Greetings from post-Halifax and from the Semester at Sea! This is the first of the 2005 summer’s Explorer Gazettes, which I hope to send out each week between mid-June and late August. Be sure to delete this with impunity if you can’t deal with receiving a mass e-mail. I am sending these to you from the MV Explorer, a brand new ship (well, three years old) operated by the Institute for Shipboard Education (affiliated, for the time being, with the University of Pittsburgh). This first week we have been getting to know each other and the staff, participating in meetings about teaching in this unique environment, recovering from seasickness, and working on planning our classes before the students join us. Mostly we have been trying to stay upright as the ship crossed the open ocean to go from the Bahamas to Halifax.

Our final week at home felt desperate altogether as we tried to arrange house-sitter + mail + paper + garbage + a ride to the airport, but everything came together in the end. Our friend Charlie Ware (the dad of one of Morgan’s classmates) graciously agreed to give us a ride, and it took us “only” 45 extra minutes to get out of the house after he arrived to pick us up. We stayed at the LaQuinta next to Sea-Tac airport and went to bed at 9:30, and even the planes taking off and landing didn’t faze us. The alarm at 4:15 was daunting! Luckily, we had relatively smooth flights to Houston, Houston to West Palm Beach, and West Palm Beach to Freeport on Grand Bahama Island. The last plane was tiny: only nine rows of seats, one seat on each side! It was lovely to fly through the clouds and see glimpses of azure water next to teal next to white sand beaches.

Freeport has all the shabby distinction of a post-colonial “island paradise,” with its clapboard houses and their peeling paint, concrete block homes, occasional graffiti, and faded elegance. It was also run over roughshod by last year’s hurricanes, so there were hundreds of island pines with no branches or needles, destroyed palm trees, and a general beaten-down look to the foliage. We had six large bags (including an electronic keyboard) and six carry-on bags (including my fiddle), so our taxi was a mini-van out of necessity. We arrived in the resort district and stayed at the Pelican Bay Inn, in a one-bedroom suite that I had upgraded (for free) from a regular room. It had thick white towels, luxurious comforters, and nice furniture with a terrific view of the bay from our second-floor deck. Temperatures were in the low 90s! We found some dinner at a nearby marketplace (Greek – after deciding against Italian, island, or Irish food). The butter with our bread was Irish (?!). In the plaza there was a live band playing various island classics, children dancing and otherwise reacting kinetically to the music, and lots of local teenagers and young people hanging out and looking cool (as cool as one could look when the weather was that warm).

After dinner we went out to the beach and reveled in putting our (finally bare!) feet in the water. It was so lovely and warm! The sun had gone down but there was enough ambient light to see by, and it felt so nice to start to let go of the plane rides. We went to bed “early” – about 11:30 (8:30 our time) and woke up at 7:30 the next morning to fresh pastries, coffee that Cary made (thank you, Cary!), and cheese that he had kept cold on the trip. Then we put on our suits and out we went to the beach! The Westin (plantation design) and Sheraton (curvilinear cruise ship design) were across the street (right on the beach), and walking on the groomed beach there was like stepping into flour; white and powdery and sticking to your feet! The waves were small (two feet high) and all concentrated right at the shore, so once you got past the initial “chill” (the water was about 85°!) you could just float and bob up and down. After about fifteen minutes in the water, I felt an abrupt sensation in my body that can be described only as some kind of deep-level relaxing. We had made it, and there was no chance of our missing the ship that afternoon. Cary and Morgan and I played tag in the water. It was incredibly beautiful, with fine weather, lovely views, and not so bright that it was uncomfortable. We later went back to the room, showered in the “rainfall” shower (one of those largish disk-type showerheads), packed up and left our bags at the front desk so we could hunt for lunch at another Greek restaurant (much better) in the same marketplace. The dolmas (lamb and rice wrapped in grape leaves), tzatziki (cucumber and garlic in yogurt/sour cream), lightly fried calamari, olives, and pita bread were all delicious and plentiful. Morgan had a feta cheese omelette! In the humidity, my freshly-washed hair puffed up to three times its normal volume and was about four or five curly inches thick.

