dolphins up close
Hi Unis! I hope you’re all having a fantastic summer. My summer has been filled with beach, ocean, and plenty of dolphins – just the way I like it! I started my summer doing field work in Sarasota, FL. An amazing group of researchers based out of Mote Marine Lab there carries out an annual health assessment of their local bottlenose dolphin population, and because my PhD research involves studying the genetic susceptibility of these animals to toxic red tides, I got to help out this year. A dolphin health assessment is no easy task. Our goal is to capture live dolphins, bring them up on a boat, run full vet exams on them and collect as many biological samples as we can, and then successfully release them again. While this may seem nearly impossible if you know anything about how big and fast these animals are, the team at Mote has been conducting this project for many years and has the process perfected so that its safe for all dolphins and humans involved.
This task involves 8 boats and over 40 people out on the water everyday for a week. One boat is responsible for driving a net around the dolphins; several fast motor boats filled with big strong guys are responsible for getting to the net as quickly as possible and getting their people in the water to get the dolphin under control; one boat is set up for the veterinary exams; and lastly, my boat was the sample processing boat which contained all the kits and equipment needed to collect the various biological samples (including vials with Duke-Cammen labels! Small skin samples were taken for my genetics analysis). Lucky for me, our boat tied directly up the vet boat so I got to see the dolphins up close and watch the vets do their work. A couple times I even got to jump over to the vet boat and help hold the dolphins as they did their exams. The dolphins are surprisingly calm throughout the entire procedure.
My week in Florida was unforgettable. I met many new people in the marine mammal field and made great connections with researchers I hope to work with in the future. I also came home with a set of dolphin tissue samples and got in the lab as soon as I could to work on those. Being part of a dolphin health assessment is an amazing experience, and I couldn’t have asked for any better way to start my PhD research. I wish I could show you pictures of all of this, but unfortunately we’re asked not to post our pictures online because of research permit limits. Instead, I’ve attached a picture of a bottlenose dolphin that a student took on a trip out from the Duke Marine Lab with the Marine Mammals class that I’m TA-ing this summer. Enjoy!
-Kristina
Wader woes
Waders can be a wonderful thing. To some, they’re key to a good day of hunting and fishing. For others, they complete an award-winning costume (meet your director, new Unis!). And for those of us who insist on centering our Ph.D.s around marsh-breeding species, waders are one of the best inventions ever. Field sites would be impenetrable without a pair of waterproof hip waders to get us through the day. Only while wearing them can we brave the mud, the floating vegetation mats, and those horrible muskrat-made potholes to collect our precious data.
But sometimes, even the pluckiest of waders is defeated by the elements. When the first sound you hear after exiting your car is not the sweet song of sparrows or the burry croak of blackbirds, but rather the steady WHOOSH of water exhaled by drainpipes, you know it will not be a good day for waders. Your waders know this, too. You buckle them on and imagine them peering up at you, asking uncertainly, “Do I matter anymore?”
Turns out, sometimes the answer is a big fat NOPE. Three days of rain and you might as well be wearing pajamas in the field.
Now you hear your waders yelling, “It’s a marsh! It has no drainage! It’s duckweed soup!” But you have nests to check and birds to catch, and so you lumber in anyway, and despite your best efforts to hike up your outrageously high-waisted pants, you soon feel the shock of cold water running down your legs and pooling around your feet and the weight of it all pulling your waders lower and lower until equilibrium is reached and marsh muck gleefully sloshes around both sides of the fabric and your lower half becomes one with the marsh. You’ve officially topped your waders. It’s 7 in the morning.
Elephantiasis? Triple-jointedness? Simultaneous bow-legs and knock-knees?
Nah, just several pounds of water and all the interesting things floating inside it. Which we have been lugging around with us for the entire day.
One little-known benefit of wading in high water is that your clothes receive a dye job! Check out that hipster fringe on this mass-marketed shirt. It’s gone from plain white to dull gray AND taupe. Who says a three-dollar tee has to be boring?
To be fair, flooded waders are not so bad when the weather is nice. By afternoon, the water has usually warmed up enough that heading back to the road is no big deal. Your pants have been soaked for hours, right? (This is a poor way to get yourself out of a dry car at dawn.)
Note: You can see a few more photos here of what I’m actually doing in the marsh. Hope everyone’s summers have been going well!
