Big Exotic Fish in a Very Small African Pond
My third-grade class was a little different. Instead of desks we sat in couches, loafed in bean bags or sat cross legged on the carpet while our teachers opened our young minds. Twenty years before the internet, we had a H.A.M radio which reached around the world to operators in Alaska, Poland and Antarctica. This was our world wide web in the 1970’s, and every week we gathered around the console as the glass tubes warmed up and waited for the world to come in. As a class, we struck up a friendship with Brian at a distant research station near the South Pole and held regular chats with him. His updates and letters exposed us to a bigger world in a way that no lecture, book or film could. Sitting around that receiver as our teacher turned dials and aerial controls we held our breath until she reached the specific frequency which brought Brian into our lives once again. After two or three weeks of radio silence, he walked away from his radio at 90 degrees south and right i