18 November--Meet the Doc(s)

Meet Doctor Harry Owens, head doctor of the McMurdo General Hospital.  My biggest disappointment is that you'll never be able to meet Harry.  He's absolutely inspirational!  Harry has been coming down here for 4 of the last 5 seasons, if I have this right.  But as I talk to him in the clinic (for my back) or at a table in the galley, more and more things just keep spilling out.  For instance, he once had a practice in Alaska for a while, but much of his career has been in very remote and under-served areas, like little Inuit bush villages in northern Alaska or on the Aleutian Peninsula.  Some of these have been in public health clinic settings and many others as a volunteer, most likely with expenses covered.  He's also spent a good long time as a doctor on a boat on the Amazon River in Brazil and most recently in southern Sudan.  Working on the Amazon, he learned Portuguese and used that later working in Guinea-Bissau and Mozambique, other parts of the Portuguese speaking world.  I can't even remember the list of all the countries he's volunteered in as doctor, but believe me, it's long.  A number of people do this sort of thing in their retirement after they have worked through their careers; Harry has been doing this for much of his career. 

As an aside, I learned later--after this was originally posted--that he grew up on a sheep ranch 25 miles northeast of Flagstaff and still has relatives living in town.

One of his secrets has been to keep his wants and needs low, though he apparently he has a small forest cabin in the Willamette Valley in Oregon to retreat to between medical tours. You have probably never met anyone as cheerful, upbeat, and eternally optimistic as Dr. Harry.  He's the sort of person I can vaguely remember reading about at my aunt's house in the "My Most Unforgettable Character" section in her Reader's Digest magazine.  Much better would be a New Yorker profile of him by one of my favorite non-fiction writers, John McPhee.  Does anyone out there know of a budding writer who could write about this marvel for the larger world?  I'm serious!  Let me know and I can get his contact information.

Some of you have asked about how we live.  There are a number of dorms here, but most FNGs start off at Building 155.  It's conveniently central to everything, including the galley, computer kiosk, barber shop, the store, ATM (yes, an ATM, who would have figured that?) and recreation office.  Some of the rooms along the outside walls have windows, which is problematical during the 4 months of 24 hour a day light.  Keeping the room dark enough to sleep can be a challenge.  During the winter I suspect these rooms could be colder.  Many more of the rooms have no window, which can be a bit creepy at first.  Mine is one of those. 

My corner of the room.

   We each get a wardrobe, a nightstand and part of a bunk-bed.  We've chosen to set them up as singles and I've got my raised high enough that the nightstand fits partly under the bed to save room and giving me more storage under the bed.  Two of the roommates have hung blankets around their corners, giving themselves more privacy, but making their corner even more dungeon-like to my tastes.

I think this is the famous milvan (shipping container) that was blown over by the wind at some point recently.  Look closely and you'll see 3 concrete blocks attached to it; there are several more on the other side.  It took the milvan and the blocks and rolled them all over a few times.  If I'm right, a cubic yard of concrete is about a ton.

This is located up on a hill called T-Site and I get to drive up here a few times a week.  The view is stunning.  There's an exciting NASA project going on up there that will have very real and spectacular results for all of us over the next few years.  Currently, all the worldwide satellite data that the the Big Guys use is at least 2 hours old when they get it to number crunch and it only covers about two thirds of the land areas of the globe.  This project will raise the percentage to 100% of the land and drop the time lag to 23 minutes.  This should have big implications for tornado forecasts in the Midwest and flooding predictions in low-lying places like Bangladesh.  (Maybe even New Orleans?  Nah, that gets into issues of race andclass.)  It relies on some new satellites going up and these haven't been budgeted yet so far, but let's hope that that happens.

Finally, I haven't been able to keep myself away from the Ob Tube and its ethereal lighting.  Here are a few more of that.

As wonderful as seeing all this for the 4th (!) time was, it was perhaps even neater seeing it through the eyes of someone else, someone new to it.  The trip was spontaneous.  Another shuttle driver came over at dinner and I was describing how fantastic the views were under the ice.  We decided to go back and see it again.  A gentleman sitting near us asked if he could go along and we invited him, too.  It turned out that he was a grantee down here for 3 weeks from the University of Alabama at Birmingham.  Dr. Asim Bej, here 30 years from his native Kolkata, has as his specialty the DNA of the algae and bacteria that grow under the ice.  Divers bring him the samples from under the ice or get samples from under the frozen lakes of the Dry Valleys, but he had actually never seen these in the wild.  He went ecstatic over seeing his field of study in its actual setting, in its context.  It was such a pleasure to have helped him get to see this.  Very gratifying!

To close, in an adjoining room someone is practicing "Over the Rainbow" and "Greensleeves" on the tuba of all instruments--over and over again and not all that well.  A real experience.  Bless them, they deserve to get good.