To GrrlScientist:

Go, blog for me, and be my eyes
And ears, beneath Antarctic skies,
Where colonies of penguins dwell
(Creating quite a rancid smell).

And you will sit upon the ice
And snow, and blog in words concise
By rugged glaciers, icy shelves,
For us, who can’t be there ourselves.

And I will read your priceless posts
And offer you a thousand toasts,
To health and heart, to pen and ink,
Whatever gift I chance to think.

I’ll wish I could be there to see
The wonders that you write for me,
So eloquent your vivid prose
I’ll feel the cold wind as it blows.

Such alien and foreign climes
Are too much work to cast in rhymes:
If you have schemes you would devise
Then blog for me and be my eyes.

The penguins there will sing and dance:
“GrrlScientist has won the chance!”
To friends up North, you’ll say good-byes,
And blog for us, and be our eyes.



To everybody else:

I know that as small fish go, I am a very very very small little tiny little cuttlefish in a global virtual pond. I struggle to maintain just over a hundred readers per day, with occasional spikes a bit higher. Rarely, one of my readers will do something, and I will suddenly get over a thousand readers, and once double that! So, yeah, I am a small fish.

So I need your help. Whatever it is that you do to share one of my posts that you like, please do it for this one. Post it on whatever blogs, forums, newsgroups, tin cans with string, semaphore chains, electronic telegraph machines or smoke signals you have, and get lots of eyes over to GrrlScientist's blog, or (if you trust me) directly to her entry, to vote. (Yeah, she's Devorah; no, I've never met anyone with that name before, either.) You may, within the rules, vote from two different email accounts if you have them; voting does require registration, but it is simple, and a worthy cause.

That worthy cause is self-interest. See, Quark is sending someone, as my little verse says, to be our eyes and ears, to be our proxy in Antarctica. This is not something for just anyone. Odds are, if you are reading this, you already know that there are better and worse bloggers, better and worse writers (the two are not synonymous), and it makes a difference who you send to observe and report for you. For me, what clinched it for GrrlScientist was her photo series on the mosaics of the NYC subway system. I want someone who does not just passively take in the sights, sounds, and smells, but who actively looks for the beauty (or the beast) in even the overlooked corners. After all, she will be a guest there, and we will be guests there through her; to us, even the things the long-timers have long ago taken for granted, are new and strange, and I (quite selfishly) want someone there who sees the world the way GrrlScientist does.

Anyway... go vote, and please go spread the word in the other places you haunt. There are about 2 weeks left in voting, and she could use your help. And you could use her talent.