RMA Meeting 10 June 2022

RMA Speaker Presentation

Date – June 10, 2022

Time – 10:00 AM

Location –

          First Baptist Church, by reservation

          Zoom – link will be sent few days prior to meeting

Introduction – TBA

Topic – “Illustrated tour (via helicopters, etc), to Antarctica. There are 2 South Poles – one ceremonial, the other real” 

Speaker – 

Robert Cooke, today’s speaker, is a retired journalist who specialized in covering modern science.  His employers included the Associated Press bureau in Los Angeles, Caltech, the Boston Globe, Atlanta Constitution, and Newsday, on Long Island, NY. 

Every year the public relations arm of our national government invites a few science journalists to visit Antarctica and, hopefully, write a few news stories and gather pictures explaining our nation’s massive investment in polar research programs. 

My turn – when I was science editor at the Boston Globe – came in 1983, and I jumped at the opportunity – with pencil, paper, camera and film in hand.  Getting to Antarctica from Christchurch, NZ, wasn’t easy. In four attempts to fly to McMurdo Sound – the big main base for the U.S. Antarctic research effort – we got sent back to New Zealand three times because of foul weather. Each attempt involved flying south to a “point of no return,” aboard NZ Navy cargo planes. We excess baggage passengers (wearing and carrying all the arctic-weather gear we might need) flew from Christchurch, New Zealand, aboard cargo planes – not luxurious – and accompanied by 10,000 fresh eggs. 

    Once “on the ice,” we lodged in deep-freeze containers – warm on the inside, very cold on the outside.  We got well fed in the big mess hall, which we had to reach by wandering outside atop a boardwalk guarded by safety rope lines.

    From then on, we four journalists were accompanied by a helicopter crew, visiting multiple research stations, including the BIG geodesic dome erected atop the south Pole. It was cold. Wet,  And as you’ll see, a ‘helluva’ lot of fun. Unforgettable.