19 NOVEMBER 2008--A Letter From England

I arrived back from the South Pole in the middle of the night. In my absence, Tracey and Jennifer both redeployed to their respective homes. Tracey to Okinawa, Japan and Jennifer to New York.
Upon my arrival I stopped at the post office and picked up a letter that had been sitting with the cargo in New Zealand since our summer months....Antarctica's winter.

The letter reads: "The Clergy Team: Hello! A wondeful article appeared in UK Newspaper "Metro-Dailymail" the other day (10 June 2008)about life on McMurdo. I have copied it and sent it to you. This sure was fun to read!" And what follows is the content of the article from Great Britain: "ANTARCTICA: Workers at a research base are celebrating after receiving a shipment--of condoms. The 125 staff will be given the contraceptives to avoid the embarassment of buying them. The delivery was one of the last to be made to the McMurdo Station before the onset of winter darkness." I couldn't believe that this shipment made the international news...but sure enough the shipment of 16,488 condoms made worldwide press. If you do a google search on this matter, you will be shocked at the number of articles that pop up regarding this delivery. My favorite quote or misquote is from the station manager. "There are some people that tend to get a little bit bored but, for the most part, people who come down here know how to occupy their time" and so the newspapers took that quote or misquote to the bank.

The timing of this newspaper article just made me laugh. Of course Tracey left before I could share this with her. One of her jobs while stationed here was "Condom Princess" delivering condoms to the station restrooms where they could be taken by anyone interested.