Blogosphere

It’s Hockey Day Minnesota and Hockey Day on the Wrap.  Coach Paige Haley of the Girls Hockey Team and and Coach Mike Luckraft of the Boys Hockey team join the program to talk all things Raider Hockey.  Both teams are highly competitive and there is plenty of optimism going ahead for both teams. Girls are

A Faribault man is facing criminal charges after he was allegedly pulled over while driving drunk in Northfield on New Year's Day.

Event date: January 11, 2022
Event Time: 06:00 PM - 09:00 PM
Location:
801 Washington Street
Northfield, MN 55057

Event date: January 11, 2022
Event Time: 06:00 PM - 09:00 PM
Location:
801 Washington Street
Northfield, MN 55057

Event date: January 13, 2022
Event Time: 04:00 PM - 05:30 PM
Location:
801 Washington Street
Northfield, MN 55057

Yesterday was the first anniversary of the riot at the Nation’s Capital. As Congress worked to certify the presidential election of 2020, an angry mob of former President Donald Trump’s supporters attacked Capital Police and stormed the building in an attempt to stop the process and somehow overturn the results of the election.  As this was one

Event date: January 17, 2022
Event Time: 07:00 PM - 08:30 PM

Craig Swenson talks about upcoming programs and activities at FiftyNorth.

Representative Todd Lippert discusses his decision not to run for re-election in November.

Natalie Draper and Emily Lloyd of the Northfield Public Library discuss childrens’ programming including drop-in homework hours for students K-12 with Carleton student tutors beginning January 18, 4-6 pm., and talk about upcoming events at the library.  For more information, click here.  

Northfield has taken a significant step toward its goal of being carbon-free by 2040 by changing its relationship to its built environment.

Rep. Todd Lippert, who represents Northfield and District 20B in the State House of Representatives, announced today that he will not seek re-election this fall.  “I have decided not to run for re-election in 2022,”” Lippert said in a statement.  “I plan to finish out my term, and I’ll work with people in my district to achieve

There was some good news at the Northfield City Council meeting on Tuesday night for those who do not enjoy the incessant howl of train horns blowing through Northfield multiple times every day and night.  After receiving a presentation from Andy Mielke of SRF Consultants, it became apparent that the barriers to establishing a Railroad Quiet Zone from Highway

Northfield’s representative since 2018 and one of six assistant majority leaders in the Minnesota House said Thursday he’s not going to seek another term.

Rice County Sheriff Jesse Thomas discusses traffic-related fatalities in 2021 and provides ice fishing safety tips.

Senator Tina Smith discusses the No Surprises Act that went into effect January 1 relating to medical bills, describes her experience on January 6 last year at the Capitol, and more.

Few men are more famous as explorers of Antarctica than Ernest Shackleton – perhaps only Amundsen and Scott. Shackleton died exactly 100 years ago ago today, succumbing to a heart attack on the remote Atlantic island of South Georgia at the start of what would have been his third major expedition to Antarctica. He was just 47 years old, a young man, but then many of the explorers died early – Scott at 44, Amundsen at 56.)

From Wikipedia

Reading on Shackleton, I’m struck by the fact that he is so famous despite, or maybe, indirectly, because, he never actually reached the South Pole. That failure somehow magnifies his stature as a leader of men. On his first expedition, the Discovery expedition led by Robert Falcon Scott in 1901-1904, Shackleton, Scott, and another man went as far south as 82º – a record for the time – but Scott then dismissed Shackleton for ill health.

A few years later, in January 1909, Shackleton’s own Nimrod expedition brought him and three others to 88º S, less than 100 miles from the pole and a new Furthest South. Though Shackleton longed to win the “race to the pole,” instead Amundsen did, in 1911, and Shackleton instead aimed at what would have been an even more impressive feat than merely attaining the pole: crossing Antarctica from the Weddell Sea on the South American side of the continent (the north, ha!) to the Ross Sea on the New Zealand side (the north again!) – and, naturally, crossing the pole on the way.

This was the famous, or infamous, Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition of 1914-1917 which ended prematurely when Shackleton’s ship, the Endurance (surely one of the most ironic names ever), was trapped in pack ice in January 1915. They had not even gotten close to Antarctica proper, and in fact had been caught in the same region where a German expedition had been trapped in 1912.

