When she met an American for the first time? Paleontologist Melanie Duration (1989) does not have to think long about it: that was digital, in her gaming time. “I was eighteen and was at HAVO in Alkmaar,” she says in one of the spacious rooms of the Fryslân Nature Museum, where her friend is a curator. “I got a relationship with Marco, a gymnasiast who was addicted to gaming. I was also addicted, and got to know many American gamers.”
At that time she noticed that Americans are ‘very sweet, very friendly’, but also ‘insecure and vulnerable’. Because health care in the United States is expensive, and many Americans are uninsured, gamers started one crowdfunding campaign after the other. They were often desperate, says Duration. Because they could not pay surgery, or had a financial debt due to a difficult delivery.
Duration stopped gaming (and with Marco) to be able to concentrate on what hair fascinates from childhood: the history of the earth. We can regard the land on which our house stands as a given, she says, but it is not so obvious. “All continents have sometimes been somewhere else, and that has major consequences for the climate and the organisms on those continents.”
Duration – because of her pink hair was called ‘the rock star of paleontology’ – went to study at the University of Amsterdam after the VWO earth sciences. She soon noticed America the place to be Is for earth scientists, if only because of the many remains of dinosaurs that were found there. For her PhD research at the University of Uppsala, she searched for the latest dinosaurs in North Dakota, USA.
Volcanic outburst
Duration has great admiration for certain American authors of the geology books she read during her education. Such as geologist Walter Alvarez, son of Nobel Prize winner Luis Alvarez. He became known for the discovery of a clay layer, rich in the rare Iridium element, which is common in meteorites. His conclusion: the extinction of dinosaurs is the result of a meteorite impact, some 65 million years ago, in which the impact material was blown into the atmosphere.
In 2012, During visited the US for the first time. She was 23 and had written an essay for an optional course about the history of the Big Bang. In it she investigated the social consequences of a volcanic eruption in Iceland in 1783. “A gigantic eruption,” she says. “Europe was dressed in total darkness for two years, the consequences were much greater than in the 2011 volcanic eruption in Iceland, which flattened air traffic in Europe. Because it was no longer harvesting, Hunger Nood broke out. That eventually led to the French Revolution.”
Her teacher found the essay so original that he submitted without her knowledge to the organization of a conference on Big History In Michigan. Prompt was invited to give a lecture.
Photos Jagoda Lasotha
Lift to Grand Rapids
One problem: she had to pay for the trip to Michigan herself. At that time she lived from a Wajong benefit because as a child she suffered from scoliosis and hypermobility. “I had to borrow money from several people.”
To save money, she wanted to fly to Toronto and spend the night there at the fiancé of a niece of her father (whom she had never met before). From there by bus to the Dutch Enclave Grand Rapids in Michigan, where she had found an affordable place to sleep with an artist via Airbnb. After the conference by bus back to Toronto, to spend the night there for the return trip.
Things went differently. With her distant family in Toronto, she could not go again after the conference, and the artist in Grand Rapids turned out to live miles from the bus station. Overcoming obstacles, it would turn out, thanks to the friendliness of the Americans she had already experienced as a gamer.
At the bus station, an American offered her spontaneously a lift to her guest address. “He said that his daughter traveled through Europe on her own. She was as old as me, and he hoped that she would also get a lift if she ended up in my situation.”
And when it turned out that she could no longer spend the night with her family in Toronto, offered an IT person who she had met at the conference to make a road trip together, and to take her back to Toronto on time. Among other things, they visited the Field Museum in Chicago, where the world’s largest and most complete skeleton of a T. Rex can be admired. The IT’er, Heathe, helped her out of greatness, says Duration. “We are still friends.”
At the conference she also met the Walter Alvarez she admired. He approached her after her lecture and thanked her because she had managed to make the relevance of geology so clear. A gift that have few geologists, he said.
Series The US & WE
This summer interviews NRC Dutch people who have a strong personal relationship with the US. Do their feelings and ideas about the country change, now that Trump is changing that way?
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Pistol
After that first introduction to the US, During visited the country several times. As in 2015, when she did volunteer work at Natuurhistorisch Museum Naturalis in Leiden as a student, and participated with a group of employees in the excavation of a mass grave of five dinosaurs in Wyoming. “Wyoming is much more conservative than Michigan. I already had pink hair then, and noticed that I had to laugh extra friendly to be annoying comments.”
But Americans were also impressed by her, Knowing noticed. Such as the rancher who made his country (for a fee) available to Naturalis. He asked if she had ever shot a gun, and was surprised when Duration gave all her male colleagues checking when shooting at one target from straw. “I have much more weapons,” he said. “Do you want to try them out?”
When she drove through North Dakota in 2017, on the way to an excavation site for her master’s thesis on fossilized freshwater fish, she noticed how the atmosphere in the country had changed since the election victory of Donald Trump in 2016. “I rode through small villages where I felt that I felt all-way-from-fleds had to keep me. “
In recent years, Americans have been ‘triggered faster’, During notes. They enter into discussions with stretched legs. ” Especially people in disadvantaged areas, where poverty is great. “They feel that they can say and do what they want. They no longer have to prove them anymore.”
In 2023, During in North Dakota was “chased away” by a set of landowners. With colleagues she did fieldwork on public areas; They had parked their car in a place where the landowners just wanted to mow. “Instead of talking to us, they educated the skin full, eagerly back and forth. Although they did not seem to carry weapons, it felt threatening. We left immediately.”
It did not stop at the place to visit the spot a year later. She booked another hotel, covered her pink hair to stand out less, and in advance informed at the Bureau or Land Management where she could best park the car. “Not far from that place I have stumbled over a large dino.”
Laptop
The plan is to return in mid -September for further research into that dinosaur. She already has a ticket and the required electronic travel permission (ESTA). But unlike all her previous visits to the US, she is worried that she might not get over the border. “How often I do not read on science forums that colleagues were put back on an airplane. Because they had made criticism of Trump in the private sphere. Because they had written something unpleasant on social media. Sometimes a telephone or laptop is taken. Occasionally someone ends up in jail.”
From friendly colleagues in paleontology and geology, she hears that research fairs are being withdrawn. For projects that are of general use, because they deal with raw materials for batteries, solar cells and heat pumps. “Earth scientists are often put away as Woke Climate Wappies. People do not realize that they also look for raw materials for products where no one can do without, as long as there are no sustainable alternatives.”
She does not rule out the fact that the US government ‘keeps an eye on her’, and has once again complicating her social media on critical statements. Whether she takes her laptop with her, she doesn’t know yet. “I would find it annoying if I had to hand it in because they want to search everything.” But she refuses to adjust one thing: her hair color. “That would be self -denial.”
And that cordiality she fell for as a teenager does she still find it in America? “Oh yes, it is still there,” says Duration. “I experience them in shops, restaurants and pumping stations. Everywhere people are in for a chat, curious about that strange one. But I am worried about those sweet, friendly people. To what extent is their heartburn threatened?”
Anyone who has converted to Trump will have difficulty staying warm, thinks. Because helping your fellow man is not seen as something beautiful in the current political climate. Or like Trumps former right hand, Elon Musk, said: The fundamental weakness of Western civilization is empathy. “When I read that I had to swallow.”
