Fire and Brimstone

There is something quite abnormal about approaching a pool of water in the earth, and seeing that it is boiling.

In this valley of hot springs a few hours from Reykjavik is the original "Geysir," which gave its name to the geothermal phenomenon of water erupting in a huge plume from a subterranean shaft and reservoir. Geysir was famous, attaining heights of as much as 170 metres — even Napoleon came to see it — but it now erupts infrequently. Geological research indicates that Geysir has been active for more than 10,000 years; the activity of all the geysers in this region seems to vary depending on earthquake activity.

A neighboring geyser, Strokkur, first mentioned in 1789, erupts less spectacularly, but is very reliable. While we were in this valley, it erupted four times, about every ten minutes. Even more amazing than the eruption itself is the way the pool seems to "breathe" and finally gather strength, rising in a great bubble-like curve of water, and then exploding upward in a tall plume of sulfurous steam and water. (The Wikipedia link for Strokkur, above, shows a sequence of eruption photos.)

Elsa and I watch Strokkur erupt. In the photograph below, you can see how close the path (and the people) are to the geyser.

The valley also contains pools of extraordinary color, apparently from living algae and dissolved minerals, in water that is far too hot to touch, and the gravelly soil is also colored with hues of red, ochre, and yellow; on the flanks of the pools that eject streams of water there is a slippery, hard deposit of minerals. The smell is difficult. We didn't stay very long, in this valley that reminds one of Dante's vision of hell, but is actually closer to the birthing of worlds. Iceland, one of the geologically youngest places on earth, shows us something of what the earth was like in its infancy.

I found that fact both fascinating and sobering. The landscape is extraordinary, and – to me – extremely beautiful. It can be dangerous. But most of all, it moved me profoundly.

We spend so much of our life in populated places, looking at what human beings have created, and even when we manage to find some wildness, it's often in the company of others. Most of Iceland is unpopulated, or very sparsely settled. In the astounding places we visited, we were often the only people there. There are almost no warning signs — here a small sign mentioning not to touch the water, which was 80-100 degrees C — a flimsy rope, no disclaimers; you and your common sense are on their own.

Cultural differences can be huge about the assumptions surrounding perceived danger. After my friend G. read my initial account of this place, he wrote me a letter about his experience visiting geysers and hot springs in Yellowstone National Park in the western United States, under the apt subject heading: "Tiptoe to the Portals of Geothermal Hell:"

"On our road trip west, August 2010, we drove through and walked around parts of Yellowstone Park, which makes an interesting contrast with your geothermal adventures in Iceland.  It is a huge park with dense clusters of visitors in a handful of accessible places, and lots of remote but regulated wilderness that we, like most visitors, never approached. The thermal areas are just unlike anything we are used to.  Approaching a wooded area with steam rising all around might lead you to think of the first or last stages of forest fire — until the sulfur fumes hit you.  The carefully curated thermal areas around Old Faithful are polar opposite of the "visitor beware" ethos you describe in Iceland.  Boardwalks, rangers, warning signs, and wheelchair accessible ramps with numbered and annotated viewpoints give you no chance to do (or feel proud for refraining from doing) the stupid things you might otherwise be tempted to do in the vicinity of weird and smelly gurgling springs of boiling water, mud or extremophile bacterial colonies. I had thoughts, not of birthing planets, but of native Americans or early explorers coming upon such a place without the commercial buildup or grade school science projects that almost make these things trite.  The ground between these steaming springs can be a shallow and fragile layer over subterranean hot and wet: fatal attractions, with a danger obvious  to thinking folks. The bison like it here in the summer because the sulfur fumes keep the bugs away, and in the winter because the shallower snowpack gives better access to grazing.  Once in a while, one falls into a steaming pool and can't get out."

Iceland is wilderness, but not merely a national preserve or an unspoiled stretch of beach — it is wilderness that, in and of itself, is changing, mutating, moving, growing. There are old volcanoes, rifts, and relics of lava flows that happened long ago, but there is the constant possibility — probability – of new events, and the measurable drift of the tectonic plates away from each other, as the mid-Atlantic ridge rises from the sea in this northern land-that-is-still-becoming.

