Odds & Ends

One thing I do every year over the Christmas and New Year's break is straighten up my office. I have a couple of piles of goodies to file. In the process, I found some neat stuff related to lighthouses. Here we go!

Winter ice is hard on lighthouses in frozen lakes and seaways. The first lighthouse at Sharps Island was a screwpile structure. It was carried away by ice in the late 19th century. The replacement is shown here after a tough winter.

This a quote from Philip Conkling in an old issue of a short run magazine called Maine Islands. It's from the 1990s.

Someone's conception of what Egypt's Pharos Lighthouse looked like two thousand years ago. It's at Islands of Adventure in Florida.

Caught in the act! Jon took this snapshot of me photographing Point Betsie Lighthouse In Michigan in about 2000.

Inner Dowsing Lighthouse in the North Sea as it appeared in the late 1980s. My penpal from England, lightkeeper John Mobbs, was a keeper here and sent me the photo. I believe he took this shot from a helicopter as he was returning to the lighthouse after shore leave. I would get cabin fever at a place like this!

A page from my old book, The Lighthouse Almanac, out of print now.

Who remembers this rock band?

Sitting on a log with my kids in January 1983 at Point Pinos Lighthouse, California. The museum was wonderful! I even played the piano (not really--I plunked on the keys!) in the keeper's quarters, the one that Robert Louis Stevenson played when he visited the lighthouse in the late 1880s. Point Pinos means "point of pines" in Spanish. It is the oldest surviving lighthouse of the original dozen built on the West Coast in the early 1850s. You must go there!

Lighthouse Kitty, mascot of the old column "Kids on the Beam" (appeared in Lighthouse Digest for many years) helped out Harbor Lights one Christmas by awarding little lights sculptures to kids who won an art contest. She was such an easy-going cat. I could pose her for photos just about anywhere. A natural ham! She answered so much mail from kids over the years when she had her column. (I bet you can guess who her secretary was!)

From my collection of old lighthouse postcards! Whoa--that's a long way down. But I read in Rachel Carson's "The Sea around Us" that waves could wash upward and douse the lighthouse.

In 2004 when Hillsboro Lighthouse debuted on a series of U.S. postage stamps, I flew from Washington State to Florida and gave the keynote address at the celebration. Jet lag aside, I had a fabulous time and got a personal tour of the lighthouse.

Ah...the joy of finally getting to a lighthouse you've wanted to see for years! I love the journals the U.S. Lighthouse Society makes for its tour participants. I write all over them. Thank you Mary Borkowski for designing these!!

The aerial cart at the Nubble Lighthouse in Maine--a great letter from a Coast Guardsman who contacted Lighthouse Digest. If you don't subscribe, you should! LD is a great magazine!

Shinnecock Lighthouse was razed in December 1948. Photos like this make me have goosebumps! The idea of destroying such an historic structure seems idiotic, but there was much less regard for historic preservation in 1948.

My belle on a bell! Jessica DeWire posed on the old fogbell from Cape Disappointment Lighthouse circa 2004. At that time, it sat on the ground in front of the courthouse in St. Helens, Oregon. I wrote a letter to the town requesting that they give it to Cape Disappointment State Park, return it to its proper context and home. No answer. I asked the Coast Guard curator for help. She sent the town a letter telling them they should give the bell to Cape Disappointment State Park. No luck. Does anyone know if it ever made its way home?

I love this! It's a good place to end too. I hope you enjoyed these bits and pieces from my office.