*** INTERVIEW FOR BOSTON GLOBE NEWSPAPER ***


Dear Cheryl,						June 13, 1994


     I'm John W. Briggs, working here at the Pole this winter for 
CARA.  We didn't speak on the phone the other day, though I helped 
set up the call with the other guys.  I grew up in Westport Point, 
Massachusetts, where my folks still live and where I built a small 
backyard observatory.  Ten years ago I was on the staff of Sky & 
Telescope magazine in Cambridge, where I was an assistant editor. 
I've been with the Univeristy of Chicago's Yerkes Observatory for 
about three years, as an engineer. My wife, Elizabeth, is an 
accountant and also works at Yerkes.

     Here goes with your questions:

     Nicknames are not so widespread here in the winter as they 
are in the summer.  Of the 27-person winter-over crew, maybe only two 
have nicknames, and of them, only one, Thumper, uses it full-time.  It's 
a little silly when a whole group adopts nicknames, like, say, in 
"Top Gun."  (The Pole Station is very much demilitarized since its early 
days, by the way.)  Here we're on a first-name basis.  When nicknames 
do crop-up for some of our characters, though, I'd say they're used 
quite affectionately.

     This is my third visit to the South Pole.  The other two were 
during short summer seasons, and each was only for a month or so.  
CARA's principal future research will be during the winter, so our 
summer efforts will be mainly preparatory.  And as interesting as a 
summer visit is to Pole, you can make only a limited comparision 
to the extremes of a winter-over.  Most visitors aren't able to 
stay here the 10 months or so that winter-over requires -- I feel 
lucky being able to do it!

     Back home, we rent a small cottage on the grounds of Yerkes 
Observatory that was originally built for graduate student housing.  
Some of the various South Pole employers make allowances for the 
disruption you face when you come here to live a year.  In my case, 
Liz is at home with our six animals (not counting the fish!), so I 
didn't have to worry about closing-up or sub-letting a place, like 
some other folks do.  Still, you can imagine how there's a lot to 
plan and worry about before going on such a long deployment as this -- 
taxes, power-of-attorney, etc.  We don't have the communication 
here that everyone else takes for granted.

     What piece of furniture do I miss most?  --Unquestionably, my 
cat!

     What incentives for my being here?  They are certainly more 
idealistic, I'm afraid, than the potential finacial savings that you 
mention.  I'm here to participate as best I can in CARA's scientific 
enterprise, and we all hope to learn something worthwhile in the process.  
Much of what we're doing at this stage is exploring the Antarctic 
environment for future high-performance telescopes.  Besides these 
immediate scientific and engineering goals, there're also many personal 
aesthetic rewards.  This place, in its extremes, seems unworldly.  If 
not beautiful, it's at least extraordinarily novel to me -- no matter 
that many others have visited already.  

     Take the constellations, for example.  I learned the northern 
patterns from the shores of Buzzard's Bay.  But here it's like a whole 
new Universe -- the entire southern celestial hemisphere always overhead, 
in one go!  And even the familiar borderline groups that I could glimpse 
low to the south at home are here disorientingly upside-down. 

     Dynamic aurorae blaze across the sky, sometimes so bright they light 
the snow like the full Moon.  The apparent motions of the Sun, Moon, and 
stars are all very odd.  And the experience of extreme natural cold is 
an adventure all in itself.  The United States has been camped here for 
over thirty years now, and the practicalities of Antarctic living are 
impressively well established.  We don't have to fear the cold anymore, 
the way I imagine early visitors might have.  While always respectful 
of it, we can now afford to simply wonder at the extreme temperatures 
and at the fact we function as easily as we do.

     It's true that we undergo a careful medical screening to come 
here, even for just a summertime visit.  That doesn't mean you have to 
be a super athlete.  It's more that they simply must check for folks too 
likely to blow a gasket or to suffer some other surprise ailment that 
would prove awkward in our remote setting.  They take a very careful 
look at your teeth, for example.  One fellow hoping to come this 
year was surprised to have cancer.  He couldn't come, of course, but 
at least he began treatment earlier than he might have otherwise known 
to.  The psychological "testing" is required only for winter-over 
staff, and it seemed much more low-key than I imagined it might be.  
It was just paperwork with some reasonable questions, and a brief 
follow-up interview with a friendly Navy psychiatrist.