Who am I, I wondered, in this landscape? Not the same person, surely, as I naively was in the streets of Montreal.

– This post is my submission to the anniversary edition of the Language/Place blog carnival, hosted this month by Dorothee Lang, on the theme of "Streets, Signs, Directions." I'll post the link as soon as it become active.

Shot

Pierced for herd immunity

I wait quinze minutes

in the salle de surveillance.

That's what my doctor called it: "The Province is out to create 'herd immunity.' That's the best way to keep the virus from spreading. I'd get the shot if I were you." And so, yesterday, we did.

That's the symbol from the Quebec H1N1 info website – good logo, I thought.

In Montreal, large H1N1 immunization clinics have been set up in easy-to-get-to, well-known locations, like the Palais de Congres convention center, and recently opened up to the general public (as opposed to the high risk groups who have been being vaccinated in recent weeks.) We had to be in Westmount early yesterday morning, so we decided to try to the clinic in Place Alexis Nihon, a mall right next to the Forum, where the Canadiens used to play hockey. The clinic was on the level of the metro station that is located right beneath the building, and clear signs pointed us in the right direction. Various "rooms" had been taken over by the provincial health authorites, with a carefully-thought-out crowd-flow plan. We`d heard stories of long waits in the earlier days, but at 8:45 am the clinic had been open since 8:00, and there was no line at all.

A volunteer gave us a number with an appointment time but waved us ahead into the first area, saying with a smile that there would be no wait. This first room had two rows of computers set up on tables, maybe ten in all. The man who processed us asked for our provincial health cards, verified our addresses and birthdates, and printed out a form with several questions on it – in our case, the questions were in English. In the next area, a high counter held pencils and we filled out the five questions on the form; I said I wasn`t pregnant, didn`t have allergies to eggs, had never had a reaction to a flu shot before. We then had a brief interview with another person, who reiterated the questions, making sure we had understood – probably a good precaution in this place of so many different languages. After that we got down to business and were sent to stations for the shot itself, where friendly nurses in ordinary clothing talked to us while swabbing our arms, told us to relax the muscle as much as possible, gave the shot, and then explained our arms might be sore for a few days. Finally she printed and initialed a piece of paper that held our names, birthdates, and health ID numbers, verifying that we`d received a full dose of a particular vaccine on such-and-such a date — ìn case you`re traveling and this is required,`she said. Then we were waved into the salle de surveillance, where the newly-vaccinated were asked to sit for fifteen minutes prior to leaving – detained by the honor system only, most of us did wait the required time.

The whole thing took no more than half an hour, and impressed me, both by its low-key, non-clinical, reassuring ambience, and by the fact that actually the province was attaining a record of every single person who had been vaccinated that could be used in an epidemiological study, if necessary. The nurse told me that school groups were being bussed into these centers during the day; “that`s when it gets busy and more difficult,`she said, `because the little kids tend to be scared and you have to spend more time reassuring them.“ In general, though, there`s been no hysteria here at all, and I think the way the clinics have been handled has a lot to do with that. People in the higher risk groups were able to receive shots several weeks earlier, but Canadians have been assured that there is enough vaccine for everyone who wants it.

Today my arm was a bit sore, but not as much as for a tetanus shot, and I was definitely more tired than usual, but as the day has gone on I`ve felt less and less effect. Apparently immunity takes about two weeks to develop, so I`ll keep on washing my hands, which I guess I do out of habit anyway…

I`m curious how many of you have gotten a shot, and what it`s been like where you are.

Osmotic Power

Norway opens the world's first osmotic power plant.

The plant is driven by osmosis that naturally draws fresh water across
a membrane and toward the seawater side. This creates higher pressure
on the sea water side, driving a turbine and producing electricity.

At first the plant will be producing a very small amount of power –  enough to run a coffee maker. A full-size plant would be the size of a football stadium and produce enough electricity for 30,000 European households; much of the engineering challenge, it seems, is to work on the membrane itself, trying to make it smaller and more efficient. The process would then be possible anywhere there is seawater.

Europe's osmotic power
potential is seen at 180 TWh, or about 5 percent of total consumption
– which could help the bloc reach renewable energy goals set to curb
emissions of heat-trapping gases and limit global warming.

