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The Gulf of America

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Written by: Rod Boyle

Category: Blog

Published: 28 January 2025

Hits: 181

In the news, too much news, really, but Google has decided to go ahead and rename the "Gulf of Mexico" the "Gulf of America". 

We, of course, don't have to be a part of this. Google has decided to concede and skew it's results in favour of the Presidency, we can find other search engines and mapping tools that don't. 

And we should, we've seen the propaganda arm of the US  under way, and to rely on it for any sort of useful information is not only useless but dangerous.

Here are a list of search engines that have yet to kiss the Orange Menaces *ss:

• duckduckgo
• qwant
• mojeek
• MetaGer

And some mapping tools that may well leave the Gulf of Mexico as it is:

• Openstreetmap
• Osmand
• HereWeGo

There are many others. Get out of the habit of using what are clear propaganda arms of the US and feeding Google your ad-revenue.

 

Sleep, Cold, Fevered Dreams

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Written by: Rod Boyle

Category: Blog

Published: 26 January 2025

Hits: 206

Friday morning, wake up under the weather, all day. 

Exhausted, this a result of what I suspect to be a bad head & chest cold. I finish work early, am asleep by 9:00 PM, Saturday morning up at 9:00. All night the same dream, I can't recall it, just a couple of objects...

Up at 9:00, coffee, go get some groceries, exhausted again, sleep another 4 hours, then read, head to work.

Not as bad as Friday night.

Then bed. All night, lying, stray thoughts, not images, exhausted but it doesn't seem I ever fell asleep at all, although I must have, I would remember a table in the restaurant, have to go check on them, then I'd realize I was in my bed, there are no tables in the restaurant, and so try to fall asleep again.

This morning, up way too early, but I'll try and nap again later. Eating Fisherman's Friends like their going out of style, and then I read the byline "In case of accidental overdose", and suddenly I'm reading the rest of the package, "Take as required", I mean...

***

Today, such an early start and completely without motivation. No news, so to speak, but tonight is a poetry slam and I should be polishing off a couple of masterpieces so I can show up and compete...that will be the challenge of the day, to see if I can focus long enough to get a couple - just a couple - of poems done.

 

The Worst Journey In the World - Aspley Cherry-Garrard

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Written by: Rod Boyle

Category: Books

Published: 23 January 2025

Hits: 232

“Exploration is the Physical Expression of Intellectual Passion”

Now, this book, at over 600 pages, took me far too long to finish. This is no fault of the author, or the book, it is Five Stars, rather more of my temperament that having been to the Poles with Shackleton and Scott and again in the mind of Cendrars, and being thoroughly persuaded that it's hell on Earth, why then did I return with Cherry-Garrard?

Well. His take on it is as good as the others. By far the youngest member of Scott's failed Antarctic mission he survived 3 years in the Antarctic, being on the team that helped depot up supplies for Scott's final push to the poles, and again on the team that found his grave.

So, how to break it down? 

#1) Criticism: It really could have benefitted from some maps - timelines, depots, points of interest, photos and Wilson's watercolours. At 600 pages another hundred or so more wouldn't have mattered and would greatly have clarified where/what they were up to. And while I looked these things up online that's not the point, when my nose is in a book I like to keep it there. This is the publisher's error, not the authors.

#2) The Men: The descriptions of his colleagues, characters, gentlemen every one of them, men of action, substance, character,  united in a higher purpose, that of science, of reaching the pole, and camaraderie unto death. Remarkable how men can get along in the face of such adversity and environs. This class of humanity I fear has by-and-largely gone extinct. 

