Are Lighthouses Sexy?

Sexy?? That word "sexy" gets used a lot these days, sometimes in ways I don't quite understand. If it means "arousing," or "provocative," then it makes sense. A lot of things besides sex itself can arouse us, appeal to our passions, and make us feel a swift and strong emotion. But lighthouses??

Maybe use of the word is more about drawing attention. If something is said to be sexy, then people will want to see it.

Recently, someone told me one of my book covers was sexy. This is why I'm pondering the question of "sexiness" today. Here's the book cover; judge for yourself. Sexy or not?

Hmmm. Is it the red color, the stripes on the tower? The keeper with his arm upraised? Or, the combination of all? (I'd hate to think there's some phallic symbolism in all this.)

I'm grateful for the comment, but it still baffles me. When Pineapple Press helped me compose this cover, we weren't thinking "sexy." We wanted to project the idea of the lighthouse as needing a keeper to bring it alive. But maybe it turned out sexier than we intended. What do you think?

Lighthouses can be sexy, I suppose...in a subtle way. They certainly add to the milieu of sea and shore and make it prettier and more interesting. The seashore itself might be sexy in some ways. Lighthouses are interesting background objects in seashore photos and images. Postcard manufacturers and photographers know this. Check out these pictures from various websites and see if they are examples of sexy lighthouses:

Writing Advice I Like and Live By

There are so many websites and blogs for writers! If you like to write, and especially if you desire to have your writing published and read, check out some of the websites. Just type "Writing Advice" into a search engine. Be sure to set a timer, because you'll be immersed for hours and will forget to go to your "other job," cook dinner, feed the cat, go to bed...

An important thing to remember, I think, is that writing is a calling, a drive, an obsession with most successful writers. It can't be a casual hobby or diversion. I'm taking a class right now with some casual writers, and I have little hope for their success. They talk a lot about their projects in class, which is good--we all should talk with other people about our writing--but very little ends up on paper or a thumb drive. They come to class with woes about not having time to write, concern about format and grammar and the minutia meant for the final stages of writing, or they make excuses about not being able to find the right words. "How do you get so much written every day?" one woman asked me. Neil Gaiman's quote below sums it up. I showed this to her and said, "To put it simply, sit your butt down and do it. Quit worrying about all the details. They will follow. First, you need to get something on paper."

The "thinking about...talking about...worrying about.." quote below sparked some good discussion in my class. I do all these three of these activities, but I also get a lot of writing done. I don't believe it hurts to be thinking, talking, worrying about writing, so long as there's actual writing worked into the formula. Writers do have an enormous cerebral side to their work--antenna up all the time searching for ideas, and a part of their brain going constantly in response to the writing urge--but ultimately they're successful because they sit down and do it. They also keep notepads in their purses and in backpacks and in cars and beside their beds and lots of other places. Those sticky Post-It Notes are the best things ever invented for writers! Ideas can vanish; get them down when they're fresh.

And, finally, Henry Miller's advice: I agree with most of it. I agree that finishing is important. But starting is crucial too, and having lots of balls in the air is good for someone who gets bored easily, as I do. I need to revitalize with new topics. I need excursions of the mind and departures from the norm. Often, I stop in the middle of a writing project and do a different one for a few days. It clears my mind and revs me up to get back to the first project. Maybe this method didn't work for Henry Miller. I'll think about it, since he was a much more successful writer than I am. :-/

That mantra about re-writing: It's true. Good writing is re-written, re-vised, re-worked over and over. I wish my students would accept this.

In a nutshell then, good writing is writing every day, writing with passion, and rewriting vigorously. Writing is good for your head, good for your heart, and sometimes good for your wallet too.

Writing is truly a sport. You have to love it to play well. You have to respect the rules and be willing to work with the team--editors, publishers, audience. The more you practice and refine your moves, the better you play the game.

Okay, I've thought about writing enough for today. It's time to do some of it...but then I have been...am. Yes, this blog counts!

Nearly-out-of-Provisions Stew

Keeping enough food in the larder on remote lighthouses was a problem before powerboats and helicopters came into being. Lightkeepers at places like Boon Island, pictured below, could run out of food if bad weather prolonged the wait for a quarterly visit from the lighthouse tender, the ship responsible for delivering supplies to the keepers. Book Island Light stands on a pile of rocks nine miles off the New Hampshire coast. Nine miles may not seem a long distance (the mainland is in view in the background of the picture), but in the days before modern means of travel, it may as well have been 900 miles from shore. Entries in the Boon Island logbook in the nineteenth century sometimes mentioned dwindling food supplies or a meal made from a duck that slammed into the lantern.

