you. But still, nobody bitches and moans about this. The word "gash" in this context is a slang term of unknown origin which refers to the garbage left over after a meal. It seems to be a noun as well as a verb...thus in signing up for gash, you are committing to gash the gash. I did gash this Saturday, and along the way managed to put a large container of salad in the freezer. Yep, all ruined. Dani (our most excellent chef) wasn't thrilled about this, but took it in good humor. I wanted to pawn it off as a "winterover moment" but I can't use that one after only being here 2 weeks. Must have been sheer idiocy. But they'll get more 'freshies' on the next ship, so it wasn't so bad a faux pas as if I'd been at McMurdo or Pole!

This is a little wood sign, posted in the corner of a doorway in the dishroom. There's another one of these "knight watch" things in the GWR building garage.

Some olde-tyme snowshoes that someone mounted on the wall leading outside from the dishroom. Completely unrelated aside: the attitude toward drinking here at Palmer is very different from McMurdo. Relaxed, not strictly regulated, and not overdone. Just part of the routine...like drinking a beer at dinner is not a big deal. Drinking a beer while you're doing the weekly "house mouse" station cleaning will not get you fired. Saturday 5:30 cocktails before dinner is actually a station gathering. The bar doesn't have rigid hours. You don't seem to have people puking in the urinals. You don't have control-freak bar manager(ettes) spying outside the bar, watching the exact minute at which people left the bar so they can bust the bartenders who didn't shove the patrons out the door quick enough after the appointed closing time. And it's a BYOB bar here too, and again, it works quite well on the honor system. At McMurdo, it is a byzantine and punitive system under which the bartenders work. For example, they have this "closed" register system...and I know people personally who have been busted for being off on their money total by meager amounts (i.e. $1.75) at the end of a night but had no way of knowing they were off along the way. Gawd! It gets my pulse rate up just sitting here typing. Guess I'll have another sip of my beer...a fine Punta Arenas product called "Cristal". Yeah right. I don't know which is worse...the New Zealand swill that they import to McMurdo or the Chilean swill they import to Palmer. Want to know what my biggest gripe about Palmer is? The fact that they got dozens of cases of Sierra Nevada Pale Ale delivered from the ship I came down on, but not a single bottle of this has reached the store shelves yet. I innocently asked the store manager a couple times about this, and he said he'd have it out this week. Didn't happen, and I'm a little sore about it. But I'm not going to make waves. In no time I'll be back at the Falling Rock, imbibing some magnificent Colorado IPA...

This one is really excellent. The Biolab building is the main station building...like 155 at McMurdo. It has laboratory space and an aquarium, as you would expect from a building named "Biolab". But it also contains offices, berthing, the galley, and food storage. On the third floor is berthing, and on each door someone (a winterover in 1985 with initials SC) painted a local bird. There are thirteen different birds, 8 of which I've seen in the wild. The most beautiful of them all is the (completely white) Snow Petrel. A close second is the Antarctic Tern. I'm glad to have seen a few of these terns while here. These unbelievable birds will migrate from the Arctic to the Antarctic each year (thanks again for the video Francois). However I suspect the Antarctic Cornish Game Hen is the most elusive. This one adorns the janitorial closet, by the way (I'm staying in room 202).

I have been asking around a little bit if people know of any hidden pieces of art around station. Dave Tashner pointed me to these lamp covers along the walkway between Biolab and GWR that I'd overlooked.

Another one of a lamp cover, only a little darker.

Inside the carpenter shop is this whale rib. It compliments the whale vertebra that is hanging in the bar. Both of these things have been at Palmer for quite a while...Maggie Amsler mentioned them during the Palmer history slideshow that she gave right after I arrived on station.

A sign in the carp shop, advising you not to copulate in the hot tub. Good advice. Enough said. Above this is a scale model of Fenway Park...

...made by Johan, avid Red Sox fan and the current science tech here. He has been doing the science tech job for many years, both here and at Pole, and in fact was the Aurora Tech at Pole when I was at McMurdo. I actually stayed in loose contact with the other three science techs during my year at McMurdo: Johan and Mike at Pole, and Glenn at Palmer.

