Good Day

Starts out with the President of the United States getting the Nobel Peace Prize, ends up with the Yankees winning in extra innings. Fine with me.

Why Don't You Just F-F-Fade Away

It seems that blogs, like rangers, do start getting old.

Well, this one is going to take Pete Townshend's advice.

I'm not saying there will never be any more posts here. If the dogs do something especially cute or the National Park Service does something more than usually silly, I might make note of it here.

Or maybe not.

Meanwhile, dear readers, I'll leave you with an archive pared down to some greatest hits, a wave of the Stetson, and the words of Richard Thompson from his Fairport Convention days.

We used to say,
There'd come the day,
We'd all be making songs,
Or finding better words.
These ideas never lasted long.

The way is up along the road,
The air is growing thin.
Too many friends who tried,
Blown off this mountain with the wind

Yet now I see, I'm all alone,
But that's the only way to be.
You'll have your chance again,
Then you can do the work for me

Meet on the ledge,
We're going to meet on the ledge,
When my time is up,
I'm going to see all my friends.

Meet on the ledge,
We're going to meet on the ledge,
If you really mean it,
It all comes around again.

Thanks for reading, special thanks to those who have become friends, and a moment's thought for Sandy Denny and Martin Lamble.

As Pete Says

Pete Townshend, John Entwistle, Keith Moon, and Roger Daltrey: the greatest rock band ever.

Turn up the sound and press "Play."

Go on. Just do it.

I've Seen The Aya Sofya

Just like the President, yesterday!

I've also seen Salisbury Cathedral:

And St. Peter's:

And as of last Thursday:

Guest Post By Two Dead People

From the Sand Island Lighthouse Keeper's Log.

In the handwriting of keeper's wife, Ella Luick (age 19):

Sunday, September 17, 1899

NE breeze & Clear Devil Island light visible clear

At 8:15 A.M. Mr. Luick left the Station to go to Bayfield. He will walk to East Bay and go from there in a sail boat with Mr. Peter Hanson. It is the first time I was over here alone on a Sunday.

Monday, September 18, 1899

N light breeze. clear and warm. Devils Island light visible

Nothing happened until about one o'clock this afternoon when as I was sewing at the machine I run the needle through the end of my second finger on my left hand tearing about half the nail off and cutting my finger through in two places. It was not very painful but I fainted twice from nervousness.

Later I found three four leaf and one five leaf clovers and saw a large white headed eagle sitting on a stub over on the East bank. At 4. 00 PM. it began to blow from the NE and in fifteen minutes was blowing what the fisherman call a "rattling good sailing breeze" & continued so. A little snake got in the storm shed today.

Tuesday, September 19, 1899

NE half gale clear and cold. Devils Island light visible

Freddie Hanson came over this morning with mail from town which they brought yesterday. It is just two weeks today since we got mail last.

Wednesday, September 20, 1899

West North West fresh breeze clear and cool Devils Island light visible.

Last night there was the first frost this fall. I cleaned the tower and sewed.

Thursday, September 21, 1899

N gale clear and quite warm. Devils Island light visible very bright.

Mr. Luick expected to be home at five o'clock this morning but it is nearly ten and he is not here yet. I just saw a boat going down outside about five miles out which looks like a government boat. She is white, has three spars, smokestack behind the spars, and an ensign flying from the middle mast. I have cleaned my silverware and sewed today. The wind went down with the sun.

Friday, September 22, 1899

And came up with the sun. It is blowing NE fresh breeze.

Mr. Luick did not come home yesterday so it is useless to expect him until tomorrow.

In the handwriting of keeper Emmanuel Luick:

Saturday, September 23, 1899

SW fresh & Clear changed to Rain. Devil Island light visible

Keeper returned from town at 4 PM on the Str. Hunter. Absent five days (5) & twenty hours (20) found everything in good order except keepers' wife was not very well.

Good to be home.

A Newfoundland's Thoughts On A Dreary Day

We had a taste of spring last week in Upper Cheeseland: three sunny days in a row, with temperatures warm enough to put away the parkas and dig back into the closet for jackets last worn in autumn. Most of our snow melted, and here and there fishermen lost snowmobiles and trucks as thinning ice broke beneath treads and wheels.

Today though, winter has returned for an encore; it's damp and chilly, with heavy clouds cutting out any hope of sunshine. In other words, it's the kind of day a Newfoundland dog adores.

