Pictures of us all in the science tent, as we do every night – talking about the day’s work and Johnny reading to us about the early Antarctic explorers.

In a world where internet is master, it has been quite a change of pace for us to be disconnected for now 5 weeks. Here in the field, we rely on downloaded music, movies, and books (except that downloaded items from streaming services delete after a month without internet connection…Lauren and Nicole were heartbroken that they couldn’t watch the rest of Mrs. Maisel). Because we can’t google every question, we listen to the knowledge of our teammates.
I have actually enjoyed being disconnected, it has resulted in less distraction and more concentration on meteorite hunting and team work. It is wonderful that we have enough of a connection to be able to stay in contact with our loved ones using satellite phones. In our spare time, the team has amassed quite a book list; below we include books we have partially or fully finished while on this expedition.
Every night, Johnny reads us diary entries from the explorers in the early 1900s*, who were trying to reach the South Pole first. We read the entry that corresponds to the specific day, for example today January 20th 2020, we read the January 20th journal entries of Shackleton’s first attempt to the South Pole (1907-08) and the South Pole race between the teams of Scott and Amundson (1913). It is humbling to listen to their adventures and imagine ourselves in their shoes; wearing wool, fur or seal suits, having body temperatures of only 94 degrees F with frost-bitten hands and feet, and only eating biscuits, pemmican (a mixture of mostly meat, fat, and oats), and cocoa. The early explorers had no outside contact and spent a fair amount of time worrying if they would find their next food cache or survive all-together. We are living a warm and luxurious life in comparison!
Also, special birthday shoutout to ANSMET member Lauren!! If you look closely at the pictures, you can figure out how old she turned 🙂

-From Emilie, listening to the sounds of popping ice instead of streaming music in Davis-Ward, Antarctica

*Johnny’s nightly readings come from The Race to the South Pole  by Roland Huntford and The Heart of the Antarctic by Ernest Shackleton.

ANSMET team reading list for 2019-2020: The Worst Journey in the World by Apsley Cherry-Gerrard,  Where the Crawdad’s Sing by Delia Owens, The Water Dancer by Ta-Nehisi Coates, Becoming by Michelle Obama, Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry, 1Q84 by Haruki Murakami, The Girl with Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson, Seabiscuit by Laura Hittenbrand, Bold Endeavors by Jack Stuster, Shackleton’s Forgotten Men by Lenard Bickel, Son of the Morning Star by Evan S. Connell, Primitive Meteorites and Asteroids by Neyda Abreu, Accelerando by Charles Stross, A Deepness in the Sky by Vernor Vinge, The Children of the Sky by Vernor Vinge, The Wheel of Time Series (books 1 through 6) by Robert Jordan, The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money and Power by Daniel Yergin, The Longest Winter by Meredith Hooper, Optics of Charged Particles by Hermann Wollnik, Beloved by Toni Morrison, Moral Tribes by Joshua Green, The Gambler / Bobok / A Nasty Story by Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Possessed by Albert Camus, Sapiens by Yuval Noah Havari, A Candle in the Wind by Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Marking Time by Dunan Steel and  Moll Flanders by Daniel Defoe.