Below is a tongue-in-cheek recipe given to me years ago by a lighthouse keeper stationed on an offshore lighthouse on the North Sea, England. It illustrates the problem of an empty pantry and no supply ship in sight, and also the attention given to fairness. Note the two keepers get equal shares, as do the lighthouse dog and cat--

Into a big pot of boiling water, drop:

• the last potato, diced neatly

• the last onion, chopped fine

• parsley flakes from the bottom of the spice jar

• 1 of the 3 turnips that washed ashore form last week's shipwreck, whole

• enough salt to fill a thimble

• dumplings made from the last cup of flour and last dab of lard

• 1 seagull egg found in the beach grass; hard-boil it in the stew

• 1 dead duck that slammed into the light tower last night, picked and cleaned

• duck giblets--heart, gizzard, liver

Boil everything for several hours. Scoop out the duck and clean the meat off its carcass. Divide meat into two bowls. Remove the turnip and cut it in half, one piece for yourself and the other for the assistant lightkeeper, and place the halves in the bowls. Do the same with the hardboiled seagull egg. Remove the duck giblets and divide in half between the bowls. Ladle stew into the bowls, being careful to give equal onion, potato, and dumpling to each bowl. If any soda crackers remain in the cracker can, place one alongside each bowl. Finally, divide the duck carcass and entrails in half and place in bowls on the floor. Yell to the assistant keeper, the dog, and the cat: "Dinner is served!"

A Sweet Story

In October 2001, Jon and I attended the Great Lakes Lighthouse Festival in Alpena, Michigan. This annual event was in its infancy back then. Over the years, it has grown quite large. Great Lakers love their lighthouses!

I was asked to speak at the event in 2001 and had a book table to sell and sign my books. It was beautiful autumn weather that Columbus Day week as we drove from Connecticut to Michigan in our motorhome. We arrived early and had a few days to do some sightseeing, so we headed off to find lighthouses.

First, we went north to the Mackinac area, then turned south along the eastern shores of Lake Michigan. As we approached Grand Haven, I peeled my eyes for the pierhead lighthouses at the mouth of the Grand River, about 40 miles north of Kalamzoo. There are two of them that create a "range" for vessels to stay in the channel as they head into the river.

"I see them!" I shouted.

Jon looked for a place to pull over--not easy task in a motorhome. He was busy scanning at the roadside while I kept the lighthouses in view.

"There's a park of some sort over there," Jon said. "I'll pull in there long enough for us to get some photos."

We drove into the park and eased our motorhome into a parking space. There were people everywhere, picnicking in the sunshine and walking the beach along the pierhead. Some were on the pierhead itself walking out to the lighthouses. The parking area was full of cars. There were quite a few motorhomes too. In fact, we had managed to park alongside several of the RVs, all lined up in a row. Jon shut down the motor, cracked the windows, and said:

"How about we have a quick snack before we walk out to the lighthouses?"

Good idea. I went to the back of the motorhome to our small kitchen to fetch peanut butter and crackers and iced tea. The big window in the kitchen overlooked the beach and the lighthouses. What a view! While I made the snack, Jon went outside to look around and do his usual check on the RV. Moments later he was back inside with a big smile on his face.

"You won't believe this, but we've backed into an RV space with hookups for water and electricity. This isn't just a park, it's a little RV park--right here looking out over the lighthouses!"

Sure enough, there were hookups behind our RV. Earlier in the day, we thought we might stay at a state park father down the shore, but this was perfect. Jon paid for our space, hooked up the water and electricity, and we had our snack. Afterward, we walked out to the beach and then to the pierhead to visit the lighthouses.

That night as I prepared dinner, the sun dropped low and made a shimmering path of light across the lake. The beacons in the lighthouses clicked on and made for some amazing photos. I couldn't stop looking out the kitchen window. How lucky that we found this spot, and by accident! When dinner was ready, we sat outside in our lawn chairs facing the lighthouses and the lake as we ate, still amazed that we had unknowingly backed into an RV space with such a fabulous view.

