6 October 2018 Leaving for the East Coast

I'm flying out this morning to the East Coast. I've got lots of presentations planned over the next two weeks. This coming Thursday, I'll be presenting at West Chester Friends Community School, where I went to 1st through 6th grade (class of '70 in West Chester, Pa!). My mom is coming up from Florida to visit with my brother (who still lives in the area) and I, and I'm delighted that she's going to be able to come along for this school visit – she taught there in the 60's. I don't do a lot of work with elementary age students, so I've been thinking a lot about how to hold their attention. The following Monday, I'll be at Washington-Lee High School in Arlington, Virginia, where PolarTREC and Upward Bound teaching colleague Kate Miller works.

Tuesday, I'll be doing something at my old high school, St. Andrews School, in Middletown, Delaware. Did you ever see the Robin Williams movie "The Dead Poets Society"? It was filmed at St. Andrews.

And Wednesday, I'll be at Lower Merion High School, in Ardmore, Pennsylvania, where my good friend over two decades of polar science teaching Steve Stevenoski teaches. Lots of neutrino talk!

I WAS going to head to Puerto Rico on the 19th, to work on our developing fundraising for Puerto Rico project. We need photographs, video, and interview material for our campaign, and I was really looking forward to working with PolarTREC teacher Armando Caussade on our project.

Thursday morning, my wife got news that her mother had passed away. I've had to cancel the Puerto Rico leg of the trip for now, in order to be in Watsonville, California for the funeral and family gathering. I'm hoping to get to Puerto Rico in November...

A word about mi suegra Socorro Favela, or "Ma Coco" as my boys called her. Born in 1925 in tough times in the tough mining state of Durango, Mexico, she was honest to a fault, a great singer, and unfailingly generous. She loved to talk and debate, and among her favorite points when I was going to the South Pole in 2002 : "Why would you ever go there? It's just full of snow." Her house was full of religious imagery, and I gave her a framed photo of Scott's cross which I took in 2002. The cross was put up by Scott's men more than 100 years ago on a hill above where McMurdo Station was later built. They inscribed the final stanza of Tennyson's "Ulysses" on the cross.

A life lived in service to others: Socorro Favela. Rest in Peace.

Ulysses (1842) Alfred Tennyson

It little profits that an idle king,
By this still hearth, among these barren crags,
Matched with an agèd wife, I mete and dole
Unequal laws unto a savage race,
That hoard, and sleep, and feed, and know not me.

I cannot rest from travel; I will drink
life to the lees: All times I have enjoyed
Greatly, have suffered greatly, both with those
That loved me, and alone; on shore, and when
Through scudding drifts the rainy Hyades
Vexed the dim sea: I am become a name;
For always roaming with a hungry heart
Much have I seen and known; cities of men
And manners, climates, councils, governments,
Myself not least, but honored of them all;
And drunk delight of battle with my peers,
Far on the ringing plains of windy Troy.
I am part of all that I have met;
Yet all experience is an arch wherethrough
Gleams that untraveled world, whose margin fades
For ever and for ever when I move.
How dull it is to pause, to make an end,
To rust unburnished, not to shine in use!
As though to breathe were life. Life piled on life
Were all too little, and of one to me
Little remains; but every hour is saved
From that eternal silence, something more,
A bringer of new things; and vile it were
For some three suns to store and hoard myself,
And this gray spirit yearning in desire
To follow knowledge, like a sinking star,
Beyond the utmost bound of human thought.

This is my son, mine own Telemachus,
To whom I leave the sceptre and the isle –
Well-loved of me, discerning to fulfil
This labour, by slow prudence to make mild
A rugged people, and through soft degrees
Subdue them to the useful and the good.
Most blameless is he, centred in the sphere
Of common duties, decent not to fail
In offices of tenderness, and pay
Meet adoration to my household gods,
When I am gone. He works his work, I mine.

There lies the port: the vessel puffs her sail:
There gloom the dark broad seas. My mariners,
Souls that have toiled, and wrought, and thought with me –
That ever with a frolic welcome took
The thunder and the sunshine, and opposed
Free hearts, free foreheads – you and I are old;
Old age hath yet his honour and his toil;
Death closes all; but something ere the end,
Some work of noble note, may yet be done,
Not unbecoming men that strove with Gods.
The lights begin to twinkle from the rocks:
The long day wanes: the slow moon climbs: the deep
Moans round with many voices. Come, my friends,
‘Tis not too late to seek a newer world.
Push off, and sitting well in order smite
the sounding furrows; for my purpose holds
To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths
Of all the western stars, until I die.
It may be that the gulfs will wash us down:
It may be that we shall touch the Happy Isles,
And see the great Achilles, whom we knew.
Though much is taken, much abides; and though
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven; that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.