Into the Cold: Antarctica travels to Minneapolis

Don't we look like cousins? Katy Jensen on the left, me on the right. We read together from Antarctica: Life on the Ice on November 11 at Mager's and Quinn (a fabulous bookstore--both new and used) on a balmy early evening in Minneapolis. Katy--whose essay is about wintering at the South Pole--finds Minneapolis too cold...

We had an extraordinary audience. My real cousins Polly and Deborah Talen were there with their three girls Grace, Lydia, and Eliza (in reverse order of age). Polly is the funniest woman alive and Deborah is a founder of Rainbow Families. Victoria Nohl, a former student from Bard, showed up still looking like Queenie (her name while at Bard). But most of the standing-room only crowd was Katy's family and step-family. They stretched back into the stacks of books and listened, enraptured, while Katy read her beautiful and emotionally complex essay. When I first met Katy it was through her essay, which has an amazing grace and intelligence to it. Meeting her was that rare moment of person living up to their writing...and then adding that special something that comes only with sitting down and having tea with someone.

Here is Katy's account of the reading, which I post with a blush.

Katy writes: "For

me, there were two best things about the event at Magers and Quinn. One was

the overwhelming range of emotions associated with being on “this side” of

a reading... from apprehension to acceptance to the rushes of adrenaline

that kept me awake all night. But my favorite best thing

about the event was finally meeting Susan in person. Nobody understood how

we could have collaborated on a book without even talking on the phone, but

when we stepped into Lucia’s for tea, I felt like it was something we did

every week. And when the ball of leaves in my tea glass expanded into a magical

flower, it was both wondrous and appropriate. Susan has that effect on people:

she disarms them with candor and then delights them with vivid adventures.

I can’t wait to see what’s next!"

And I can't wait to see what's next for Katy, who has just started working for Lockheed Martin. She shared one story of meeting an astronaut she admired. She was a bit tongue-tied until he shook her hand and said, "I never thought I'd meet someone who has been to the South Pole." Katy hasn't just been to the South Pole, she has spent more than four years in Antarctica, including three winters at the South Pole, where, for two seasons she was the station’s first female area manager.

Here is a cool fact about the Antarctic: geographical features can be named for living people (unlike in the rest of the world where you must be dead to be remembered in this way). Five contributors to Antarctica: Life on the Ice have features named after them: Uberuaga Island, Joyce Peak, Ainley Peak, Guthridge Nunataks and for Katy, Jensen Rampart, a set of cliffs in the Darwin Mountains. Some day she hopes to visit her cliffs. And I want to tag along.

You can read more about naming on the continent in an Antarctic Sun article from November 12, 2000.