After lunch we got ourselves and our bags (almost forgetting the camera – my fault – and indeed forgetting a liter of drinking water – also my fault) to the ship. The MV Explorer was built in Hamburg, Germany, and was owned at first by a Greek company (so it’s got famous quotes in Greek and in translation from Kazantzakis and others). It’s 594 feet long and has at least seven levels. Built as a cruise ship, it has some elements that you would normally see on a cruise ship (lounges, a fully-operational spa and beauty/barber shop, store for sundries) and those you would never see (a 10,000 volume library, computing center with brand-new wireless internet-connected PCs/scanners/printers, classrooms with fully operational audio/video equipment). We walked into our room and I was sure there had been a mistake. The main living/sleeping area for the three of us is about 9 x 11. You can imagine what the place looked like with the three of us, our six huge bags and our rolling carry-ons. We staggered and laughed and bumped into and stepped over each other and our things, and in a surprisingly short period of time, we had put much of it away. Whew.

So picture this tiny room (which you get to by going down a six-foot long narrow hallway (with bathroom on the right, closets on the left). If you’re standing in the hallway, you look out a nice large window (3’ x 4’) to the open ocean (or whatever happens to be out there, five floors down). To your immediate right is an angled inset desk (18” deep by 30” wide) and a chair. To your immediate left is a set of drawers, two of which hide a small fridge. Next to the fridge is a tiny round table (18”) with a little chair next to it. The beds are two twins, one against each of the left and right walls, and a bunk bed that pulls down from the ceiling and is accessible (above the left-hand twin bed) with a short ladder. Cary’s in the upper berth, Morgan’s in the lower berth, and I’m in the twin to the right side of the room. A small bedside table with three drawers (2 feet wide, 18” deep) separates the twin beds. The bathroom has a toilet, sink, and shower, all very modern and nice. We draped fleece blankets and towels around the lower bunk so that Morgan could have a “cave” for privacy and sleep when the lights are on, etc. Her friends are very impressed with the cave. She has brought her two stuffed companions, Pup (a Rottweiler) and Laddie (a border collie), and they sometimes come flying out of the cave when provoked.

The ship has 20 faculty and 400 students joining us in Halifax. A number of faculty have brought their children; there are about two dozen children including a handful that are Morgan’s age. We had our first meeting on Sunday and a whole array of meetings on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday as we fretted about not having electrical outlets in our rooms (they’re upgrading them so they’ll have five outlets instead of just one), no internet access much of the time, and no offices to prepare classes. I was relieved, in talking to various colleagues, to hear that only some of them have completely prepared their lectures. I have not. I am wildly overprepared for some areas (Ireland, for example) and hopelessly underprepared for others (the Basque region and Poland). I very much like everyone I’ve met so far. One faculty actually met me in 1985 for a day when I was working at the ethnomusicology archives and (apparently, according to him) came in on a Sunday and let him go through the Joe Heaney collection. How he remembered that day after 20 years is a mystery, but I’m flattered! I’m glad I was nice to him! How awful it would be to be remembered for having been rude.

It was lovely to pull out of the Bahamas that first night. The moon was out, lights were on all over the port, and (for some reason) there just happened to be some fireworks going off in the distance. As we picked up speed we saw brilliant streaks coursing through (and above) the water, and realized that they were flying fish!! I’d never seen them before. So already there was something new and exciting for us to experience. We dragged Morgan off to bed by 11:00 pm. When we reached the open ocean (I’m guessing about 3 am) the ship began to roll a bit, and I’m pretty sure that most people woke up right away. Seasickness was an issue for some people (faculty, staff, families alike) but we did okay. Morgan didn’t feel well in the morning, but she got through the first day (playing wildly with her new friends) and went to bed at a normal bedtime. Some of the food has been surprisingly good (Thai lamb curry! Yum!) and some of it has been unappealing (the water is heavily chlorinated and iodined, so brushing your teeth is like doing it in a swimming pool). Luckily Cary remembered to bring a water filter, and we have that little fridge, so we’re good.

Every day at noon we get the “bridge report,” where we find out how fast we’re going (about 19 knots), how high the waves are (six-to-ten-foot swells), how fast the wind is going and from which direction (varies), how deep the water is (on Tuesday, over 13,000 feet deep!), latitude and longitude, and what land we’re closest to (Cape Canaveral on Monday, Cape Hatteras on Tuesday, Long Island on Wednesday). We were about 150 miles from land until approaching Halifax on Wednesday.

