Last year I worked at the John Ball Zoo in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Unlike the delightful Barrow sun, which I think I have mentioned on one or eight occasions, the evil Grand Rapids sun beats down with relentless ferocity. It wrenches drops of sweat from even the most stationary skin with boundless efficiency. I seem to take to monotonous jobs, and last year this meant selling birdseed glued to a stick and harnessing the excitable would-be zipline riders just before their 18 second journeys. That sun did a number on me. (Fortunately, Lake Michigan and my favorite beaches were never far away.)

One typical day, while standing and dripping beneath a broken patio umbrella, I was minding my own business, busying myself with accidentally hot-gluing my fingers together instead of managing to get the seeds on the popsicle sticks. On this day I encountered an unfortunate family who seemed to think that “tortoise” is synonymous with “female turtle”. I am under strict orders not to abandoned my broken umbrella, or I would have hastened to correct the misconception as the family walked away. The moral of this woeful tale is, of course, that education, particularly science education, could do with a little more emphasis.

I am trying to absorb as much science as possible, and am really enjoying talking with other researchers about their work. Sometimes they present their projects to the community and I can learn science without bothering to have a conversation with them!

We got up at the crack of dawn part of the morning that comes before the kitchen is open for breakfast to participate in a webinar with Elizabeth, the teacher from Florida, and Paulo, the doctoral student she is working with. Denver the Owl Guy rounded out the group, and altogether the event went well, despite some early technical difficulties. I’d not known much about Paulo’s work before, but now I have information suitable for an audience ranging in age from eight to eighty! (These people were supposedly lurking at computers around the country, listening to us talk into the speakerphone, but I have no proof of this.) The webinar is supposed to be archived here, but I didn’t check to see if it worked. I have little to no desire to relive my improvised speech about local wildlife.

On Tuesday night we took a trip into town to see a presentation at the library (!!!!). I love libraries. A researcher who worked at BASC in 2004 was in town visiting after attending NICOP and before returning home. Torsten’s research is also in the arctic, but it is in Siberia rather than North America. (He mentioned to me that the internet is a little frightening, being a somewhat permanent record of various on- and off-line activities, so I may be breaking the rules by stating his name. However, he also chided me for writing “a book” in my blog every day, and clearly I continue to be long-winded, so that’s two strikes.)

The pictures that Torsten showed from his research station at a remote location in the Lena River Delta were beautiful, though I was assured that it’s easy to take great pictures there. Some of the local vegetation was identifiable from the pictures, and it was the same old Eriophorum and Pedicularis that we have come to love here. I was rather proud of myself for noticing it (but also glad that Jeremy and Job neglected to quiz me!).

I believe that there is a presentation on Saturday, too, from one of the UTEP people. If not, there’s sure to be a presentation on something. (Not in the library, though. Rats.) Until then I will continue to learn things here and there at dinner, such as last night when I discussed reindeer herding with a young woman named Karen.

When I get tired of learning (possibly never), I can teach. Today I taught Jeremy the difference between less and fewer.