– and almost awake. Early on Tuesday morning, I participated in a video conference (1 frame per second images, plus a teleconference phone call for our voices) with an Honors English high school classroom in Loudoun, Virginia, USA. There were about 6 of us around a table, including an iceberg glaciologist, a diver/musician, an information technology staff member, a school teacher working in the admin offices, myself, and the National Science Foundation representative.

Event time? 4:30 AM. (I got up early, washed hair, and drank some black tea.) It had to be done at that early hour to avoid bandwidth issues on Antarctica’s end — plus it was a morning class time in Virginia. The students’ questions were excellent and ranged from scientific inquiry to social adjustments, life on the ice — even relationships between artists and scientists. I wore my fur hat, since I figured that would be amusing to watch on their end of the video. I wonder what sort of impression such a conference would have made on me, at that age, if I’d been able to participate in a live conversation with a group of interesting folks in Antarctica….