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Teeth are frightening. It has been said that they are a glimpse of the skull leering at us, half hidden. And they are certainly a source of pain. Let them go, and they become infested with aching rot. Keep after them and you are doomed to the pokings, proddings, and drillings of the dentist.<\/p>\n
One thing the National Science Foundation wants to avoid at all costs is having to make an air evac run or abort a mission because someone develops a grizzly infection in a tooth. Thanks to the miracles of modern dentistry, these scenarios are almost entirely preventable. All it requires is a thorough dental exam before embarking for the ends of the Earth.<\/p>\n
Since there is no hope of being allowed to set foot on the icebreaker without evidence of a recent dental exam and any subsequent necessary work, I girded myself for a visit to my dentist, Dr. Lindsey, last Tuesday. All went well. I have no gaping cavities, no broken, dead, or wisdom teeth, no gum disease, no worn out dentures. In an hour, I was on my way with a set of bite-wing x-rays in an envelope, along with a form filled out and signed by the dentist. He had only this caution:<\/p>\n
“Now, you have no cracks. But if one of these old silver fillings should fail and a piece of a tooth break off, don’t panic. You’ll be a bit sensitive to hot and cold for four or five days, but after that, you’ll be fine. We can fix it when you get home.<\/p>\n
He also said not to bite any icebergs.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, I have been buying books about Antarctica. My friend and fellow Clarion Foundation<\/a> trustee, Kim Stanley Robinson, who spent time in Antarctica researching his Mars<\/i> books and gathering material for Antarctica,<\/i><\/a> and fully intends to return there someday, obliged me by sending a list of his favorite books on the subject. Sometime in the next couple of days, I will post a list of them. I’ve already discovered that Frank Worsley, the captain of Shackleton’s ship Endurance<\/i>, was a really fine writer. I pray that I won’t have to write of similar adventures.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Teeth are frightening. It has been said that they are a glimpse of the skull leering at us, half hidden. And they are certainly a source of pain. Let them go, and they become infested with aching rot. Keep after them and you are doomed to the pokings, proddings, and drillings of the dentist. One […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-home"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/etchemendy.com\/rblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/etchemendy.com\/rblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/etchemendy.com\/rblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/etchemendy.com\/rblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/etchemendy.com\/rblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=12"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/etchemendy.com\/rblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/etchemendy.com\/rblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=12"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/etchemendy.com\/rblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=12"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/etchemendy.com\/rblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=12"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}