A few days later we arrived back in Alpena in time for the lighthouse festival. I had a book table for sales and signings and gave my presentation each day of the event. It was based on my title Guardians of the Lights, which sold well after each presentation.The festival was wonderful, with lots of tables and spaces filled with lighthouse goodies and many excellent speakers.

A few spaces away from my table was a young woman with her paintings of Great Lakes lighthouses. I admired her work, especially her watercolor of the Grand Haven Pierhead Lighthouses. I told her the story of how Jon and I ended up with the best view possible by accidentally backing into an RV hookup space near the lighthouses. A few hours later I passed by her display again and saw that the Grand Haven painting was gone. No surprise. It was pretty and would look nice on someone's wall.

At the end of the festival on Sunday afternoon, we packed up my books and slide show and fired up our motorhome to head back home to Connecticut. But first, we did a little more touring. We drove up to Mackinac Point, visited the lighthouse there and then crossed the bridge to the Upper Peninsula before finding an RV park for the night. It was dark when we pulled into our space and hooked up, and we were tired. Dinner was sandwiches and soup. While I took a shower, Jon made up the beds.

As I emerged from the bathroom in my RV pajamas, Jon handed me a cup of tea and gave me a hug.

"I got my favorite author a little souvenir from the festival," he said, motioning to my bed. On my pillow lay the framed watercolor of the Grand Haven Pierhead Lights....

Musings about Successful Writers

People often ask: “What makes a person likely to become a successful writer?”

A friend of mine wondered about this a few years ago, reminding me that her elementary school-age son loved to write and approached every classroom writing assignment with relish. She sometimes sent me his writings, perhaps hoping I possessed some form of occupational ESP and could tell her she was raising a great novelist or a future Pulitzer Prize winner. Students in my college classes know I'm a writer "in my other career" and seem to feel a need to tell me about their writing acumen or lack thereof, though I don't teach writing. They will say they love to keep journals and diaries, and I tell them I did too, as a child and still as an adult. Journaling and writing in diaries are good habits. But there's more to being a professional writer, I remind them, than writing every day. They’ll offer confessions of sorts: “I’m not a good English student, so a writing career is not for me.” Or, "English is my favorite subject, so I'll probably become a novelist." Or worse, "I love to write and want to become a full-time writer, but I hate writing on topics teachers require. I'm at my writing best when doing my own topics the way I want to write them, not constrained by a teacher's demands." (Editors are laughing at this admission!)

Doing well in an English class certainly isn’t a guarantee. I aced almost all of my “English” classes in high school and college and even received a small college scholarship "For Excellence in English," but I feel sure I did not become a writer because of these achievements. What's the explanation/answer/reason then? Musing onward....

In a writing class I taught in the late 1990s, a student told me she was driven to write. “I have stories to tell,” she said, “and I have to get them down on paper.” Another added, “I read everything I can get my hands on and am always thinking of how I can turn ideas into stories.” I like both of these statements, because I think they hint at what it is to be a writer—an avid reader, an obsessive word-weaver, and a story hunter. Here I am this morning pounding the keyboard when I could be doing something else—messing about in my flowerbeds, reading a novel, watching an old movie, sewing or crafting (I've re-discovered macrame!), or taking a long walk—all activities I enjoy. Instead, I’m looking at the monitor as my fingers weave ideas. I realized long ago the computer monitor is really the public, my audience. I know good writers are adept at many skills, but most important I think is identifying audiences and imagining conversations with them. When my students get stuck on their writing assignments, I tell them that writing is, at its simplest, a conversation on paper. Who are you talking with? Why? What is it you feel the need to tell them? Pretend they’re interested in what you have to say and are asking questions and adding their comments. Believe that what you have to say is important and detail it without a hammer. (Nobody likes being hit in the head with a hammer.)

Those high school and college papers I wrote so long ago, marked up with corrections and comments by teachers, all had something in common. A positive comment I frequently received was: “You target your audience well.” Long before I became a professional writer (meaning I'm paid for my work), I understood the importance of knowing who I was talking with and how to speak with them. There are other skills necessary beyond ID of audience, of course, but the listeners are critical to successful writing.

