A Wizard with the Blizzard

Why don't they give storms like these names?

We have a blizzard coming and the winds are the first phase. The bow on the wreath is nearly off (again) and the TV crews did a three second stand up on the rocks about 5 minutes ago before running for cover. Jules thought it was lightning ahead of the storm. The shovels and the rock salt have been dug out from storage and we are sitting back, crossing our fingers about holding on to the lights. We have plenty of blankets though, love our PB & J's, are sitting on 10 pounds of fudge made with my mother's recipe, so all things considered, we are set. These are the nights we have been waiting to see. There is magic in the air.

And it might make my wreath disappear.

Ho Ho Ho

Flying Santa is a crowd pleaser.

The annual visit of Flying Santa to Cedar Point just wrapped up minutes ago. For eighty years now Flying Santa has visited Lightkeepers by plane and by helicopter. For more on the story visit Friends of Flying Santa.

A very grateful group met with the Jolly Old Elf and had photographs taken while sharing candy canes.

A funny comment overheard as kids climbed in and out of the aircraft: "You can see Santa any day at the mall, but when do you get this close to a helicopter?" Try this link to see the landing.

Thanks to the Scituate Highway Department, the Scituate Fire Department and Officers McLaughlin and Steverman of the Scituate Police Department. Thanks also to Linda Martin for the photograph of our family.

Photographs by Julie Gallagher.

Its Beginning ...

To look a lot like Christmas here at the Keeper's Cottage.
A quick hit today just to pass on a few pictures as we decorate in anticipation of Flying Santa's arrival on Saturday. (Also - let me know if you saw Haley on TV the other night)

On the Catwalk

Spent some time up top this week.

Hanging the Christmas wreath was on the list of 39 things I signed off on to do when chosen to be the new keeper. I certainly had seen it done and had the good sense to buy the wreath early in the hope of good weather giving me an easy time to put it up.

The process began last Saturday morning. The wind was down at 8:00 am and I got the ropes out to rig the wreath, laying them out in the yard and measuring out where I thought I wanted the wreath to fall against the tower. Having tied some knots to hold those measurements, I went up top, got the door to the catwalk open, creeped out there, dropped the ropes, and pulled the wreath up top. Gloves were a must; I found out the hard way by not having them on as the big green circle of pines made the trip up.

There were two causes for caution while out on the catwalk. First, the wind had picked up in the half hour or so I had been working. That brought the temperature down some and made the gloves even more necessary. (I had come down to get them) The second cause was that the catwalk is metal. I have only been out there a few times and each time in summer when the metal was warmer and seemed to have more texture. In the cold it seemed a little slick.

I got the wreath strung along the lines I had laid out while in the yard. A cord wrapped and knotted at the top, call it at 11 and 1 on the clock face, and then looped and tied again at the bottom at 7 and 5. I weighted the ends of the line and dropped them over to tie off at the bottom. There was a hang up with one that slowed me down a bit, but by five after 9 I had it up. One more trip up top let me adjust one of the top cords to center the wreath, another somewhat daunting trip on the catwalk as I found out that there is a pitch on the parking lot side; slight but real or at least an optical illusion that makes leaning down to adjust a knot on that side a more interesting (euphemism for shaky legged)task.

Thursday was very windy here on Cedar Point. Gusts over 50 miles per hour greeted me in the morning, knocking my glasses off of my head and blowing them down the driveway before I got in the car to go to work. A check on the wreath showed that it had taken a beating over night in the wind. The bow was gone and the lines I had set had become tangled with the flagpole line that climbs the tower. I came home that afternoon, consulted with David Ball, and headed back up to clean up the mess.

The wreath had not been set tight against the tower. I had set the lines inside the posts that rise from the catwalk rather than set them outside and that had allowed the wreath to spin and to tangle. Just as I had unwound all the ropes Dave came along to coach me through the last few steps. Though it was a little windy up on top, carrying off every third word Dave sent up, it was warmer and moving on the walk was easier. At least I was more confident while the adjustments were made left and right. My thanks to David.

So as of Saturday December 5,2009 the Christmas wreath is properly installed on Old Scituate Light. Flying Santa will be here next weekend and it will be my honor to welcome him to the Point. One of the very first posts on this blog included the pictures from Flying Santa's visit last December.

