This NPS-produced video about John Wesley Powell - the one-armed war vet that lead the first known expedition down the Colorado through that big ol' Grand Canyon - is just so wonderfully cheesy. Watch it. Or just listen.
A Life Well Lived
It was fifty years ago that Jim Whittaker became the first American to summit Mount Everest. Check out "A Life Well Lived," a short documentary about the climber here. Inspiring guy.
Agafia
Thank you to the good folks at VICE for inviting us up to the Explorer's Club (more on that place to come) last week for a private screening of the latest and greatest in their Far Out series. The VICE team found themselves in Siberia this time around, visiting a woman who has lived her entire life 160 miles from the nearest town. Read more of the fascinating story here (it's worth your time, believe you me) and start watching Agafia's Taiga Life.
Explorers Club Dinners
Thank you to the Village Voice's food blog, Fork In the Road, for posting these great Explorers Club menus from their famous dinners of yesteryear. More info:
The Explorers Club was founded in 1904 by a couple of full-time explorers and a ragtag crew of archaeologists, journalists, and professors -- they finally began admitting women members in 1981, starting with the geologist Kathryn Sullivan and deep-sea diver Sylvia Earle.Today, the club is still driven by "the instinct to explore," especially at the dinner table. Once a year, international members gather in New York to honor "various accomplishments in exploration" and to eat extremelyadventurously, from a banquet that famously celebrates the marginalized delights of maggots, scorpions, and roaches, and offal of all sorts, from duck tongue to pig's face. (Back in 2001, three allergy-prone diners suffered from burning, itchy mouths after eating improperly prepared tarantula tempura -- the spider had been served with its urticating bristles, or poisonous leg hair, still intact.)This year's feast -- the club's 109th -- takes place on Saturday evening at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel. Here's a look back at some of the club's menu designs over the years, starting in 1896 when it was still called the Arctic Club, through 1974.