This story from WaterAid:

Seven year old Punam Kumari Shaha brushes her teeth before going to school in Malahanma, Nepal. Her community worked with WaterAid’s partner NEWAH to build their own water supply and she is now able to use clean, safe water from a pump that is near her house.

As part of the project her community is also learning about hygiene education and Punam has been attending health education classes at school once a week. She has an older sister and they now teach each other and their family about good hygiene practices.

By educating people about good hygiene and the links between poor water, poor sanitation and disease communities can gain the full benefits from their new water and sanitation projects.

Donate to WaterAid to help other children like Punam.

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Snap a photo if the boat is landed. If you are in the boat and a leopard seal is chasing the penguin, toss him back into the water—FAST! You don’t want a hungry leopard seal in the boat. The seal will grab the penguin by its feet and smack it around until it’s dead. Leopard seals are also supposed to perform some fancy flipping maneuver that effectively skins the penguin, but I’ve also read the seal simply keeps flailing the penguin until it gets ripped into eatable pieces. The prospect of such a gruesome death is probably why a penguin flees so fast and will take the opportunity to jump into a Zodiac if it happens to be around. The Adelie penguin in this photo is just curious. No one chasing him.

The Boys of Terezin is a documentary file project that chronicles the lives of a group of young boys (aged 12 to 15) who published a magazine—Vedem (We Lead). What’s extraordinary is that they undertook this activity while imprisoned by the Nazis in the Terezin concentration camp during World War II. The boys wrote, edited, and illustrated more than 800 pages worth of content, all in secret.

Most of the boys were killed by the Nazis. A few survived. One of the boys hid the manuscript. Some of it survives today. After all these years, several of the surviving boys are still alive, and very old.

Music of Remembrance commissioned John Sharify to produce and direct a documentary about Vedem and the boys interned at Terezin. The film features interviews with the six remaining survivors – now spread across four continents. Mr. Sharify is the winner of several Edward R. Murrow and Emmy Awards. Although the documentary is in progress, it needs much more funding to finish.

This is your chance to be a filmmaker! Any donation—from small to enormous—is needed. If you are able to give a lot of money, you’ll get your name on the film as one of its sponsors. If you give a little money, you’ll be able to take pride in the fact that you helped bring this story to light. Music of Remembrance intends to have a premiere of the film in Seattle, to show it on public TV, and to enter the documentary in film festivals.

John Sharify is a class act; he’ll do justice to this story. Music of Remembrance has over a decade of experience of producing musical concerts, CDs, and commissioning new works. MOR’s mission is to preserve the musical legacy of Holocaust musicians. MOR has a stellar track record in getting things done.

For more information, contact Music of Remembrance at (206) 365-7770 or donate online.

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A Poem from Vedem:

We are all children, little ones
Playing with a colored ball.
We cry easily with ruddy cheeks
And then, with glowing faces
We look at a silvery world,
At green hillsides,
At life. We look ahead.
–Hanus Hachenburg (b. 1929, perished Auschwitz)

A few people asked me if I saw any polar bears during my recent trip to Antarctica. No, I didn’t. Polar bears live in the Arctic. If you want to see them, either go to Canada (where 60% of them live) or get to some other Arctic location, like Point Barrow, Alaska. Find out more about them and their melting habitat on David Suzuki’s website.

One person asked me if I met any Antarctica natives. In fact, I met several thousands of them. They live there only part of the year, so you might argue they don’t qualify as natives. Unfortunately we had a big communication problem. I don’t speak penguin. Penguins are very communicative with each other. After watching them for awhile, I could understand their primary motivation in life—fish and reproduction. A few seem to have some other interests, like racing!

That’s what it felt like during my recent trip to Antarctica. A tail here, a fin there, and the occasional glimpse of a blow hole or mouth. My companions and I wanted to see more. We were sitting in a small Zodiac boat in icy cold water watching mammals that are 50 feet long. What if one came up under the boat? I guess we trusted the whales knew what they were doing. They trusted we weren’t going to harpoon them.

You might have seen photos of whales jumping out of the water. That’s what we wanted to see. But these whales were feeding. Feeding humpbacks don’t do that, which made watching them a challenge. The whales typically approach a large gathering of krill from below, then drive them towards the surface, with mouth open. The whale engulfs the krill, snaps its mouth shut, and squishes the water out. A tasty meal.

When the petrel sea bird feeds, its feet patter on the surface of the water. It almost looks as if the bird is walking on water. There is a story in the bible about St. Peter walking on water. Hundreds of years ago someone familiar with that story named the bird after St. Peter. At least that’s what I’ve been told.

Petrels are a type of pelagic bird—they live on the open sea, flying to land only to breed. Non-pelagic birds fly close to shore; seeing them is a sign that land is nearby. If you can’t tell a pelagic bird from a non-pelagic one, you’ll be sorely disappointed if you’re lost at sea and encounter petrels. You might think you are close to land when in fact it’s no where in the vicinity of your boat.