How do we learn to ID audiences and speak directly to them? I think an appetite for reading is part of the process, along with a great desire to talk about the ideas discovered in a reading, either on paper or with others, and glean the message. Translating that message into something new and useful, even if just for entertainment's sake, is satisfying. Reading generates ideas, but it also brings familiarity with good writing. It's instructive if you're willing to think about how the author presents it. The old adage about imitation being a form of flattery is true, but imitation is an excellent tool for developing writing skills, including audience sensitivity.

I read voraciously as a youngster and still do. I loved (and still love) characters that carried messages, mostly implied (no hammers, please). The guy pictured below is a good example, a guide I followed early in life. He now hangs in a maple tree outside my office window, a sort of inspiration on days I need a boost. I made him from a bucket and cans in honor or my favorite childhood character from Frank L. Baum’s "Wizard of Oz" tales. The scarecrow had so many wonderful things to say about choice, confidence, and brain power, not to mention the fact that goofy and clumsy is okay. For years after I first met this character in the classic Judy Garland movie and an entire summer in about 1962 spent reading Baum's Oz books on the glider on our front porch, I sought out characters who weren’t human in the physical sense but had important things to say to flesh and blood characters. Often, they were sci-fi and fantasy characters.

These days, my husband will hear me complain that all my reading seems to be targeted at specific research for a book or article or for my classes, leaving me little time for leisure reading. I still relax on porch funriture to read, in fact, but I know I don’t leisure read. I can't. I realized this long ago. Reading is an obsession for me. I do enjoy it, but every book I choose for entertainment fills me with new writing ideas and IDs new audiences. A good example is Peter Fitzsimons Batavia, a sprawling piece of historical fiction I read about a month ago that’s more fact than fiction and details the 1629 wreck of a Dutch ship on its way to Indonesia during the spice trade. The history therein sparked my interest, again, in the Dutch East India Company, in the issues with navigation before the chronometer, in the marking of Indonesian shores with navigational aids, and in the horrendous eruption of Krakatoa in August 1883, resulting in the loss of several lighthouses on Java and Sumatra. After a few weeks of research, I went to work on an article roughly titled "Krakatoa and the Loss of Light in the Sunda Strait" for my favorite audience—readers of the U.S. Lighthouse Society journal, The Keepers Log.

I like lighthouses for much the same reason I like the Oz scarecrow, robots like Gort (shown below from The Day the Earth Stood Still), talking animals like Garfield, and other anthropomorphized characters. Lighthouses speak; it’s fun giving them a voice. And...they're not so different from the Tinman and Gort.

Those characters made us think about ourselves; they had a message of welcome, warning, strength, and salvation. (Note: The modern version of The Day the Earth Stood Still spun Gort as a destructive character rather than the instructive one he truly was.)

Like the student in my writing class years ago, my antennae are always up looking for new ideas and new audiences, or looking for new ideas to entertain and educate a proven, reliable audience. It’s audience I crave. That's what drives me to write....even if that audience is myself. I think most successful writers agree.

Do You Have a Lighthouse Tattoo?

Tattooing is a very old practice. Sailors of centuries ago learned it from South Pacific Islanders and readily adopted the symbolism of it for their own. Nautical tattoos gave seamen a sense of camaraderie but also provided protection, either through superstition or in the real sense. An anchor symbolized a sailor's connection to shore; an albatross or crucifix might protect a seaman from drowning. (In the age of sail few sailors knew how to swim!) Johnny Depp's "Jack Sparrow" character in the popular Pirates of the Caribbean films gave us a laugh with eyes tattooed on his eyelids, but there's some sense to that practice. A sailor could grab forty winks and no one would know he was sleeping, especially the officers on the ship. Tattoos also offered reminders of home--the name of girlfriend for example or a sailor's hometown--and attested to his personality, line of work, and the risks associated with going to sea. Sea monsters, King Neptune, mermaids, anchors, ships--all were common symbols in nautical body art.

Tattooing has made a big comeback in recent years, and much for the same reason as in the days of sail. I've met a number of people sporting lighthouse tattoos. (I'm hesitant to get one myself: I'd have trouble deciding which lighthouse I should wear. The permanence of it is concerning too, and I dread the thought of what it would look like when I'm 95!) Usually, people with lighthouse tattoos tell me the design is a favorite lighthouse or symbolizes a virtue, such as strength or salvation or duty, or pays tribute to someone. Sometimes, they choose a lighthouse simply for its beauty. Some of the designs are stunning.  Type "lighthouse tattoo" into any search engine or on Pinterest, and you'll get many examples. Here's a folio of a few lighthouse tattoos--

First up is my friend and fellow author, Chris Mills of Ketch Harbour, Nova Scotia, with his upper arm lighthouse tattoo. If anyone deserves such a badge of honor, it's Chris. he's a former British Columbia lighthouse keeper who served on some really remote stations. Today he works for the Canadian Coast Guard servicing automated lighthouses. Gannet Rock Lighthouse is his choice. Last time he visited with me he flexed his biceps and triceps: "Stormy seas!"