—Irene L.
Defining Service {lma}
Approximately 17 days ago, another DukeEngage student and I arrived at our volunteer site in a small village called California in Trinidad and Tobago. We learned that we would be working under the supervision of a retired female individual who, to my knowledge, is not affiliated with a government body, a nonprofit organization or any insitution connected to volunteer or service work. We have been completing the assignments she has assigned us in our homestay. In the span of approximately two weeks, we have finished approximately 8 interviews of community members she has arranged for us to speak with. To my knowledge, these interviews will be complied into a report that myself and another DukeEngage student will submit to her. It is unclear to me at this point who will read this report other than those affiliated with the DukeEngage program.
During our training for this project, in a three-day program known as DukeEngage academy, we were often asked to define “service.” Given the experiences of the past two weeks, if what we have been doing is to be called “service,” then I would define “service” as, “an arrangement by which one individual is utilized as a means to achieve the ends of another individual or individuals.”
To follow the experiences of the six students of this DukeEngage project, please visit http://devilsintrinidad.tumblr.com/. To follow my personal adventures and opinions, please visit http://lengagestrinidad.wordpress.com/.
Hello from Abuja, Nigeria.
Ah, I see I am the third to post today. Tori. You write extremely effective emails.
Hello everyone, and a special hello to all of our new Scholars! Welcome to Duke! I hope this blog will provide us a means to connect before we meet for some heart-to-heart time at the September retreat.
I’m Jane, and I am a rising senior, currently using my Uni enrichment opportunity to have the summer of a lifetime. I spent the first month in Brazil, filming a documentary with my seven-person team from Students of the World, a 501(c)3 organization. We worked closely with the NGO Citizens for Democracy in Information Technology and documented the work they are doing to bring computer technology and education into the favelas. Millions live in the “slum hills,” so-called “invisible” communities steeped in abject poverty, violence and drug-trafficking. And yet, very little is known about these and similar unplanned urban sectors, spreading through Brazil and throughout the developing world. For more information on our work in Rio, Salvadore and Belem, you can check out blogs, videos and photos on our team’s “live site” at http://www.seechangenow.org/2008/Brazil.
I am spending the last two months of my summer in Abuja, the capital city of Nigeria, volunteering with the NGO Teachers Without Borders (TWB) to realize the UN’s Millennium Development Goals. It’s been a completely different kind of experience. In Brazil, as the interviewer behind the camera, I was part of collaborative efforts to bring outside, international attention to local crises. In contrast, I have come to Abuja as an individual volunteer and have found that everything rides on personal initiative. Here we launch projects and implement educational reform on the grassroots level, inside out, bottom up. We most recently launched our first Wall-less Classroom, which is a class I teach with another volunteer in the middle of the sprawling dirt expanse that is Jabi Motor Park. I don’t want to risking boring you with details, but if you are interested, you’re free to look up my daily scribblings at whereonearthisjane.blogspot.com. I’ve copied my most recent entry below, in the interest of not cheating and making this a real blog contribution.
I wish you all the best this summer, wherever you are in the world. I would also love to hear from you: let’s connect before it’s over!
Jane C, Trinity ’09
Day 33. 07.23.08. Education is more than literacy.
We finished up late today and waited under the canopy for Mr. Oko to come from the office to pick us up. Amarachi and Ngozi were seated across from me, discussing today’s class –when behind them, a man in maybe his mid-twenties reached out and slapped a woman to the ground. Shocked, I stood there as she lay there, ten yards away, facedown in the dirt, shaking. Three men seated at a table inches –literally, inches –away from the girl, did nothing. They did not move to help her, or turn to ask how she was, or really, give any indication that they had witnessed what had just happened at their feet–or felt happen, from the tremors in their table legs.
All around, people sat around, on makeshift benches, on cars, all watching in that nonchalant way of the accidental, incidental spectator. A full ten seconds or so later, feeling entered my legs and I found myself rushing over; Amarachi realized what was happening and helped me try to get the woman to stand so we could assess the damage –she was sobbing and sobbing –and as I brushed off her arms, covered in that horrible dusty orange dirt, the dirtiest kind of dirt –I had a second shock. This was just a little girl. Though relatively tall, she was so skinny that my hand fit around her forearm. Amarachi began shouting at the man who had struck her, and at this point another man saw fit to come over and join in on chastising this silent man in the blue jersey. We eventually determined that the blue-shirted man hit her because he did not want to pay her the 10 naira he owed her. Ten cents.