Because they fly for long periods of time, petrels have thin legs. Their legs can’t support their weight very well, which is one reason stay at sea except when they need to breed.

Petrels—and other pelagic birds—drink sea water. You or I would die if we drank that much salt. How do these birds survive? They have a specially built bill that has nostril tubes for blowing out salt. If you look closely, you can see the saline dripping out of the tubes.

When I was in Antarctica recently, I saw 10 different varieties of petrels. They appeared soon after we crossed the Antarctic convergence zone, circling the ship while we were in open waters. One of my favorites is the Cape Petrel. It has the most amazing pattern on its wings. It almost looks stenciled on its back.

One of the ways to tell that you’ve passed from the Atlantic Ocean into the Southern Ocean is the appearance of albatrosses. This Royal Albatross is one of the several kinds of sea birds that became constant companions to the Polar Star during my recent expedition to Antarctica.

Like many living creatures on earth, the albatross faces many threats. 100,000 albatrosses die each year from ingesting fish hooks. Most of the hooks are discarded by fishing boats when the fisherman toss out waste and bait. BirdLife International is trying to stop these deaths with their Save the Albatross campaign. Check it out.

I don’t know what to say about this creature. The expedition staff on our cruise had never seen an octopus in Antarctica. This one was in the shallow water near Port Lockroy. If you have any ideas on what species it is, please let me know.

That’s not a misspelling. The bar and bra have a connection. Read on and you’ll find out.

The Verdansky Antarctic scientific station has a few side businesses that open only when tourist ships visit the area—a Post Office, a souvenir shop, and a bar. They claim the souvenir shop and bar are the most southern. I’m not sure I believe them. It seems McMurdo must have some enterprising scientists there as well.

Some advice on the Post Office: Your mail first goes to the Ukraine before going to its intended destination. I chose not to use their P.O. and instead waited to mail letters from Port Lockroy, the British station. Port Lockroy sends their mail to England first, which is much closer to any of the destinations that I addressed my mail to.

A wise word about the souvenir shop: It is the most high-priced on the Antarctic peninsula. There are two other souvenir shops—one run by the Polish and the other by the British. Verdansky was our first stop at a scientific station, so I didn’t have that bit of knowledge at the time, but now I can pass it on to you! The prices were from 50 to 100 percent over similar things in the states. Someone pointed out to me that the markup was likely due to transportation costs. Before I disembarked to take a Zodiac to the station, I noticed a few boxes near the gangway on our ship that were labeled “souvenirs.” Did our ship deliver the packages to the Ukrainians only to have us buy them and bring them back? If so, doesn’t that warrant a discount? In any case, the British have the best shop, so hold out for Port Lockroy! Their prices are about a third cheaper too.

Check out the bar! The Ukrainians make their own vodka that I heard was pretty good, so the chance to try it intrigued me. We arrived at Verdansky at 9:00 AM—a little early in the day for drinking vodka. But in a place where the sun never sets, the exact time matters less and less as one bright day slips into the next. (The Ukrainian scientists drink only once a week, I’m told. The bar is closed until a ship shows up.)

A caution on the options for paying for a shot of vodka: Either you leave a bra at the bar or you pay $2. I saw two bras hanging there. Notice the red one in the photo, just to the right of the younger man’s shoulder. The other bra (not in the photo) was left by a senior woman on a previous Polar Star cruise. Judging by the fact the bra was hung in the window as a sort of curtain, I’d have to conclude that it was a rather large woman who left the bra.

Leave a bra or pay $2? I didn’t think this one over too long. It was an easy choice. Pay the $2. My bras are worth at least $20 each. I would expect that one of them would be worth enough to buy a round for my best buddies on the ship. So I paid the $2 and tossed the vodka. I made the right choice. It was tasty vodka, but certainly not worth $20 a shot. But at $2 it is the best deal on the base. If you go, drink up!

(Verdanksy is where the ozone hole was discovered.)

The Antarctic ozone hole was discovered in 1985 by British scientists Joesph Farman, Brian Gardiner, and Jonathan Shanklin of the British Antarctic Survey. I recently had the opportunity to visit the scientific station where the discovery took place. As you can see in the photo, the station proudly advertises its discovery with a sign in the main hallway.

Verdansky base (also known as Faraday)—now owned by the Ukranian government—has a long history. It has been populated for the past 63 years (to the day—starting in 07 Jan 1947). The British occupied the station until 1996 when it was sold for a nominal fee to the Ukranians. The spot is particularly good for observing the ionosphere and performing meteorlogical and geophysical studies because it is located at a high geographic latitude and a low magnetic latitude.

The Ukranians are not restricting their activities to research. They make vodka, have a gift shop, and run a post office. You’ll hear more about their vodka bar in a future post.