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.

Four Pictures

Goodbye Rock, Paper, Scissors

Now I can say yes.

Since arriving in February I have been asked three or four times a week if there have been any big storms out here on the Point.  As of today I can answer in the affirmative.  A surging tide washed up along the walkway (pictured left) and even into the front yard on the harbor side.  Haley captured the 45 minutes or so of the biggest push.

This buzz began on Thursday night with as loud a wind as I can remember since the No Name/Perfect Storm of Halloween 1991.  Beating down the windows like a drumming octopus, the wind woke me up on Thursday with a relentless thumping.  It was as cool and as ominous as that moment in Jaws when the shark makes its first appearance.  Even with the wind however, there was no sign of any debris the next morning and you could still see from the windows.

Not this morning.  The cars were limed with salt and the windows are as cloudy as a shaken bottle of bleach.  I rinsed everything off this afternoon and came into the house only to find that my glasses, perched on the top of my head as usual, had been caught in the same spray in the time it took to spray the cars.  Most of the stuff in the yard that I thought might be threatened had been tucked away earlier in the week.  The couple of chairs that I had left out were blown over though and the wicker rocker we have in the yard must have done a pretty good dance to end up where it was.  The same kind of wind is expected tomorrow so maybe I will get a chance to watch another episode of The Rocking Chair Waltz.

Haley, her friend Kristen, and I went out after the tide and cleaned up - it didn't take long. The Highway Department came along and cleaned up the road so cars could pass safely.  There were people out checking out the waves though and when I saw one woman in her late sixties nearly break an ankles negotiating the walkway I had to do something about it.
That kind of thing sticks with me until I fix it. We got it back in shape but another high tide is coming again tomorrow so we tried to throw the big ones toward the house and the little ones toward the ocean.  Maybe tomorrow we'll only get the little ones back.

There is nothing like the power of the ocean. It rolls stones you could not pick up with a crane and tosses them with a grunt that female tennis players would envy. Five lobster traps are wrecked outside the window. Metal shredded by water and boulder and wind. Haley found a dollar in the debris which was in far better shape (all things considered) than the lobster traps. We are going to frame it as a momento.  Golf balls wacked out to sea rolled up into the yard along side what could be a four foot long fence post. It is just amazing to witness and study and ponder.

As kids we all mastered the game of Rock, Paper, Scissors. We had each gesture down and we knew the rules like we knew the sound of our mother's voice. No one ever had it explained to them; we all just knew it after one round of watching. We need to update it somehow. Somehow invent a new gesture. Something with both hands, both feet and a running start. Forget Rock, Paper, Scissors; Water trumps them all.

A Messy Open House

Next Sunday is the date for fifth Open House of the year. Old Scituate Light will be open from 1:00 to 4:00 for tours of the cottage and the Tower.

This morning we had an Open House with a twist. As I gathered together recycling and trash for the Sunday morning dump run I left the runway door to the yard open and the runway door to the cottage open. A small white dog chased a gull into the yard and scooted by me into the runway. In a second the dog was in the cottage and I was wondering when exactly I was going to hear from the couple who had started out with this dog when they had left home. I found the dog in the utility room and began the cajoling to get it toward an open door. Fido zipped by me again and I discovered the pup in the living room on the small couch we have there. The next move was off the couch and back down the runway; I am following and closing doors as I go now to reign in the hound. The Tower stairs slowed the canine down and at last the curious guest was outside again where the owners began to call "Lucy" from outside the fence. I grabbed the collar at last as the pooch headed back to the runway door and walked "Lucy" over to the fence line.

I will leave the reader to guess the messy gift Lucy left me in the utility room.  I could go with pun after pun here but I won't. Provide your own in the comments.

Light the Candle

The Light is out tonight.

For the first night since we got here in February the Light does not shine out over the water. The bulb will be replaced in the next day or two but for tonight I will look out this window and consider what past keepers had to do to keep the light on.

There was an oil tank some 15 yards to the left of where I am sitting to type this entry. A keeper would make his way to the well and proceed from there to the walkway and up the stairs. 32 steps later it was two ladders to get him to the lantern room and the lens. My admiration for those keepers has grown and grown as I have been here. For those that took the walk to the far end of the big jetty I have an even greater admiration. That red light is doing all the work tonight as it did for the 134 years that saw the Tower light extinguished.

The wind tore a screen out of an upstairs window last night. In that kind of wind, in all kinds of weather, the job was to keep the light on for mariners. I miss the whir of it; the pattern can hypnotize. Tonight the horizon is an oil slick and the knock of the rocks is the only way to know where you are. Light the candle again; we don't take it for granted; we know what it does for us.