The hardest part about the trip, so far, was on Wednesday itself, when we ran into a (ahem!) perfect storm. (Actually, not a storm, but a low pressure system.) The day started beautifully; a few clouds brushed the horizons (remember, the horizons are all around when there’s no land in sight), and there were long rolling swells that made the ship rock gently from side to side. I began to be concerned about seasickness relatively early on, but went outside on deck to watch the far horizon and breathe in the fresh, cool air (we had since left the 90° weather behind). It helped! With surprising abruptness, fog and clouds closed in on us, and it began to rain. There were whitecaps on the tops of the waves (“white horses,” they called them). This was at lunchtime, and there weren’t nearly as many people eating lunch as I thought there would be. First clue! Several of us were in the faculty/staff lounge on the seventh deck, practicing a couple of sea shanties (more on that later) when one of them – Rick Lorenz – spotted some dolphins off the starboard bow. We all leaped to our feet and ran to the railing, and we were looking way off when they crested the waves right in front of us! That was the last we saw of them, though.

The funniest part of the rolling waves was that there is no way to walk down a narrow hallway without richoceting off the walls. I was moving rather quickly down one of them and saw a crew member lurching toward me, so I jokingly said something about trying not to run into him. He laughed and we held steady until we were about five feet away from each other, and then the boat lurched and we barely missed each other! It is also hilarious trying to go up or down stairs: when the ship is going into a trough, you feel like you weigh about fifteen pounds, and it’s a struggle to keep in contact with the stairs (but you can really fly up them!). Then when the ship rises, your normal weight doubles and you simply have to stop where you are. At one point I was (again) trying to walk quickly down the hall when the ship went into a trough, and I felt like the roadrunner with dancing feet, just trying to stay with feet on the floor! It’s like unseen hands lift you right up, and it’s really fun.

We stayed out a little longer to keep the seasickness at bay, and it worked (again). Morgan was playing with her friends Rebeccah and Eliana about halfway through the afternoon. Then the storm started in earnest. We began riding the waves high, and dipping into troughs (though we heard afterward that the waves were only 14’ high). There I was in the computer lab when there was a terrific jolt (with an appropriately loud crunching sound), the whole ship shuddered, and we all looked outside to see the splash from a wave all the way up by the windows of the sixth deck! One of our friends up in the faculty/staff lounge on the top deck was directly under the sloping windows, and evidently the wave came all the way up and covered the windows! That sent a number of people in the computer lab (including the person who was working there) to their rooms.

As it turns out, Cary and Morgan and Rebeccah were out on the deck when it happened! They flew inside as fast as they could go (and a stack of deck chairs toppled nearby to hasten their speed). A few minutes later I found the girls lying down on soft benches in the sixth floor dining room with Cary keeping watch next to them, so I relieved Cary and told them stories and sang them songs until dinnertime. I turned around partway through the songs and stories and noticed about a dozen other people hovering to listen. At least two thirds of the ship’s inhabitants were not present at dinner. For some reason, though, the three of us were just fine. The weather started to calm down later in the evening, and although it took me awhile to fall asleep, I was happy to notice that we were sailing in much calmer waters the next morning en route to Halifax. We passed a couple of beautiful lighthouses and were pulled into the harbor by tugboats on the dot of 8 o’clock. We’ve been docked in pier 20, next to the famous pier 21, Canada’s version of Ellis Island (1925-1970s).

Halifax was stormy and cold and grey; however, we were happy to get off the ship and take full strides wherever we wanted to go. We walked along the windy waterfront (fully decked in rain gear) with Rick and Joan Lorenz (he’s teaching international law on the ship and is from Tacoma) to find a nice restaurant for dinner. There is a beautiful tall ship moored there next to our ship; I hope to get a picture of it. As it turned out, I didn’t get out my new camera all day because the rain was constant. Once we found a place and made a reservation, we spent time in a used bookstore, then enjoyed coffee, tea, and hot chocolate (me, Cary, and Morgan, respectively) in a “fair trade” coffee place. After that we found the old (from the 1750s) and on) burial grounds for Halifax; in a place the size of a city block there were 12,000 souls buried there! This is also the place they buried some of the victims of the Titanic (those they could collect from the water). We were particularly impressed by the art on the gravestones (lots of winged skulls, extinguished lamps, and hourglasses on their sides). Halifax’s downtown was the site of a major disaster in 1917, when two ammunition ships collided in the harbor and exploded, killing 2000 people and obliterating the entire downtown. There are multiple books about the event, as you can imagine It was the largest explosion in the world up to that time.