Somehow I was reminded of those lovely days in October that we used to call Indian Summer: warm and sunny, with crisp blue skies backdropping autumn leaves of every hue. A time of bittersweet pleasure, shadowed by winter's approach; the time of year when post office encounters with your neighbors usually run,

"What a day, huh?"

"Yeah, just gorgeous!"

"Wish it would stay like this all the way to Christmas."

"Yeah, dream on."

I envision two Newfoundland dogs meeting under similar circumstances on a day like this one:

"Don't you just love this freezing drizzle?"

"This is the kind of day I dream about when it gets to be August."

"Don't even talk to me about August. That's when I just lie in the basement and think about snow drifts."

"Tell me about it! Well, let's just enjoy this while it lasts."

Amazing that our two species manage to get on so well.

Up To Bayfield To See The Boats

Went up to Bayfield yesterday to run some errands and take pictures of the fish tugs in the frozen harbor. Click on the photos for a screen-filling view.

The Thomas C. Mullen was built in 1946; it's been in Bayfield since 1979.

The Twin Disc was built in 1937 as a demonstrator for the Twin Disc Clutch Company of Racine; it made its way to Bayfield in 1982. The Eleanor B, in the background at left, is a youngster, launched in 1950. Even so, it's had four names: the Ewig II, the Seeker, and the Jean Maur B., before taking its current name in 2002. The Donna Belle, in the background, was built (as the Lily Mae) right here in Bayfield in 1946 by Frank Muhlke, grandfather of my good friend Bobby Nelson.

The Donna Belle's current owner used to have a permit to dock at the NPS facility at Little Sand Bay. It was a neat idea: visitors got to see and hear and smell a working fish boat at the park's restored fishery. Sadly, the arrangement was canceled a few years ago.


A real senior citizen: the Allie Brothers was built in 1934.

Fooled ya- those are ferries.

I have to find out about this one: the JayJayCee is a new name for me. Check out the guys on ATVs on the lake in the distance- looks like one of them is towing his ice house in. Pushing his end-of-season luck a little, maybe? Probably not; even though the ice road was officially closed, I saw more than one truck heading across to Madeline Island.

If you want to learn more about the fishing boats you see around the area, visit my friend Harvey Hadland's web site- an encyclopedic guide to the local fishing fleet. (Shameless self-promotion: I designed and maintain the site.)

Oh, And One More Thing?

That Raspberry Island assistant keeper in the last post, McMartin? The guy who nearly froze his ears when his boat got blown all around the Apostle Islands while he was trying to get to Bayfield?

Seven years later, assigned to the Granite Island lighthouse off Marquette, Michigan, he launched the station boat one October morning for a trip to town. A wave caught the boat, flipped it over, and smashed it against the rocks.

This time he died.

The Lake Is The Boss, vol. 64,546*

Nothing justifies an afternoon spent staring into a microfilm reader better than the discovery of an item like this 1896 article from the Washburn Times:

Had A Tough Trip

The Lighthouse Crew On Raspberry Island Have A Hard Experience

John Eddy, light keeper, and John D. McMartin, assistant, closed the lighthouse on Raspberry Island Saturday and started for Bayfield 14 miles away in a sailboat. When abreast of Frog Bay they encountered a West gale which blew them back and they took refuge behind Bear Island. On Sunday they discovered a fishing shanty and luckily found some flour which they mixed with water and baked in a wash basin.

Their next attempt to get to Bayfield, they landed on Raspberry Island again, and finally on the main shore near Raspberry River, where they left the boat and footed it to a homestead cabin about 8 miles from town. Mr. Eddy has both hands and feet quite badly frozen, and McMartin's ears are nipped; neither one serious.

- Washburn Times, December 9, 1896

Closing-up time was especially hazardous to the keepers of offshore lighthouses in the early years of the Lighthouse Service. Your basic procedure was this: stay out there until every other mariner has packed it in for the season, then find your own way home. The weather is almost certainly horrible; the lake is big; your boat is small. Mix well and serve.

The obituary for one lighthouse keeper's daughter tells how things could turn out:

Alice Winifred Atkinson was born on Michigan Island November 1,1871, where her father, J. S. Atkinson, was assistant lighthouse keeper. When she was but five weeks old the family returned to the mainland in a sailboat that was so buffeted by storms that a part of the Atkinson household goods, including the kitchen stove, had to be thrown overboard to lighten the boat to a point of safety.