You might describe the year like I just described the trips to the catwalk, tentative and instructive at first, increasingly confident as time has past. We have learned a ton, made mistakes and cleaned up after them, gotten more right than wrong when it was all said and done. Christmas in this cottage is going to be great.

Whistles

The wind is blowing the wrong way.

I know that that is not possible but there is a new sound and a new sight here on the Point this morning. The wind is gusting from the Southwest and the waves are running out of the harbor as a result. The gusts passing across the chimneys are making a whole new kind of whistle. These are the subtle storms that alter the beach - you can almost see the sand moving in the water. The splash is on the harbor side of the small jetty and a current is pushing birds out of the mouth of the harbor on a line straight east. It is very cool to see. The whistles will take some getting used to though.

Filling in the Blanks

I know that this may be hard to believe but some of my students tell me that they find history boring.

They object to the names and the dates, the causes and effects, the dead white men and the occasional woman. They find their textbook flavorless, merely an anchor in the shape of a book, holding them back, dulling their senses.

What they are missing is the way that history fires the imagination. Today is Thanksgiving Day; historically a day hidden in myth and misunderstanding. When I think of it I first consider the facts. A group displaced from Europe to a place where feeding themselves was a constant challenge, where hostile tribes emerged from the woods with questions about why so many of their own had recently died, where the truce that eventually held them together would dissolve into a sadistic violence called King Phillip's War. It is an act of imagination to complement the facts with interpretation - to choose what qualities should be highlighted and which could be relegated to a lesser position.

Today we recall the courage and the determination it took for the Pilgrims to stay here. We watch in awe at the recreations of their crossing and landing and that agonizing first winter. It is a matter of perspective though, as, if a group went to the moon today, and had half of its members die within a year, and eventually created a permanent enemy in the natives it found there, no amount of interpretation would find any virtue in it.

The facts only take you so far. The textbook can deliver the student to a point, and it is a useful place to be, but it is not the whole picture. Imagination fills in the blanks. It puts tastes on the tongue, butterflies in the pit of your stomach, the waves under the ships, and the angers and the passions that moved those dead white men and occasional woman to act, to write, to move, to stay, to lie, and to pledge. If you want to know history you have to take that leap, to give yourself over to the much more challenging prospect of imagining. My advice is to go for it.

An Appreciation

Its quiet here now.

Even with an amazing November underway - Weatherbug had the temp at 70 yesterday - it is still very peaceful here now.  Even when there are folks around the Tower or on the beach there is a hush.  October was noisy.  Waves and stone, and the crowds here to watch both.  In my memory November is the gray month and with the gray, reflection.  

There is still a great deal to do.  I am trying to take advantage of the weather to prepare the gardens for next year.  I cleaned out a pretty good pile of bamboo along the fence just yesterday. I have burlap to wrap up some of the newer shrubs and Julie's rose bush.  I have plugged a number of holes in the past few weeks and covered up the windows in shrink wrap.  Perhaps that is making the house soundproof as well as weather proof. Summer clothes and towels, bikes and kayaks are all tucked away waiting for the spring training games to begin.  I have found the old sweaters and found the new moth holes in those sweaters.  We have the newest school picture of Haley (and she's got a full bore smile in it.) One term of grades is entered and my courses now turn to the First Amendment, to Theodore Roosevelt and then to World War 1.

The flag flies at half staff for the soldiers lost at Fort Hood several days ago. As I write I remember that tomorrow is the Marine Corps birthday.  Each year until they passed, my father or my uncle Tom (both Marines) would call and ask me if I knew what the day was.  It was a test I had to pass or there would be consequences. I will think of them and of John Dow tomorrow. John was a fifteen year old Marine in the Pacific like Uncle Tom.  He lost some fingers out there. His son was wounded in Viet Nam and his grandson in Iraq.  These are November thoughts, of gratitude and awe. I argue in class that the First World War was the most important event of the twentieth century; that those lost were the hope of the millenium, inspired to tinker with the world, to right wrongs, to offer imagination as antidote to misunderstanding. Small wonder we still mourn them on Veterans Day; Armistice Day for my grandfather who was there when it ended.

The quiet is a good thing. It gives us time to set the restless energy down and to think before the rush of the winter holidays are on us. It gives us time to recognize the daring and the sacrifices of those we still lean on for lessons. The United States has a great number of men and women under fire and in danger right now as it has had before. The quiet has in it the chance to calmly hope they make it home safely and to hope their families know just how much the generosity of their service is appreciated.