The worst part. The man felt bad. I could tell. He did not move or say a word as we dusted the girl off, or when Amarachi issued him a warning, or even when others then began yelling, even jabbing at him. I looked at this man, a little older than me; his unchanging expression, how still he stood through it all, and I knew. He felt bad. It was strange, how horrible this was, this knowledge that he was sorry for what he had done. It would have been easier to digest, maybe, if I thought that he thought he was in the right. But “right” and “wrong” are not such clear things here. You act. You do. And when a foreigner gets into the middle, and then of course others get involved in the muddle, and you are forcibly held accountable for what is daily occurrence here in the Park, and you look at this girl, bleeding and sobbing, clutching thirty crumpled naira…I don’t know. I don’t know how that feels. How confusing, and tumultuous, and bad.
I feel sick writing this, hours later. Education is missing from Jabi Motor Park, and that doesn’t just mean the people who spend all the hours of the day here lack the opportunity to read fancy books and write fancy letters and pursue better salaries. There is a violent undercurrent in the motion of daily Park life, and even at the best of times, it is expressed in a kind of roughness, a brusqueness of the hands and of the feet. I know the beatings cannot be uncommon. Children and women are especially vulnerable. It is not a question of whether they are treated well or badly –they are not treated at all. They are handled.
violence in the district
This summer, I have the pleasure of interning as an investigator with a criminal law internship program, thanks to the summer enrichment fund. There’s never a dull day on the job here in the District of Columbia, where there’s no shortage of alleged murders, rapes and assaults to keep me occupied.
My blog, lconquersdc.blogpot.com, chronicles some of my experiences and many of my thought processes.
Uni love,
Lisa M.
Greetings from the Rocky Top Retreat
I open my eyes from a hazy sleep to see a spider above my head. It looks dangerous. It takes me a while to register what exactly is going on. I get a book, knock the thing from out of my tent and go back to sleep.
I awake forty five minutes later because the heat in my tent is unbearable. I crawl out of my tent, and walk barefoot to “the porch.” Roger, who’s accent is so thick I can barely understand him serves me an awful cup of coffee. I say “Roger, this stuff is so bad, it gives me the shits.” Roger’s reply: “Its good for you boy. Make you light and strong. You’ll climb better.”
No, im not somewhere fancy like New Zeland or Africa. I have been spending my last few weeks camping at Roger’s Rocky Top Retreat in Fayettville, WV. Its a simple place consisting of a field and a shack (pictured below.)
Rock climbers from all over the country come here every year to climb on the Nuttal sandstone that hangs high over the New River, ironically one of the oldest rivers in the world.
Tucked away in rural West Virginia, the New River Gorge is a little known haven for all who enjoy “human powered recreation.” Although the most popular activity is white water rafting (the New is considered one of the best white water rivers in the country), rock climbing, mountain biking and hiking are also very popular activities.
Some photos so far.
Hope everyone else is enjoying themselves,
Greg
“From Russia with Love” (or, “Aleks debunks 007”)
So contrary to James Bond movies and other popular portrayals of Russia these days, people don’t drive tanks around downtown St Petersburg, they don’t drink vodka 24-7, and they don’t talk to each other in English with a weird accent.
In fact, St Petersburg’s Pulkovo International Airport, with its socialist realist (“socialist baroque”) façade, and the occasional Soviet insignia in various metro stations are the only remaining clues of Russia’s communist past.
An unbiased spectator will immediately observe, probably to his surprise, that modern St Petersburg is booming. It suffices to ascend the escalator from the metro to Nevsky Prospekt, the city’s main street, and to circumspect, observing thousands (maybe millions) of people swarming up and down the sidewalks and in and out of stores at any time of day or night. Since, around the time of the summer solstice, the sun sets in St Petersburg at about 1 AM only to rise again about 3 AM, it takes a bit of adjusting to get used to the fact that one is part of these swarming masses in the middle of daylight at midnight.
