San Francisco Dinner: "How to Survive Antarctica"

Thursday, March 15, social hour 6 pm, dinner 7, show 8; City Forest Lodge, 254 Laguna Honda Boulevard, San Francisco (across from Laguna Honda Hospital and downhill from Forest Hill Station; take Muni's K, L, M, or 43). Come early for street parking (no sidewalk parking please).

Lucy Jane Bledsoe, recipient of the National Science Foundation's Artists and Writers in Antarctica fellowship, will present a multimedia program sharing stories of her wild journeys and extreme adventures from her new book The Ice Cave: A Woman's Adventures From the Mojave to the Antarctic. Slides of penguins, icebergs, whales, and the communities living on the ice will be accompanied by Antarctic music - the sounds of glaciers calving, katabatic winds blowing, and the underwater vocalizations of leopard seals and orcas.

Bledsoe focuses on human life in Antarctica. Who are these people who spend a few months of every year on the Ice? Where do they live? What is their relationship to the animals there? She will share her own story, how a disastrous solo trip in the Sierra one winter precipated a crisis in her relationship to wilderness and how, paradoxically, that misadventure led her to Antarctica.

Bledsoe has traveled to Antarctica three times and worked at the three American stations - McMurdo, Palmer, and Amundsen-Scott South Pole - finding stories among the workers and scientists stationed there and at the numerous sites in the field where biologists, geologists, and cosmologists camped out studying penguins, seals, global warming, and the Big Bang.

Passport Magazine writes that "The Ice Cave is an exhilarating read... There's an aching beauty to her tales of travel."

Reservations are required for this very unusual and exciting evening (no attendance for program only). Non-members are welcome. Mail check for $13.50 made out to "Sierra Club, S.F. Bay Chapter" to Barb Bourns at:

274A Connecticut St.
San Francisco, CA 94107.

Checks must be received by Mon., March 12. Specify clearly which month's dinner you want. Bring your own wine or soft drinks. Glasses and ice available. Let us know if you are a vegetarian. Questions? Call Barb before 9 pm at (415)431-6054.