 The design below is popular, the striped lighthouse. Notice the beams falling like waterfalls from the lantern. I like the message, "So shine a light." We should all shine a light, yes?

Raging seas speak volumes about struggles and overcoming adversity. Check out the two inundated towers below.

 

Next down the list is a screwpile lighthouse of the Chesapeake Bay variety. Possibly this is a favorite place to go or conjures wonderful childhood memories for the wearer.It certainly would be a conversation piece, since this style of lighthouse is not common.

This one below looks very much like North Head Lighthouse on the southwest coast of Washington. Kudos to the artist for a good likeness!

Why not two upper arm scenes? (above) Twin lights perhaps?

Below is surely a rendering of Cape Hatteras, a tribute to Sylvia, lucky girl.

This looks like Nauset Beach Light on Cape Cod. Lots of ink in this one!

...and below is a resemblance to Cape Neddick "Nubble" Lighthouse in Maine, complete with its signature red oil-house. The artist chose elements of the station, just the tower and oil-house, the island the sea.

Spilit Rock Lighthouse in Minnesota is below. No water laps at the base of the real Split Rock Light, though, as it sits high above Lake Superior on a rock outcropping. Yet, some elements were accurately preserved, like the blanking panels on the lantern to direct the light in a specific direction.

There are temporary lighthouse tattoos as well, and body painting designs. A few of the above examples may fall into those categories. Artists are so good it's hard to tell!

Stairways

Who doesn't love stairs? They lead somewhere, sometimes a mysterious place. As a kid I loved to play on the stairs in our old, drafty house. The stairway was enclosed, because there was no heat upstairs, but it had a window at the bottom overlooking the front porch. It was great fun to hide in the semi-dark stairway or hop my stuffed bears up and down the steps in a pretend game of mountain-climbing. Those stairs were synonymous with morning--coming down at daylight and opening the door to wonderful kitchen smells of breakfast--and bedtime too, trudging up step-by-step in pajamas and slippers. Latr, as a teenager, I lived in an old house with a beautiful oak staircase. The second to last step before the landing creaked loudly. The trick when coming to bed very late was to skip that step so as not to wake my mother! Perhaps this childhood fascination with stairs is why I like lighthouse stairways.

 

Stairs are a feature of almost every lighthouse, and they come in myriad styles and lengths. I always take photos of the stairways in lighthouses I visit. Stairways tell us a lot about the character and purpose of a lighthouse. I climbed tiny Lake Kootenay Lighthouse in British Columbia last summer. It has wooden stairs, very steep (pictured below). The local historical society keeps the interior of the lighthouse crisply painted and clean.

The big lighthouses of the Outer Banks--Cape Hatteras, Bodie Island, Currituck--have long, spiral staircases made of cast iron. These were made in foundries in the mid to late nineteenth century. They are open framework, a design meant to reduce weight and allow air to move freely through the towers. There's no central column around which the stairs are fitted. They are anchored into the inner walls of their lighthouses. Leaning over the railing and looking up or down is a thrill.

A central column spiral stairway is common is small lighthouses though. Below are the stairs at New Dungeness Light Station in Washington, where I've served as a volunteer keeper numerous times. For such a tall lighthouse, it's surprising to see this style of closed, central column stairway. It's a long jaunt to the lantern!

Here's the stairway in another small lighthouse in the Chesapeake Bay. Notice I got my foot in the photo, which isn't such a bad thing. It gives some sense of scale to the image. The treads are a modern addition, I'm sure, probably installed by the Coast Guard for safety. The old U.S. Lighthouse Establishment didn't care much about safety; better worded, they weren't fixated about it like we are today.

Some lighthouses have stone stairways. Amelia Island Lighthouse, Stonington Lighthouse, and Concord Point Lighthouse in the United States are good examples. They're small lighthouses made of stone, and the stairways are built into their walls. Below is Keoghi Lighthouse in Greece. It has a marble stairway! Architects and builders used whatever was available and cheap. In Greece, marble is abundant.

