C is for cookie ...

This is Adam, with his almost indestructible camera. The black rectangle is a series of solar panels that help to recharge the battery.

'Oooo! Chaaaaaa-lie!! It's a glacier!' This is Marie, Silver's wife and my language and knitting teacher. We giggled throughout our helicopter ride...

For most of my life, the abbreviation 'cc' has hitched up in front of the word 'cookie' to represent one of my favorite things in the world: chocolate chip cookies. In fact, when I imagine those letters in my head, I imagine them jotted in Liz's slanted script, on a small scrap of paper with 'Log Lunch recipe' or 'Log lunch shopping list' scribbled at the top. But alas, when I made cookies this week (I've been thinking about this post title for a while, and the thought of it inspired me to bake, obviously), I couldn't find chocolate chips at the store. So I made chocoalte chunk cookies. Still delicious, FYI. But my point is that my imagination of 'cc' is changing the more time I spend in Ilulissat, in this Environment office, and in my own head, reflecting on it all ...

This morning I got out of the town, out of the office and out of my mind during a helicopter trip!!! Adam Lewinter, a researcher/photographer/engineer/adventurer extraordinaire, invited Marie and I to tag along on his research expedition to the faces of two glaciers. Yippee (we even brought our picnic spirit!)! We strapped into the 5 person flying machine at 8:30, glided over town and up the fjord, a few miles deep before we got to the face of the Ilulissat Glacier - the famously 'most productive glacier in the Northern Hemisphere'. I posted a picture of Adam at this site, checking on his camera. Adam works for the Extreme Ice Survey, who have, for the last few years, been photographing the recession of tidewater glaciers all over the world. They set up these cameras, boxed into hearty, weather-resitant, rock-resistant cases (emphasis on

'-resistant' and not '-proof' - they've lost 2 cameras to rock and snow falls). This shoe-box-sized camera armor also houses a timing device developed to make the cameras take pictures at regular intervals only when there is enough light. Every few months, Adam or one of his colleagues goes out, changes the memory card (this was our expedition) and presto-chango, they scroll through the shots and have a time-lapse record of glacial movement. OK, the presto-chango part isn't simple, but ... All of this is published on thier website (check it out! http://www.extremeicesurvey.org/).

The pictures become art; they become movies; they become research material for scientists and compelling images for people wondering about the changes that are happening in our natural world today. 'The best way that I can describe our work,' Adam tells me as we look out at an enormous glacier-born iceberg in the bay, 'is to say that we take you out of the perspective of human time, where changes are hard to see, and put you into glacial time'. I like the idea of glacial time ...

Yesterday, Adam came to one of the English classes that I've worked with at the adult education center in town. He brought a camera that the students could look at, as well as videos of huge calving events (when a big piece of glacier breaks off from the front edge/face and crashes into the sea, where it becomes an iceberg). My boss from the municipality, Mette, came along and helped to translate English-Danish for us, just to make sure everyone was following. We ended up staying for the entire 1.5 hours class and talking not only about Adam and Mette's work, but also about what climate change is, and what can be done to mitigate against it. We spent the last 40 minutes discussing the answer to one student's question: 'But what can we do in Ilulissat?'. Well of course, people here can do the same things as people anywhere: walk instead of drive, use CFL lightbulbs, turn down the heat, etc. But, the annual emissions of Greenland's 56,000 people are hardly a significant contribution to the global emissions (compare to the US, where 5% of the world's population emits 25% of the world's greenhouse gases). This isn't to say that people here should not try to live sustainably. However, it is to say that the margin of effective changes to be made here is relatively slim: there are only 600 cars for 5,000 people, houses are rarely more than 5 or 6 rooms ...

My thoughts on how Greenland can actually make a difference? It can send a message. Greenland is already a symbol in the climate change debate - I wouldn't be here otherwise. And by making changes here, Greenland can tell the rest of the world (that's you, stalkers of my blog) that people elsewhere also need to be aware of how they are living, consuming, emitting and changing the global climate. Hopefully you're thinking about it :)

I'm thinking about dinner tonight :) which I will share with Adam, Silver, Marie and Suzanne, the managing editor of Metro, a newspaper based in Denmark but also distributed in Boston and New York (I'm hoping to talk to her about some of the previous paragraphs, since managing editors are probably messengers ...). We're going to the 'Hotel Hvide Falke' (Hotel White Falcon) for the weekly 'Greenlandic buffet'. I am hoping for some seal meat (check out the photo below!), since I have yet to try it. Silver made a whale stew the other night for Marie, Adam and me. It was a delicious and hilarious dinner, in which Silver's life story attracted more attention than the novelty of a whale in my bowl.

There's NO WAY to tell about all of it or really to characterize this man - even he says 'Oh GOD! You wouldn't believe it. My life, there are things you don't know and if I told, you wouldn't believe it.' But he IS telling! And not only to his dinner guests, but also to 2 Italian authors who are writing biographies of his crazy life.

At the age of 19, he was playing keyboard for a very popular Italian pop-band. 'Five-thousand, ten-thousand, twenty-thousand people we had at EVERY show! And the girls! Agh, the GIRLS! They would be up there crying and wooing and kissing us,' he wiggles his arms like jelly above his head and dances around in what must be intended to be feminine.

He played music for more than 30 years, in various bands, in various parts of the world. He talks about summers in Greece, where he would go diving every afternoon before evening gigs. He came to Greenland in the 1970's, for a kind of random gig offered to him by a company he was playing for in Denmark. He fell in love here and never left. 'Kendy (yes, this is how he pronounces my name), you seem to be making some friends here,' he puts his hand on my shoulder and I smile back (I can count my friends on one hand), 'I just have to tell you one thing: do not fall in love here. It will ruin you.'

Silver is now 60 years old and, in the way a recovering alcoholic won't pick up a drink, this Italian rockstar will not pick up his music again. He quit over a dozen years ago, saying that the musican's life was destroying his family because it demanded crazy working hours and habits. When he put down his keyboard, he picked up tourism and he has been showing people around Ilulissat for about 15 years now.

I think he should open a restaurant and serve the incredible Italian-Greenlandic food that is helping me add a few layers of insulation to my body just as the winter rolls in :) I even promised I would teach him how to make my mom's cc cookies ...

**P.S. It took me a while to figure out how to post pictures, so there are some at the bottom of the page, too. Enjoy!