Shackleton and his crew lived, barely, for the entire summer, fall, and winter of 1915 on the ship itself, hoping that warmer temperatures in the spring would allow them to free the ship and sail either home (which was in the throes of the Great War), or amazingly, deeper into the sea, toward the continent, to try the crossing after all. A separate group had already laid supplies on the other side of the continent, fueling Shackleton’s hope to lead the third party to the pole – and only the second to return successfully from it.

These plans disintegrated in October 1915 when the spring breakup crushed the Endurance, driving the men onto the ice. They tried to march north, but found the going too slow, so they camped on the ice until Shackleton decided to make another march, which also failed, just a few miles further along. They returned to the shipwreck to salvage supplies and lifeboats in the hope that they could find open water and sail to one of a few relatively nearby outposts of civilization, then camped for months.

All the while, the ice floes were drifting and splitting, drifting and splitting, and the men were starving, losing their wits, fighting and mutinying. They shot all their sled dogs and ate some of them, a complement to endless seal meat. Finally, in April 1916, with another winter approaching, conditions deteriorated enough that Shackleton ordered a desperate effort to sail the open lifeboats – now renamed, almost ludicrously, for the expedition’s main financial backers – to any of several islands they knew were nearby. A brutal five-day voyage brought them, without the loss of anyone, to Elephant Island, just off the tip of the Antarctica Peninsula.

Resting on the barren island, Shackleton determined that he and five other men would sail one of the boats through the rough seas of the Drake Passage to South Georgia, from which they’d departed about sixteen months earlier. This was an unimaginably harrowing trip that depended entirely on the ability of Shackleton’s captain, Frank Worsley, to navigate without proper instruments, maps and charts, or even, you know, a stable deck.

Worsley did it. After two weeks at sea, the tiny boat made it to South Georgia on May 10 – but on the uninhabited side of the island. After a couple days of recuperation, Shackleton, Worsley, and another crewman made a two-day trek through the wilderness to the whaling station at Stromness, the port from which the Endurance had left in December 1914.

I nearly weep to think of the relief they must have felt to see ships, houses, and other people after so long a time, and so much an ordeal – but also to think of the need they felt to rescue the rest of the Endurance’s crew.

After retrieving the three other lifeboaters who’d stayed on the far side of South Georgia, Shackleton made four successive efforts to sail back to Elephant to rescue everyone else – not even knowing if they were still alive, three months after he had left in the lifeboat. The damn sea ice defeated the first three attempts over three months until finally Shackleton reached Elephant Island in August to find the entire party still alive, though they had suffered horribly through another austral winter – starvation, depression, scurvy, frostbite, gangrene, amputation. Again, I can hardly imagine the mixture of feelings they must have felt, sailing back to Chile and then home to Great Britain: elation and relief, certainly, but probably also sadness and frustration. All that effort, all that suffering, all for naught.

Shackleton was recognized as a hero, however, and after service in the British military and a period of lecturing, he organized another Antarctic expedition – partly to pay off debts from the failure of the Endurance trip. (That these insane treks required so much financing and were even seen as possible ways to make money by discovering minerals or other resources or simply by publishing newspaper and books, seems ludicrous.)

This expedition was to have conducted a wide range of scientific research during a circumnavigation of Antarctica. Shackleton fell ill on the journey south but insisted on continuing. Finally, on the morning of January 5, 1922, with the ship docked in, yes, South Georgia, a crewman discovered Shackleton in terrific pain. He cautioned “the Boss” about his hard living. Shackleton replied, “You’re always wanting me to give up things, what is it I ought to give up?” Moments later, Shackleton had a coronary and died. The expedition carried on, as he would have wished, but did little of the work he’d planned. Shackleton was buried in South Georgia.

The post Ernest Shackleton, RIP (100 years ago today) appeared first on Blowing & Drifting.

Last night the Northfield City Council passed a new sustainable building policy that will require new construction receiving subsidy from the city to meet higher environmentally friendly standards than those required by the State of Minnesota.  The new policy is focused on renewable energy and energy efficiency. Any project receiving financial incentives from the city