For dinner the first night we went to the “Five Fishermen” restaurant with Rick and Joan, where we enjoyed a “salad and mussel bar” with the best mussels I’ve ever had. Morgan loved them, too! We dipped them in mild garlic butter. We split a bottle of Nova Scotia white wine (pretty good, actually) and although I had come in with the intention of ordering lobster (my first lobster!!), I chickened out at the idea of that exoskeleton. I keep imagining them as bugs-on-steroids. So instead, I had seafood fettucine that included lobster pieces, Digby scallops (yum!), a prawn and some kind of fish. It was delicious, but the mussels were exceptional. Cary had the same thing, and Morgan was delighted with her tomato-rosemary soup. We were exhausted when we got back to the ship.

On Friday we went out earlier in the day; I had to find a couple of CDs to make up for ones I had left at home. In the CD store the guy on the first floor told me that all the international CDs were on the third floor, and as I trotted up three flights of narrow, window-less spiral staircase I got incredibly woozy. Flipping through rows of CDs, however, was much worse! I had to grab the rack to steady myself. After I found what I needed, I stopped and had a lovely cappuccino and small treat at a coffee house, thinking that it was probably my last moment of anonymity and privacy for some weeks to come. Cary and Morgan climbed up to the top of the city and looked down, then walked around and stopped to watch some people doing glass blowing. Everything was chaotic when we got back on board the ship, with parents and students walking all over the place. Several people asked me where they could smoke (I said “Nowhere”).

When we pulled out from the shore (precisely at 5 pm, as scheduled), Rick Lorenz, Harry Fletcher (law professors), Ron Linden (Academic Dean), Cary and I all sang the Ian and Sylvia song “Farewell to Nova Scotia” – first on the 7th deck and then on the 5th deck. We hoped that the videographer hired to document the voyage wasn’t planning to catch the whole thing, but there he was, along with the photographer. Ron named us The Ineptunes. It was earnest, corny, fun, and embarrassing all at the same time. We got turned around 360 degrees in the harbor by the tugboats, for some reason, then finally headed out as the fog closed in. I watched the parents waving from the receding shoreline and knew that if I were one of those parents, I would be on my second packet of tissues at that point. It seemed that every student had a digital camera.

Today, Saturday the 18th, we were in reasonably calm rolling seas in deep fog; a few birds have been following alongside. Tomorrow is supposed to be calm as well, but we’re expecting another low-pressure system the next day, which means the students will be challenged to be upright, focused, and in class! I had my “debut” in presenting a piece of music in Global Perspectives, the one course required of every passenger on the ship (except the littlest kids). Every day I’ll be offering a few minutes of recorded music and talking about it right at the beginning of class. For some reason I was terribly nervous about it (perhaps because it’s to a crowd of well over 400 people), but it went okay. I played a selection of music from Rapa Iti, a small island 900 miles south of Tahiti, in which the choir (recorded in a church made of coral) manifests the sound of the tides and waves by sinking a quarter-tone at the end of each phrase. Listened to with the ship swaying from side to side was really interesting; I should have let it go on longer! Maybe I will when my classes officially begin tomorrow.

I’ve been spending a little time with Soffia Birgisdóttir, who boarded the ship in Halifax and is sailing with us to Iceland. She is a specialist in Icelandic literature and music, so I’ve drafted her to give a guest lecture in my class on Icelandic popular music. She lent me half a dozen CDs of Icelandic and Faroe Islands pop, rock, and rap. It’s amazing stuff! Hearing people rap so crisply in Icelandic is fascinating! I’m trying not to be too anxious about classes, though I’ve certainly had several “what was I thinking?” moments since getting on the ship, having exclusively to do with teaching. The ship itself, Cary and Morgan, the tiny room, the food, and the other passengers are all going to be fine, even after nine weeks.

That’s it for now! I hope this gets to you, and that you are enjoying the beautiful summer wherever you are.