I'm interested in all of these renewable sources of energy; seeing our friends from Iceland recently reminded me of the potential of geo-thermal energy, a source which is also being explored in Canada.

H1N1 Self-care Guide

I was at the my doctor's today for an annual check-up, and on my list of questions was whether or not I should be vaccinated for the swine flu/H1N1 virus.

"Yes," she said, and explained that she's listening to the advice given by the health officials of the province of Quebec, who are trying to achieve what she called (rather unflatteringly but accurately, I'm sure) "herd immunity," by vaccinating a large percentage of the population. There will be free, widespread clinics in Montreal, in shopping centers and other big public locations, over the next month, with the vaccine available first to the populations most at risk. The general public will be able to get shots about one month from now, and I'll probably follow her advice and go myself. Besides, there's something eminently bloggable about getting a flu shot in the Olympic Stadium, n'est-ce pas?

But I did want to pass along this link to the Quebec H1N1 Self-care Guide that arrived in the mail a few days ago. I thought it was particularly well done – full of important information, calmly presented, designed to keep public anxiety at a low level and help alleviate the pressure on the delivery system. (This is the English edition; it's also available in French of course, and you might find it interesting to take a look at the edition adapted for people of the First Nations.) The decision chart on page 15, which describes symptoms and what you should do in each case, seemed especially helpful to me, and applicable to anyone, anywhere.

Meanwhile, wash your hands and don't lose sleep over this.

Icebergs, Inuit hymns, and a Patriarch

The image above was taken near Greenland, during the Arctic Symposium 2007, the seventh voyage organized by the Orthodox Patriarch, His All Holiness, Bartholemew, as part of Religion, Science and the Environment, a symposium conceived in 1988 to study the fate of the world’s largest bodies of water. Prior symposiums have focussed on the Aegean, the Black Sea, the Danube, the Adriatic, the Baltic, and the Amazon.

Like many of us, I’m often too weary and depressed about climate change to read new articles about it. This piece by Neal Ascherson, in the London Review of Books, is a notable exception: fine writing, and an unusual setting featuring an Orthodox patriarch and Greenland villagers.

Before us, on a motionless turquoise sea, the icebergs towered in the
evening light, each vast as a city. I looked at the spectators and saw
that every one of us, the Greenlanders as well as the patriarch’s
retinue of scientists and theologians, stood like a row of Caspar David
Friedrich solitaries, facing the ice as if facing their judge.

Climate change is already changing nearly everything about Greenland and its inhabitants, most of whom are descended from the Inuit with some Danish and Norse genes. Some changes are welcomed: the improving economy — due to greater opportunity because of less cold and ice, and better fishing — will mean independence from Denmark. Other changes, like not being able to trust that the ice sheet will hold a dog sled, will alter Greenland’s culture forever.

Some of us climbed the hill until the group around Tjodhilde’s chapel
was a dab of colour on the grey-green shore. Up here, a flock of
redpolls swooped about drying cod nailed to posts, and a raven croaked.
Inuits have another belief, not quite translatable, in what they call
‘Sila’: the force that brings alarming, unexpected things. Sudden
storms are part of it, and disastrous changes in the ice, and caribou
migrations shifting out of reach. Sila is also a spirit, and
occasionally warns shamanic children that it is coming.

Males Need Not Apply

Back in my naturalist days, one of my most-favorite pastimes was to dip a pail of water from the mucky, algae-filled edges of a pond and spend a couple of hours exploring its contents under a microscope. I could get lost in that delicate spirogyra forest, searching for its single- and few-celled inhabitants. Some of my favorites were the rotifers, transparent creatures with an incredible propulsion system. (Their name comes from the Latin word that means "wheel-bearer" because each rotifer has a ring of cilia – little hair-like  projections – that move rapidly, causing the organism to spin.)

If you’d like to see some rotifers, here is a rotifer gallery with the best photographs of these creatures I’ve ever seen, by the Dutch photomicrographer Wim van Egmond.