St Petersburg’s economic boom is not limited to Nevsky. In any corner of the city, new buildings are popping up like mushrooms out of the wet Russian soil. (Of course, this is yet to impact the terrible housing situation, with 1-bedroom apartments in the outskirts of the city costing more than our house in suburban Denver, Colorado.) New American-style stores are closely following in the steps of the residential development. “Okey”—the Russian analogue to Wal-Mart—sells everything from apples to underwear to computer parts and in between at affordable (at least for an American on USP money) prices. And yes, everything is “Made in China”.
On top of that, it is also comforting to see that the Russian government is taking matters seriously. The Russian National Project “Education”, run by Dmitry Medvedev, Deputy-Prime Minister and President Putin’s second right-hand man, has been pumping millions into Russia’s crumbled education infrastructure. The Graduate School of Management at St Petersburg State, where I worked, received $5 million (US) from the government in what one associate described as “a catastrophe of national proportions” because the school had a hard time dealing with all the funding. While I was there, they acquired new, state-of-the-art computers; imported books from the United States; and hired lecturers from Europe.
During my stay, three events of national importance took place, shedding more light on Russia’s dynamic image. The first, described by The Wall Street Journal as President Putin’s attempt to place a “fifth column” of “KGB operatives” in the United States, was the reconciliation of the Russian Orthodox Church Abroad and the Moscow Patriarchate, two parts of the Russian Orthodox Church divided by the 1917 Revolution and subsequent civil war. It took place in Moscow’s newly constructed Christ the Saviour Cathedral amid thousands of Orthodox faithful from around the world. The fact this event was not only broadcast live on Vesti 24, the Russian analogue to CNN, but also occupied all the news headlines of that week, and that even those distant from the Orthodox Church could be observed discussing its significance, shows its importance for modern Russia. It was not just the end of a tragic chapter in Church history; it was the reconciliation of the Russian nation, divided into “reds” and “whites” by the turmoil of the civil war. It also marked a new chapter in Russian Church-State relations, with President Putin speaking at the ceremony of the importance of the Church to Russian society.
The second event was the passing of former President Boris Yeltsin. It could be seen that in burying Yeltsin, Russians were burying the remnants of their past. The former president, hugely unpopular at home but immensely loved abroad, is bound to leave a mixed legacy. Ironically, the current president is immensely loved at home, but hugely unpopular abroad.
The third event was the international Economic Forum held in St Petersburg. It brought together not only important statesmen but also businessmen, Russian and foreign, investing in Russia. The figures of total foreign investment in Russia announced at that forum reveal that, despite the looming Cold War between Russia and the United States and the Litvinenko scandal with Britain, most American and British businessmen see Russia as an excellent opportunity.
This is not of course to say that modern Russian does not have its problems. The roads are in terrible condition and smoking is out of control. It takes four and a half hours to traverse Russia’s main national highway from St Petersburg to the ancient town of Novgorod, a distance of 90 miles. And while our studies revealed that 48% of Russian adults smoke, I am convinced that figure is closer to 90%. Running hot water in many apartments is still a luxury and attempting to drive around the city is a form of suicide for all the potholes, bad drivers, congestion, tramway lines, and antagonistic traffic police.
Yet despite its many problems, modern Russia poses a serious challenge to Western democracy. President Putin stated that Russia intended to pursue its own path of reform, not to blindly import ideas from overseas. So far, he is making substantial progress; time will tell if the positive changes in St Petersburg will spread to remote villages, where the situation is far more dire. And time, too, will tell if Russia and America are once again headed for a showdown, as de Tocqueville predicted centuries ago.
Aleksandr Andreev
New York City, #1
This is my last week in NYC! I wish I had posted on this blog earlier. Now I have to go back in my memory and recall all the AMAZING things that happened over the summer! When I got here in May I probably looked quite naïve. I didn’t know how to navigate the subway or how to find my way around New York neighborhoods. Now I pretty much know my way around Manhattan. Armed with my trusty map, I can find my way no matter where I am!
The key, however, is not to pull out your map, lest you look like a tourist. Tourists are abhorred in Manhattan and I’m starting to understand why. It’s nearly impossible to walk through the Times Square area without seeing huge groups of people standing around snapping photos. I mean, it’s to be expected – it is Times Square, after all – but sometimes you have to walk through Times Square to get where you need to go.