 

This stairway is also marble. It's in Greece's Kakokefali Lighthouse where I spent almost a week in 2008. The checkerboard pattern floor is marble too. I was surprised to find that the marble stairs and floor were painted! I suppose painting kept the keepers busy on slow days, so they weren't tempted to get into trouble. Kakokefali's stairs were installed in the 1880s when the lighthouse was built. They have depressions where feet have worn them down.

Cap Arkona Lighthouse in Germany (Baltic Coast) has a really pretty stairway. Below is my friend Darlene Chisolm on the final course of stairs leading to the lantern. It's a tight spiral.

There are all manner of fun stories and sad stories too about lighthouse stairs--
The late Charles Settles of San Juan Island, Washington, told me he and his sister used to play with beads of mercury on the stairs of Lime Kiln Lighthouse when their father sieved out the mercury from the float where the lens rested. The high density mercury made the lens revolve effortlessly, but the mercury got dirty and had to be cleaned. Always, a few beads escaped during the sieve process, and the kids had fun rolling them down the stairs like tiny marbles. Mercury is poisonous, I reminded Mr. Settles. He just laughed and said he was proof it wasn't as bad as everyone claimed.

Many lighthouses have ghosts on their stairs. While I don't believe in ghosts, I do understand how one could believe they exist in lighthouses. The stairways often are shadowy, damp, and full of echoes. I climbed Jupiter Inlet Lighthouse many years ago with a Coast Guard keeper. He dropped his pen down through the stairs by accident as we neared the top of the tower. It made the strangest sounds as it worked its way down through the tower. In Ponce Inlet Lighthouse, the air currents can feel like a clammy hand touching you as you climb. St. Simons Lighthouse has a stairway ghost, reputed to be the spirit of past keeper, and the creak and moan of the metal stariways in the Reef Lights of Florida have, understandably, spawned ghost tales. Metal expands when warm and contracts when cold and makes sounds as it does so. This might explain why those poltergeists are most often heard at twilight or just after sunset. As the temperature changes, the metal responds in a noisy manner.

There were occasional falls and other accidents on stairs. Sally Snowman, who was caretaker of Boston Light for many years, had a dog on the station with her that fell down the stairs. He survived with minor bruises. A lightkeeper at Bodie Lighthouse in North Carolina  was hit by a bolt of lightning that discharged down the metal stairway. Thankfully, he also survived.

A sordid activity in years past, when lighthouses were left open to the public without docents on duty, was throwing items down lighthouse stairs. Spitting and urinating down the stairways was popular with vandals too, and disgusting. Huntington Island Lighthouse in South Carolina used to be left wide open 24 hours a day. When I climbed it in the summer of 1983 the smell of urine inside was overpowering. There were soda cans and other garbage in the base of the tower, and the lens that was sitting in the base was missing prisms. I'm glad to report the lighthouse is now cleaned up and cared for by the park and the lens is in a better place.

One of the wildest stairway stories concerns old Cape Florida Lighthouse on Key Biscayne. Seminoles set fire to it during the 1830s with the keepers inside. The wooden stairway burned out completely and left one surviving keeper stranded on top. The other keeper was shot. The survivor was rescued, but was badly burned and injured. The old engraving below depicts the event.

Modern stair-climber exercise machines might keep us in touch with the exertions of yesterday's lighthouse keepers as they daily ascended and descended lighthouse stairs, sometimes a dozen times or more. At the very tallest lighthouses, duty was a cardio-vascular adventure! It's funny how we'd rather take an elevator or escalator than stairs these days, yet we go to the gym and get on those exercise machines.Old lighthouse keepers would laugh at this contradiction in modern behavior!

One final note from science:
A spiral stairway is a very old invention that combines several simple machines, the screw and the inclined plane. A spiral stairway is actually a special version of the ladder, which is a ramp with steps. A spiral stairway is a ramp wrapped around a pole. It's a screw with steps. Mindboggling!

Spirals are ubiquitous forms in nature, from a chambered nautilus shell to the shape of a galaxy to a small bone in our inner ear. The mathematician Fibonacci came up with a special numbering system to explain spirals.

Who knew lighthouse stairs were so complex??!!