Today, Chris Clarke has added to my knowledge with one of his signature posts about evolutionary biology. He begins with the rotifers and takes us on a journey through various forms of sexual and non-sexual reproduction, discussing the evolutionary preferences for each, and ending up where the title begins: "What Really Bothers the Creationists." Highly recommended.

AIDS and Anglicans

How far will the African churches go "on principle" – and what is morally right? Observers continue to discuss the fact that if Africa’s Anglican churches split from the North American branches, and refuse to continue to take support from them, it could have a large impact on aid flowing into Africa to combat AIDS. Two stories in The East African cast further light on this. In "Aids orphans in firing line as Church fights over gay priests," Paul Redfern writes about Bishop Mdimi Mhogolo of Central Tanganyika, who has continued to accept support from the New York branch of the US Episcopal Church, unlike the rest of the Tanzanian Anglican church. His view is very much the exception among African church leaders:

“We have no qualms about it in my diocese,” Bishop Mhogolo told Reuters. “(If) a gay person has felt: ‘I want to help an HIV orphan to go to school,’ and you say: ‘No, I’m not going to receive that money,’ you are rejecting the person and you are rejecting an answer for the HIV person.”

Around 1,000 Aids orphans are benefiting from the US church’s “Carpenter’s Kids” programme in Tanzania and such a project is typical of the support given to the poorest people in East Africa by generous donors within the United States.

“Let the judgment be done by God, not by me,” he said.

There’s a related story in the newspaper’s sidebar: "Activists angered by Gambian President’s AIDS-cure claim." In January, president Yahya Jammeh announced that he had perfected a cure for the virus that works within ten days; people he has purportedly healed have been appearing regularly on state-run television.

The cure’s secret ingredients, according to [government Health Minister] Mbowe, are Jammeh’s
“family knowledge of traditional medicine” and “the teachings of the Holy Koran.”

While many citizens believe that the president has divine power to heal, and an increasingly oppressive political climate stifles overt criticism of his claim, even by medical officials, one newspaper editor, Sam Sarr of Foroyaa, has spoken out:

“A lot of people are sceptical, they have doubts, especially in urban areas,” said Sarr. “In a society where a lot of people are fetishists, their lack of knowledge leads them to believe that the president used supernatural powers to find a cure,” he said. An editorial in Foroyaa warned that President Jammeh’s claim could be a threat to the fight against HIV/Aids in Gambia, where the disease prevalence
rate is estimated at 2.1 per cent."

Without Sin

During the work-retreat this week, we did a series of interviews. One of them took us to a neonatal intensive care unit in a major medical center. Amid the beeping monitors and tubing and high-tech equipment were the plastic pods in which premature babies spend the first days – even months – of their lives. The pods were draped on top with white fleecy cloths, stenciled in a cheerful pattern of blue baby footprints, and they had round hand-holes on the sides through which a nurse or a mother could grasp the tiny finger of a child. There were babies in the pods: babies with feet hardly bigger than one joint of my thumb, some with IV lines somehow inserted into imperceptible veins. A window at the far side of the room looked out over white pine trees, and blue hills.

In spite of the intensity of care that was being delivered, we were welcomed in and our questions graciously answered. One of the babies had been born 30 hours earlier, in a remote rural location, and had just arrived by helicopter. The parents came into the unit not long after we did, looking very young, dazed, impoverished, and as lost as if they had landed in the middle of Manhattan. Just then a pilot in a green flight suit came up to the unit to say he was ready to go; there was another baby to pick up, and in a few minutes a bright-eyed nurse and the pilot were wheeling a transport pod down the hall, toward the elevators, toward the helicopter pad on the back side of the hospital.

We learned later that some of the babies are born early and with complications because of the parental drug use; the agitated, crying babies go through detox for a week or more. I tried without success to imagine anything more unfair: being born into starvation, I suppose. But that’s the heartbreaking and ever-sharper contrast, isn’t it, in this rich country with its blue hills and high-tech medicine, its fertile valleys and schools and towns and differing possibilities that sift some children into white coats and flight suits, articulateness and skill, and others into a spiral of hopelessness, despair and escape into addiction. In this nursery tiny fingers grasped hands that reached for them out of both worlds; I realized I was hoping for miracles even greater than the precarious preservation of new life.