-Bayfield County Press, Feb. 28, 1929

As years went by, the U.S Lighthouse Service began picking up keepers in the large and sturdy lighthouse tenders, or hiring steam tugs for the job, reducing the risk attendant to venturing out onto the lake in a small sailboat in December. Nonetheless, things did not always work out well. Conditions could range from distinctly uncomfortable:

Terrible N. W. gale. At 11:00 A. M. Keeper and wife left station on tug R. W. Currie for town. From here the tug went to Raspberry Island, then to Devils Island, thence to Outer Island, then to Bayfield, arriving there about midnight.

-Sand Island Lighthouse Keeper's Log, November 27, 1898

...to downright harrowing, when ice conditions prevented the tender from reaching the remote island:

Light Keepers Were Forced to Walk Long-Distance On Ice

Frank Marshall, lighthouse keeper at the Devils Island light station, and first assistant J. Luick, who were not taken off the island by the tender Marigold, when the vessel was in local waters last week, arrived in Bayfield at five o'clock Thursday afternoon, having walked from Devils Island to Bayfield on the ice, leaving the island at 8:35 in the morning and walking continuously until their arrival here at five o'clock.

-Bayfield County Press, December 19, 1919

The situation was especially difficult at the end of that 1919 season:

Froze Toes in Trip Over Ice

Light keeper Joe Sexton and assistants Anderson and Lewis had a most strenuous trip in coming over from the station on Long Island. They started out from the island to cross the channel on the ice to Houghton Point. Owing to the fact that they were pulling a heavy sled well laden, the trip was necessarily slow with the result that assistant Anderson froze four of his toes. The men were put up at Houghton Point by residents on Wednesday evening, and came on to Bayfield by train yesterday afternoon.

-Bayfield County Press, December 12, 1919

Though there were close calls, no Apostle Island keepers were lost in end-of-season mishaps. Such was not the case at the first of Canada's Lake Superior lighthouses: two of the three keepers who manned the St. Ignace light during its brief existence perished in end-of-season ordeals:

This lighthouse was nicknamed the "Lighthouse of Doom" as it had three keepers during the six years that it operated. The island's distance from Sault Ste. Marie made it a problem for the Department of Marine and Fisheries to remove the keeper at the end of the navigational season before freeze up. Their solution was to have a keeper make his own way to winter quarters. According to instructions, Parry, the first keeper closed the lighthouse and headed for the Hudson's Bay Company post at Nipigon in an open boat during November. He never made it. In the spring his body was found on the mainland of Nipigon Bay still 14 miles from the post...

The third keeper was Andrew Hynes. After closing and leaving the lighthouse late in the fall of 1872 he endured great fatigue while trying to reach Silver Islet to winter over. He finally arrived after an 18 day trek to cover 50 miles, but soon died due to the fatigue of his ordeal.

-Larry and Patricia Wright, Great Lakes Lighthouses Encyclopedia

Keep these stories in mind next time you hear someone saying how neat it must have been to be a lighthouse keeper.

*****

*With tips of the hat to Bayfield elder statesman Julian Nelson who coined the phrase, and my friend DaveO whose wonderful blog has helped bring it to wider circulation.

And In Honor Of The Day

I don't want to hear any quibbles- there's nobody more fun on this great Irish-American holiday than these fellows in their Aran sweaters.




God bless you, Tom, Pat, and Tommy; and keep you well for many more years, Liam.

You Rock Once Again, Dave

From a press release just received:

Seventh District Congressman Dave Obey (D-WI) announced that he is co-sponsoring a measure introduced in the House today that would impose a substantial tax on bonuses paid to employees of corporations that receive Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) funds, like those made by American International Group (AIG).

“Sometimes you have to hit someone over the head with a 2 x 4 to get your point across. Companies that have to ask U.S. taxpayers to help keep their companies solvent shouldn’t be turning around and handing out million dollar bonuses to their employees,” said Obey. “The U.S. Government may not have the authority to void legally binding contracts, but we can certainly use the tax code to make sure that corporate executives aren’t rewarded for their bad decisions.”

The measure would subject any bonus paid out by a company that received funds under the Wall Street bailout to a 95 percent tax. “This is one time when we can use the IRS to help average taxpayers for a change,” Obey added.

Actually, I'm quite okay with Sen. Grassley's suggestion a few days ago that the management ranks of AIG owed it to the rest of us to commit honorable seppuku, and can't see why he withdrew the proposal so quickly.