     A recent winter-over physician at Pole Station happened to be a 
psychiatrist, and I recall an interesting opinion he expressed in his 
end-of-season exit report.  He stated that the winter-over experience 
does not cause mental illness.  Rather -- if you happen to have 
problems here, you likely arrived with them.

     There are stresses here, but I don't think we find them accute.  
Some winter-over crews function more harmoniously than others, as you 
would expect.  I think we have a very good group this year.  A while 
back, a New York Times article reported extreme winter stress, but I 
now view that story as unfortunately sensationalized, based on 
experience to date.  It's true, though, that this year's crew has 
long months yet to endure -- we'll see how it goes!

     I, sad or depressed?  I would not say "sad."  And "depressed" is an 
especially tough word to 'fess-up.  However, many of us (but not all) 
freely console each other in our mutual cycles of motivation.  My 
friends have days when *nothing* seems fun.  And so do I!  Together we 
recognize these occasional slumps as normal, and it becomes something 
we can laugh about.  

     The way to imagine our situation is to recognize how confined we 
are with our work.  Think of not being able to leave your office 
building, for A YEAR.  Except to step outside where the ambient is often 
as low as -70 F., sometimes below -100, with occasional windchills to 
-180.  No overtime pay.  You can't hop in your car.  Nowhere to go, except 
maybe just to another small building across the snow.  No cats allowed.  

     Sure, we have plenty of videos, "Ren & Stimpy" tapes, Stooges, -- 
everything like that.  And other recreational facilities.  But no matter 
how much you might enjoy your work, and the wonderous grandeur of the 
environment, it's not unusual to wage little mental battles once in a 
while.  And that's OK -- it's just another interesting facet of 
being here.

     Friendships here remind me very much of what you can find in 
residential college or boarding school.  Yes, they can be wonderfully 
strong.  We're living and working in close quarters, and we enjoy some 
great laughs.  It seems unusual and neat being able to re-experience 
this atmosphere with fellow adults, after you've put school days behind 
you.  There may be analogies to the friendships of military life, too, 
but I speculate, since I'm not a veteran.

     In my case, I've enjoyed astronomy since childhood, and I 
consider myself fortunate to have worked in the field as much as I 
have, since it's a tough racket to get into.  My father was editor of 
the Taunton Daily Gazette back when it was still a family-owned paper. 
In those days, the National Geographic Society sent out a monthly sky 
calendar, which was a press release highlighting eclipses, meteor showers, 
and the like.  I don't know if the Gazette ever ran that as news, but my 
Dad sure brought it home to me, and I made use of it.  I might have 
equally enjoyed getting into some other field, interested as I was in 
bugs, shells, rocks and anything burnable or naturally explosive -- 
but I certainly have no regrets now, working in astronomy.

     What do I personally "get" out of a field like this?  Well, my 
motivation, grounded as it is in the pleasure of actually *seeing* 
things like the old eclipses and meteor showers from our yard in Westport, 
remains, I suppose, a simple aesthetic one.  It turns out if you learn 
enough about this stuff you can actually go to work and contribute a 
bit to our general understanding of things.  You meet people along the 
way who share your eccentric enthusiasm for whatever you might have 
specialized in -- let's say, comets.  And among your comet colleagues, 
you'll likely discover good comradeship and the opportunity for very
satisfying collaboration.  On the other hand, you might also find 
burning competition.  I lament those students of science who are 
confronted by ugly competition before they enjoy good collaboration.

     Living and working in the dark?  Like so much else here, you get 
used to it.  Our observatory building is 1/2 mile away from the main 
Dome, where we eat and sleep.  Those of us working out in the "dark 
sector," which is new this year, walk more often than not.  When the 
temperature is below -90, it's bad to run the vehicles, so we *have* 
to walk.  The experience is not always peaceful, given how the wind 
can blow, but it's often beautiful.  Solemn, you ask?  Well, maybe a 
little bit, during the walk.  You're usually alone on the ice, and 
sometimes you can't see well.  Never in fear of getting lost, though.  
There's a safely rope, up on waist-level stakes, the whole way, with 
flags, too.  So far this season, we've never come close to actually 
needing it.

