Hello Nat,

A story I thought you and the band might appreciate... I'm just finishing up some field work in Antarctica studying a group of glaciers on the East side of the Antarctic Peninsula. It so happens that all of these glaciers (and many of the mountains nearby) are named after Moby Dick - Stubb, Starbuck, Pequod, Flask, Melville, Ishmael, etc.

We spent the bulk of our time working on Flask Glacier. So naturally your song about Flask came to mind. When we were dropped off at the beginning of a 7 day storm, I realized that in all of food supplies - the butter was missing! So, yes, I had to laugh when we were a butterless crew of scientists on Flask glacier... We did request a resupply of butter over the radio and when the plane came back a week later to move us further down glacier they brought us a bunch of butter. And we enjoyed every bit of it.

We ended our field work at Palmer Station a few weeks later. We found a guitar and our team made an attempt to sing Flask's song for everyone on the station (adding a verse for our own butterless adventure, of course).

Thanks for the song...

you can see a bit of our adventure on Flask Glacier here:
http://iceshelf.wordpress.com

take care,
Erin

PS. In the world of glaciers, Flask is now getting a bit of revenge, tearing through Stubb and Starbuck Glaciers and dominating the regional ice flow.

PPS. I live up in Fairbanks Alaska now - any chance you'll be coming north to do a show any time soon?

Erin Pettit
Assistant Professor of Geophysics Glaciology