#3) The Environs: Antarctica, of course, but add in the temperatures - lowest recorded on earth, close to -100 degrees Celsius, the blizzards, the precarious sea ice, calving icebergs, bottomless icy blue crevasses, bottomless and echoing and despite countless slips and misadventures not one of the party was lost to one, 4 months of utter darkness in the winter, 4 months of daylight in the summer, the Aurora Australis, eruptions of Mt. Erebus against the perpetual Antarctic Night, add to this landscape the limited provisions, dietary and otherwise, the dogs, the ponies, the failing motor sledges, the sleeping bags and reindeer mittens/coats of 1911, the frostbite, of the toes, fingers, cheeks, noses, faces, spreading to the feet (as in Oates), snow goggles & blindness, headaches from the pressure ridges, Scurvy, Dysentery, the altitude of the Polar Plateau (over 9,000 feet), well, you get the idea. "Worst Journey in the World" is an understatement. Fun fact: James Clark Ross named Mt. Erebus and Mt. Terror after his ships (and the Ross Ice Shelf after himself) - these ships, of course, would go on to later infamy at the other pole with the Franklin Expedition. This is a journey into the furthermost recesses of mind, the darkest of places we cannot but dimly imagine flanked by the aptly named volcanoes that guard it’s shores.

#3) The descriptions of the Sea Life: - the comical Emperor Penguins, the Charlie Chaplins of the South Pole, and their egg stealing, incubation of rocks, the raising of the penguins, the dire expedition to try and retrieve their eggs, their lack of Christian charity and ungentlemanly conduct in pushing one another off the icebergs to check the waters for sea lions and Killer Whales.

On that note, the descriptions of the Whales, especially Killer Whales, the dogs, ponies and people being hunted by them while out on the flows, to see them breaking up the ice and rolling out upon it to turn their heads for a glance of what might be a new and tasty treat, for those who deny that we are prey is only because of our familiarity with them (or theirs with us), once upon a time this wasn't so.

And, his digression to describe his delivery of the Emperor Penguin eggs to the Natural History Museum, to be summarily and rudely dismissed by scientists who have no idea as to what cost was their acquisition...

#4) The character of the animals in an alien, inhospitable land, the ponies, rebelling, biting, kicking (Christopher), their various demeanours, some mild, hard-working, some otherwise, the killing them one by one to feed the dogs or lay rations at a depot, and the dogs, trying to escape where no paths to escape or survival existed, resisting the bit, the harness, hunger strikes, feigning injury to avoid pulling the sleigh, and the pecking order of dogs, dogs that nip the heels of others not pulling their weight, none questioning when members of their team disappeared, merely trust in the kindness of their masters, what realization had they that theirs were bit parts to a bigger tragedy, the “Rosencrantz and Guildenstern” to Shakespeare’s Hamlet? 

#5) The End: We all know how it ends, but to recap, Cherry-Garrard was part of the first relay to be turned back on December 22, 1911, the next relay of 3 was turned back on January 3, 1912. Scott chose 4 men to accompany him to the pole; Seaman Evans, Wilson, Oates & Bowers. On January 17th they reach the pole, only to find Amundsen's flag - he had beaten them by several weeks. They spend time, survey the area, and pick up a letter addressed to the King of Norway.

The return is grueling. On February 17th Seaman Evans dies at the foot of the Beardsmore Glacier, of a head injury and exhaustion. March 16/17th Oates, suffering serious frostbite and realizing that his presence is risking the survival of the party, steps from the tent into a blizzard, saying "I am just going outside and may be some time". He is never seen again.

March 19th to March 29th, the remaining 3 men are trapped in the tent in an unseasonal blizzard, only 11 miles from One Tonne Depot. They die of starvation and cold. On November 12, 2012 Cherry-Garrard is part of an expedition sent to find the lost party, and they recover the letters and diaries. Scott has taken pains to write to the widows of the men that accompanied them, endorsing their heroic and noble demise.

In the end Cherry-Garrard eulogizes Scott, speaks to the joy, the necessity of discovery, and then compares the expedition to the comparative success of Amundsen's, at only 99 days return, with dogs alone and no loss of life.

So, all in all a very worthwhile read. If not the "Worst Journey in the World" it was certainly a strong contender, and Cherry-Garrard does not sell it short. And Antarctica still remains relatively unexplored, the most formidable and hostile environment on earth.

But I don't care to read of it anymore, and perhaps will seek out some sort of Unicorn Chaser or play Candy-Crush until I can find more pleasant diversions. That said, I've started on "Confessions of Dan Yack", fortunately he hasn't yet gone to Antarctica, and perhaps, if I'm understanding it correctly, he doesn't. We will see.