     So you get to one end of this dog-run, say to the Dome and its 
associated under-snow complex.  The main structure is 160 feet in 
diameter and now somewhat buried in blowing snow.  You forge in through 
the front door, stride a connecting tunnel, and you then enter the vast 
unheated cavern of the Dome.  Usually you cruise straight into the galley 
building, the social center of our little community.  Someone is hanging 
out there almost 24 hours a day.  The coffee's always hot, there're 
plenty of leftovers, and the illumination is by what we call "happy 
lights," full-spectrum fluorescents that are supposed to fight "seasonal 
stress disorder."  Good music, playing on the stereo, is not uncommon.  

     On the other end, at the observatory, it's more like walking up a 
stairway to a minature oil rig than into the Dome's giant ant farm.  Our 
building is on stilts to allow blowing snow to pass underneath without 
drifting up so much.  Telescopes and other instruments are mounted on the 
roof.  Indoors you notice more computers than anything else, though we 
also have a modest metal shop, lots of electronic test equipment, and 
piles of tools and other specialized stuff for maintaining the telescopes 
and related instruments.  We have a stereo, too -- known to blare James 
Brown.  Judge *that* solemn, man, if you dare to!

     What *things* do I miss the most?  I miss having a cat, as I 
mentioned.  You miss green things a lot, too, like grass.  I also very 
much miss convenient telephone communications.  But I suppose one 
should not dwell on such things.  I actually don't worry much about it, 
and I try to stay focussed on duties.  It's hard to make things work 
here, and there're always chores pressing.  

     Fun here is joking with friends hanging out in the galley.  We 
really have a lot of laughs!  Movies and books are here, too, but 
they're not so much fun as just distractions from one's confinement.

     I miss most my wife Liz, of course, who I've known since high 
school.  But I'm grateful that we're both on electronic mail via 
satellite and Internet, which allows for us much better communication 
than what's been suffered in the past here.

     I don't think living at the Pole will change me much, though I 
hope to feel a little more enlightened of the world, and perhaps of 
myself, for having been here.  One tends to become more introspective, 
I believe, being stuck here a year.  At home, you can plod along 
comfortably in a given situation, while years go by. Coming here is 
certainly a shock to your system!  I expect the experience will 
delimit one phase of life from the next -- as would any major move 
or job-change.    

     Airdrop, our one physical contact with the outside world during 
our 10-month isolation here, is a giant Lockheed Starlifter, screaming 
low overhead, producing parachute-borne crates.  And then off it goes 
back into the moonlight.  Airdrop will be wonderful, but lots of 
things can go wrong, and I haven't requested, nor am I counting, on 
*anything.*  Rumor has it that post-airdrop blues are a common 
moral problem.  The event defines the Beginning of the Rest of your 
Winter.

     It's hard to miss any sort of food, since we have such a seemingly 
preposterous surplus of it.  It's said that, should civilization end, 
and we were consequently REALLY stuck here, we would have a seven-year 
supply.  Long before that we would run out of heating fuel and freeze, 
unless perhaps we instituted some very radical fuel conservation.

     Our living quarters remind me of a school dormitory, although the 
standard private 5 1/2-by-10-foot rooms are extremely small -- like monk 
cells.  I have a crude desk and a spare computer set up in mine, which 
means I have virtually no floor space.  But I don't care.  I'm just 
grateful to have my own private flop.

     Fire is perhaps our greatest safety concern here.  Part of our 
winter-over preparation is a week-long no-fooling fire brigade school 
at the Rocky Mountian Fire Academy.  And we've had several real fire 
alarms so far this season.  Each  of our rooms is equipped with a small 
emergency escape door, exiting through the wall and into the cold Dome, 
to insure an extra margin of safety.

     Given the weight limitations imposed upon us, I took very little 
personal stuff from home.  But having been here a couple times before, I 
had some insight regarding what personal clothing to carry.  They issue 
great gear on your way in, through New Zealand.  But on the other hand, 
it's nice to have a little variety, for lounging.  It's like this -- you 
wouldn't want to spent a year in a boy scout uniform.  The extreme cold 
weather clothing and accessories become like a uniform after a while.

     The projects that are my responisibly are just a small bit of the 
total research enterprise of the season.  And further, each of my 
experiments is a front-line effort of rather involved collaborations 
back home.  One contraption that I'm running is essentially a light 
meter, sensitive to infrared radiation.  It scans the infrared glow 
from the Earth's atmosphere.  Astronomers have anticipated that, if 
looking in certain interesting infrared colors, the view through 
Antarctic air will be spectacularly clear and crisp.  So far, the data 
from my instrument, which was provided by Australian astronomers, and 
the data from another similar CARA experiment, seem quite encouraging.