A stencil of a penguin and chick, along with a little krill painted on a carp shop door.

Another gem from the carp shop...safety first! If you are wondering what all the little holes on this are, they are from the official Palmer Station blowgun. They have some little cobble-job darts made from nails and duct tape, which fit nicely into a piece of conduit...

A bathroom shelf in the GWR garage...nothing great to see here, except the modified title of the book on the shelf cracked me up.

Some knots in a frame. Generic but cool.

In the GWR building stairwell near the medical office and station store, there are all the winterover portraits...dating back to the beginnings of Palmer Station in the mid-60's. They're all here...very cool.

Three more pictures here from what I like to call the "Hall of Crusties". Actually, I don't know how crusty you truly get here. I suppose that people along the way have really burned out on the place...after all, compared to most other places in the world it is small, it is remote, and it is cold. But this station is not below the Antarctic Circle, and therefore you have some direct sunlight all year round (although you have to hike to the top of the glacier to actually see the sun itself in mid-June). But today, May 30, even though it was foggy and cloudy, we still had a distinct ~6 hour long daytime, from about 10 am to 4 pm. This is distinctly different than McMurdo and South Pole, where the darkness is complete and lasts for several months (especially Pole). And although Palmer used to have a period of extended isolation, the ship now visits the station on a regular basis, year round. Actually, the ship won't be back later this winter for 3 months, but that is an unusually long hiatus. So overall, winter here, although it certainly brings its share of challenges, is not nearly the same as the other two stations. And so I'm guessing the people here don't get nearly as crusty towards the end of winter.

This isn't really artwork, but it is a nice tidbit of the station's history. It's a life preserver from the ill-fated Bahia Paraiso (see here, about halfway down the page).

This is one of the coolest weathervanes I've ever seen: a metal krill on the top of the sauna hut (yes, a sauna hut). This was made by the same fellow who produced the whale on the stove. Nice, nice work. A good monument to the poor little unsung things...each one is pretty much identical to the billions upon billions of other krill in the sea, and they all have basically the same main purpose in life: food for bigger sea creatures.

This isn't art either, but an interesting little thing hanging around the boat shop. Rick, the boating coordinator, says this was done by a leopard seal. These seals are without a doubt some of the most dangerous seals out there. They are big, strong, and often aggressive. I saw a skull of a leopard seal at the International Antarctic Center on my way through Christchurch, heading to McMurdo for the first time, and was impressed with the size of the teeth. An adult leopard seal could probably take my leg off at the thigh with no problem. In fact, a British diver at Rothera was killed last year by one of these things. They live around Palmer Station, and have taken a liking to gnawing on the zodiacs. Rick routinely finds the ends of the pontoons chewed up, with this one being a prime example. This seal must have been big, since it got its mouth around almost this entire plastic cone. I guess that in actuality, the instances of them attacking humans are very rare. But that is not comforting to me at all. If I was out in a zodiac and one of them started swimming around the boat eyeing me (as they often will do), I'd get the willies in a big way.

This is the Batcave.

The penguin stencil again, this time on a wall in the dive locker.

A little thing I found in the T5 hut - a penguin getting shot out of a cannon. Or maybe flying out of the water onto an ice floe to escape a leopard seal? I guess I'm a little bit fixated on the leopard seal? I'd actually like to see some of them (from a distance) but most have gone north for the season.

This is also in the T5 hut. It's a trio of penguins marching along on the tool board. From the signature I gather that Glenn (veteran scitech) made this nice painting.

I also heard about these imprints that people left on the cement foundations of the FEMC building. I finally tracked them down today, so here a pic of a nice snowflake.

Another one, of a snowflake and the Antarctic continent.

This is a great one - somebody's face. There is also a cement hand sitting in a window of the T-5 hut. Johan tells me this was sticking out of one of the T-5's foundations but somehow broke off. Fortunately, he rescued it and brought it inside.

Some funny stuff, found in an out-of-the-way corner of Palmer Station.

Someone hung a seal skull on this breaker box.

I can't believe I overlooked this one when I was walking around looking for material for this webpage. It's only the most obvious and recognizeable thing on station...the giant painting of an orca on the fuel tank!