The things that usually impress people about NYC didn’t really impress me that much. We (myself and some other Duke in New Yorkers) went to Times Square our first night here, and I didn’t even know that it was Times Square! I was looking around like “where is it?” It just looked like downtown Chicago to me. What I think is cool about New York is that there are so many neighborhoods in so little space, that you can run into anybody anywhere, and that there are so many hidden treasures around every corner.
Example #1 of how you can run into anybody anywhere: three of us went to a (free!) comedy club called the Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre. It stars Amy Poehler from Saturday Night Live, and the performance was great. I ran into a friend of a friend, a Duke alum, just standing in line waiting to get in. There are Dukies all over the world!
Example #2 of how you can run into anybody anywhere: On the first day (yup, the first day!) of my internship, I got the chance to go to a book release party where Steve Harvey, the famous comedian, was in attendance. I was really excited!
Examples of hidden treasures in NYC: AURA THAI. MANDOO BAR (not a real bar, it’s a Korean dumpling house). MEE. PINKBERRY. Please check out these restaurants if you ever come to NYC. They’re wonderful.
I’ve been able to do so many cool things this summer! Pizza in Brooklyn. Walking the Brooklyn Bridge (both ways, to Brooklyn and back!) Performing poetry at a street fair in Harlem (best memory of the summer). Going to a jazz club. Hanging out in Central Park. Going to tons of museums (the Met, the MoMA, the Brooklyn Museum of Art, and the Museum of Natural History). And I haven’t even started to tell you about my internship and Duke in New York itself! Stay tuned.
Ikee G.
Greetings from the scrub
For the past six months I’ve been working as an avian ecology intern at a vibrant, wonderful biological station in (not so vibrant, wonderful) south-central Florida. In exactly one week I’ll be packing up all my stuff and driving a thousand miles home to prepare for a conference and, following that, the move to Durham. This timeline has been set since I accepted the position; the strange thing is that I now find myself thinking in circles whenever I consider the amount of time I’ve been here. On one hand, the tasks I was charged with completing in March and April and May seem like ancient history. Moreover, the level of familiarity I’ve achieved with the study site and 250+ Florida Scrub-Jays within it is a testament to the months I’ve spent in the field. On the other hand: Um, didn’t I just get here? Where did March and April and May go? It takes flipping through my journal and perusing several files of photos to convince myself that I was, in fact, alive and conscious for the past half year – not only that, but working 10 hours a day to track this population of bold, spunky birds during the entirety of their breeding season. Yet I truly struggle to accept the length of time I’ve been here.
I think a principal reason for that struggle – which is a shared sentiment, judging from the “Can you believe how fast it’s been?” exchanges with other interns – lies in the repetitiveness inherent in data collection and processing. It’s a singular mentality manifesting itself during each field job I’ve held; individual days are rendered meaningless as we conduct the same activities hour after hour to compile a massive amount of data. Then all of a sudden, a month or two or five are gone, and the sole proof of their passage is in the arbitrary list of dates written in our field books and official files.
For the majority of the season, my days revolved entirely around deciphering scrub-jay behavior to find and monitor nests, punctuated by population censuses and trapping of unbanded birds. Life was defined by nest searches, nest checks, chick ages and the absence of weekends (jays don’t have them, so why should we?). When nesting activity wound down in late May, we switched gears to working on our required independent projects, whereupon I conducted the same experiments for one month straight before embarking on number-crunching and writing. Up next week are furious draft revisions and Powerpoint creations, the final presentation on Thursday, and departure on Friday. And…scene. That’s it?
I’ve been dwelling on the time issue lately, because witnessing the speed with which my internship flew by makes me apprehensive that my 20s will be summed up in a box of field books and spreadsheets. (I blame this illustration for the “aaagh!” moment.) But even as I write this post, I know on some level my worries are unfounded, since anyone reading this blog probably doesn’t take his/her education too passively. The best assurance I have is my fortune to be specializing in one of the topics I most enjoy and to be doing so among the brightest academic community I could ask for. That, and when “work” is loosely defined as “testing behavioral hypotheses by playing games with birds (plus stopping to look at cool things along the way),” all those hours in the field are worth it. Go figure, I can actually earn a degree doing this!
–Irene L.
A male Florida Scrub-Jay (Aphelocoma coerulescens) perching on my ATV and being ridiculously tame.
Nineteen days old and ready to jump ship…
INTERuniTARY 