     It's said that winter-over staff often become homebodies, at 
least for a while,  when they get off the ice -- much more content to 
spend time peacefully around the house and yard than to, say, go 
cruising a downtown scene, in a crowd.  A number of people choose to 
decompress in beautiful, peaceful New Zealand.  I expect to head home 
pretty fast, and it won't surprise me if I fit the homebody pattern.

     My hobbies have been very close to my work for a long time.  Here 
I find myself awfully consumed just keeping present experiments 
running as well as worrying about a number of important ones that are 
hardly begun yet.  Actually, answering your questions is something of 
a hobby for me.  I do a lot of public speaking back home, to astronomy 
clubs and school groups.  I also collect and restore old telescopes.  
I have a real whopper waiting for me  -- a "Rolls Royce" of a telescope! 
It must weigh several tons, and I can't wait to get started on it.

     I've read studies saying that people with intense hobby interests 
have historically done less well during Antarctic winter-over.  I don't 
see obvious evidence for that claim this year, but yet it could be very 
true.

     What voice do I miss most?  Well, all I can say is that hearing 
*any* familiar voice from family or friends is especially intense and 
delightful.  The importance of regular, unfettered voice communication 
with family is critically important for moral here.  Our present 
restriction to 10 or 20 minutes' personal phone use per week is too 
little -- no matter if it's already much better (they tell us) than 
what had the heros of yesteryear!  To hell with the heros, I say -- 
I want to Talk with my Wife!  The people here with children or medical 
problems at home face a particularly tough situation.  A couple 
seasons ago, a friend wintering here lost his father.  I lost my 
grandmother shortly after I arrived.  Events like these aren't 
unusual.

     What is my reputation here?  That's of course better known to the 
others, with their perspective, than to me, with my entirely normal 
but distorted mental mirror.  I'm content with how we all get along.  
The social dynamics of our crew are being studied by anthropologists 
using monthly surveys.  Our season is the last of this three-year 
study, which has been motivated in part by a potential analogy between 
winter-over and a long-duration space flight -- say, to Mars.  We 
affectionately call each monthly questionnaire "the monkey-man test."
Some of the monkey men sweated-through fire school with us, I suppose 
to get a better handle on us.  I gather their eventual paper, without 
naming names, will address the issue of reputation.

     My character?  Well, I think I'm *not* really a "nerd," even given 
my many nerd interests.  I guess I'm "extroverted," but not, I trust, 
a loudmouth.  My hulking mass is smarter, I hope, than it may 
look.  I *am* enthusiastic about my work, without, I hope, too often 
being breathless.  

     We've got enough musicians here at Pole this year that they've 
formed a rock band.  Our plumber is an excellent drummer, for example.  
So we have dance parties once in a while.  We clear the tables out of 
the galley and go at it, making lots of noise.   I get right into it, 
with everyone else, shaking it the way I was too inhibited to do in 
high school.  This is South Pole.  Who gives a damn?

     I don't have any problem with this interview.  It's a privilege.  
The realities here are interesting and sometimes amusing.  If we can 
share that, we've scored.

     While the experience of Antarctica can be easily overdramatized, 
it's certainly a wonderfully neat place.  The United States is leading 
much of the ongoing scientific exploration here -- in many diverse 
fields -- and Americans can take pride in that.

     About nine years ago, I met a man who had wintered here around 
1970, and I realized that there were opportunities to come here.  My 
wife at that time and I considered very seriously how we might do it 
together.  But she went on to her dream at NASA, and I to mine at 
Yerkes Observatory.  It's just an odd twist of fate that with Yerkes 
came a chance to work on the ice.

     The simple cold is probably the most amazing thing.  Step outside 
berthing, into the Dome, with wet hair?  My God, does your hair freeze 
fast!  Being actually at "The Pole" is of course equally amazing.  We 
can stroll out to the marker, whenever we feel.  But you forget the 
wonder of Pole after a while.  You can't forget the cold.

