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Tuesday, December 14Retracing John Steinbeck's Sea of Cortez ExpeditionPlease join your fellow NCSWAns and their guests on Tuesday, December 14 for our annual holiday dinner. We’ve lined up science writer Jon Christensen to give us a multimedia recap of his trip retracing John Steinbeck and Ed Ricketts in their famous expedition to the Sea of Cortez. In the spring of 2004, Jon joined a scientific expedition on a working fishing boat that sailed from Monterey down to Baja’s Sea of Cortez to recreate the 1940 expedition by novelist Steinbeck and marine biologist Ricketts. Jon kept a daily log of the expedition, which surveyed the same 20 intertidal sites and more, at www.seaofcortez.org. Jon is writing a book about the journey to be published by Shearwater Books/Island Press in Fall 2005, and he will give us a sneak preview of the inside story of these two collaborations between writers and scientists, the historical voyage that resulted in one of the seminal books in ecology, The Log from the Sea of Cortez, and the contemporary expedition. Jon ruefully notes that NASA prepares carefully before putting astronauts together in a small spacecraft for months, but his crew was thrown together simply by serendipity onto a small boat at sea for two months along the remote coast of Baja California. Jon and the crew also worked closely with other reporters, from the Los Angeles Times to National Public Radio/National Geographic's Radio Expeditions, to tell the story of the voyage. Jon will show us slides from the journey and talk about these collaborative experiences, the expedition's findings, and how historic scientific expeditions can open up new perspectives on contemporary changes in the environment. Jon came to northern California from Carson City, Nevada, when he was awarded a Knight Fellowship at Stanford in 2002. During the dozen years before that he roamed America's outback, writing regularly for High Country News, a western regional newspaper, as well as many of the Silver State's newspapers, and The New York Times. He created a regional Web site, www.GreatBasinNews.com, wrote a book, Nevada, and produced "Nevada Variations," a series of feature stories from each of the state's 17 counties for Nevada Public Radio. Last year, Jon was a Steinbeck Fellow at San Jose State University, a fellowship for writers working on a book. This fall he began a fellowship in the history department at Stanford. Jon continues to write for The New York Times Science Times section and is a columnist and contributing editor for Conservation In Practice, a quarterly magazine. OTHER FESTIVITIES • Our annual door-prize giveaway, with fun science-related gifts from the Exploratorium and other Bay Area institutions. • The second annual NCSWA Book Exchange Table. Would you like to lessen the load on that science bookshelf at home? Did you receive books to review and didn't quite get around to it? Bring one or two science books for a first-come, first-serve exchange. • Mingle with new, old and student members of NCSWA and national reporters covering the American Geophysical Union meeting. DINNER Tuesday, December 14 6:30 - 8 happy hour Yank Sing is one of San Francisco's most popular deem sum restaurants, ranked by the San Francisco Chronicle among the Top 100 Bay Area Restaurants and by USA Today as one of the ten best places to ring in the Chinese New Year. We're taking over their Rincon Center restaurant for a Chinese banquet that includes traditional deem sum plus classic Chinese entrees: Cold Platter Directions to get to the restaurant Yank Sing's Rincon Center restaurant is in San Francisco's South of Market area, an easy walk from the Embarcadero BART station. If you are driving, check out Yank Sing's Web site for directions and a map: http://www.yanksing.com/location-rincon-center.htm. Parking: Yank Sing offers free validated parking in the Rincon Center garage. The garage entrance is on Spear St., midway between Mission and Howard Streets. Bring your ticket into the restaurant and ask a waiter to validate it for you. Cost: Mail your check, made out to "NCSWA," by December 7 to: Bob Sanders OUR HOLIDAY FETES USUALLY SELL OUT, SO SEND YOUR CHECK IN SOON. NCSWA is subsidizing a portion of the costs to keep the price reasonable. CARPOOLING: For those interested in carpooling to the dinner, Karen Street again will play transportation matchmaker, matching up those of you wanting a ride with those who are driving. Contact her at karen_street@sbcglobal.net. She will mail out information as she receives it. Many thanks to all those who have offered rides in the past, enabling people to attend.
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