     During the winter season, a number of people work in small teams, 
say, like the construction crew, and consequently they maintain some 
semblance of a schedule, to stay together.  Not so for folks like me, 
running experiments.  We can generally keep hours as we please, and 
there are advantages and disavantages to this.

     For example, today I woke up at about 10:PM (we use New Zealand 
time here).  And now it's 3:AM, and I'm going strong.  I have the 
computer room in the Dome all to myself, and I can concentrate.  (And 
I'm wearing my own goose down booties, by the way, not sandels -- per 
one of your questions!)  Similarly, if I were working out in our small 
lab-shop, I wouldn't be bumping into my buddies around the bench.  You 
can get a little more done this way.  You work pretty much until you've 
just had it, and then you'll go lounge around with friends and maybe 
catch a movie, before you finally crash.  For some people, all this 
naturally runs a little longer than 24 hours.  So your schedule cycles 
around.

     Other folks are quite disciplined in staying with a 24-hour day.  
This faciliates interaction with a majority of the Station, which is 
healthy, and it allows catching the two regular meals as they're served.

     I don't know which routine is really best -- I just try to get a 
sound rest when I need it, and I stay as productive as possible.  I see 
enough friends to have a few laughs no matter what my hours are, and 
consequently I stay sane.

     More often than not, your own word -- Jovial -- describes the 
scene as I see it.  It's more a family atmosphere than most work 
situations.  But the mood of the Station can certainly change.  We've 
a long way to go, yet -- I mentioned already the historical problem of 
post-airdrop blues.  Some folks are a little more business-like than 
others, but nobody's a hardass.  Many people, however, are intensely 
devoted to their duties, which is a good strategy for getting through 
the winter.

     Regarding the cold: I remember well an airborne return to 
McMurdo, on the coast of the continent, at the end of a summer visit 
to Pole.  The sunny temperatures of Pole Station had dropped to -40 
by the time we left on the 3-hour flight to the ocean.  And when we 
stepped out onto the snow runway of the Ross Ice Shelf, many 
passengers exclaimed how wonderfully warm it was.  "Feels like 60 
degrees!" some guy shouted -- and I agreed.  Turned out, it was about 
20.  

     I gather that one just grows accoustomed to the bite of the cold 
outdoors at a place like Pole, and when you finally escape it, it's 
a slight disorientation to your senses.  Kind of like that unsteady 
feeling in your legs when you step off a gangplank after some days at 
sea.

     Right now, as I write, the temperature is about -44 F., with a 
light wind.  This seems so mild compared to the most uncomfortable we 
know that my colleague, John Kovac, very sincerely said 'how nice 
the weather was' as he strode out just now to work on his exposed 
radio telescope, 1/2 mile away, across the drifts.  

     The worst *I* know occurs sometimes during my climb up a 70-foot 
scaffold-like meteorology tower, where we've mounted fragile temperature 
sensors.  The experiment provides data on how low-level air turbulence 
will limit the resolving power of telescopes, and it's a shared effort 
between CARA, French, and Australian astronomers.  In the spirit of 
international collaboration, this is not something we want to goof-up. 
Experience revealed, to our dismay, that the sensors are destroyed by 
accumulating ice, if there're not covered and heated between data-taking 
sessions.  Thus, I have to climb that tower whenever I want to score data.

     At first, I had no idea if this were practical.  But it turns out 
to be entirely so, somewhat to my amazement, even in windchills as 
low as -160 F.  It's a pain, sure -- but, with the clothing we've got, 
and good common sense, it's no sweat.  While this is just a little 
experiment in the grand scheme of things, I'm really happy to be 
getting the data.

     I believe that one's sensory scale shifts here, with acclimation, 
to a stage where any outdoor cold, short of the onset of frostbite, is 
merely an uncomfortable nuisance.  I wear a full face mask that does a 
great job protecting my head.  It's gross, though -- it's like a 
dip-wick in a drool bucket.  No matter, because your face is protected. 
But when your gloves have frozen-through, and your fingertips are next, 
or maybe have already begun (because you were stupid and pushed it 
too far) -- THAT burning feeling is our winter-over definition of "cold."
           

     			##########

Note:  *...* indicates where I would use *italics.*

Sorry, Cheryl, for the delay getting back to you!  Because of a silly 
error on our end here at Pole, I did not hear about your list until 
some time after it arrived.

Please get back to me if you have further questions.


     				Cheers,

     					--John.