November's heritage: memories and memorials

It was fifty years ago tomorrow that the Edmund Fitzgerald sank in Lake Superior. Gordon Lightfoot memorialized the tragedy with his song The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald. Please pause for a moment of silence after following the link and listening to him perform. Then check some interesting background to the song.

Minnesota's Split Rock Lighthouse on Lake Superior

Photo by J. Harrington

Locally, on November 10 the Split Rock Lighthouse and the Minnesota Historical Society will host a memorial to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Fitzgerald's sinking, as has been done for the past four decades or so.

Our area's firearm’s deer season opened yesterday with colder temperatures than we’ve seen so far this season. Warmer days are forecast for later in the week. One of the reasons I was more of a grouse and waterfowl hunter than a whitetail seeker is that I can't manage to sit still enough to blend into the landscape when experiencing the frequently cold temperatures we get during deer season in the North Country. Plus, when I tried deer hunting back in New England, before moving to Minnesota, I did it with a mixed group of bow hunters and bird hunters. It rarely failed that the bird hunters spooked deer and the bow hunters watched grouse strutting around their stands.

UPDATE: Local ponds are forming ice cover. First snow of the season is falling as graupel and forming snow snakes along the roads.

Since November is Native American Heritage month, as well as the season for early gales on Superior, and since Lightfoot referred to Superior by her Ojibwe/Anishinaabe name, Gitche Gumee, it seems fitting to close today with a Kimberly Blaeser poem. Water, in Great Lakes and elsewhere, has long been a source of both life and death.

Wellspring: Words from Water

A White Earth childhood water rich and money poor.
Vaporous being transformed in cycles—
the alluvial stories pulled from Minnesota lakes
harvested like white fish, like manoomin,
like old prophecies of seed growing on water.
Legends of Anishinaabeg spirit beings:
cloud bearer Thunderbird who brings us rain,
winter windigo like Ice Woman, or Mishibizhii
who roars with spit and hiss of rapids—
great underwater panther, you copper us
to these tributaries of balance. Rills. A cosmology
of nibi.  We believe our bodies thirst. Our earth.
One element. Aniibiishaaboo. Tea brown
wealth. Like maple sap. Amber. The liquid eye of moon.
Now she turns tide, and each wedded being gyrates
to the sound, its river body curving.
We, women of ageless waters, endure;
like each flower drinks from night,
holds dew. Our bodies a libretto,
saturated, an aquifer—we speak words
from ancient water.

********************************************
Thanks for visiting. Come again when you can.
Please be kind to each other while you can.

November: storms of the season

In commemoration of the 47th anniversary of the sinking of the Edmund Fitzgerald, Minnesota’s Split Rock Light House will be holding a Memorial Beacon Lighting and related activities. For those unable to attend the event, a portion of the beacon lighting will be streamed live on YouTube. I would be remiss if I failed to include a link to Gordon Lightfoot’s haunting song about the wreck, so here it is.

• Previous postings on My Minnesota about the Edmund Fitzgerald

Split Rock Light House

Photo by J. Harrington

This week’s weather makes me glad I haven’t spent all year looking forward to the firearms deer hunting season that started last Saturday. It’s been a week of howling winds, rain, thunderstorms, I think they got some snow up north. Deer don’t like strong winds. Speaking only for myself, I never enjoyed sitting on a tree stand in the rain, but then I never had a tree stand with a roof like some of the ones I’ve seen at the edges fo several of the farm fields around here. A little bit of snow, known as “tracking snow,” is usually seen as helpful, but there’s none of that to speak of around here.

The sleeping giant (thunder bay, lake superior)

Emily Pauline Johnson 1861 – 1913

When did you sink to your dreamless sleep

Out there in your thunder bed?

Where the tempests sweep,

And the waters leap,

And the storms rage overhead.

Were you lying there on your couch alone

Ere Egypt and Rome were born?

Ere the Age of Stone,

Or the world had known

The Man with the Crown of Thorn.

The winds screech down from the open west,

And the thunders beat and break

On the amethyst

Of your rugged breast,--

But you never arise or wake.

You have locked your past, and you keep the key

In your heart 'neath the westing sun,

Where the mighty sea

And its shores will be

Storm-swept till the world is done. 

********************************************
Thanks for visiting. Come again when you can.
Please be kind to each other while you can.

In Memoriam, Edmund Fitzgerald

Forty-three years ago, the Edmund Fitzgerald, with all twenty-nine crew, was lost in Lake Superior. Today the Split Rock Light House will hold a memorial service to commemorate those lost in Great Lakes shipwrecks.

Split Rock Light House overlooking Lake Superior

Photo by J. Harrington

The wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald has been memorialized in song by Gordon Lightfoot; in video on the History Channel; and in numerous books. Last year we did a more extensive posting about the storm and the wreck and the song and the history.

In reviewing our November postings on this blog, we've been disconcerted by the number of pictures and mentions of snow and cold. We persist in our belief that, even in the North Country, that kind of weather is supposed to hold off until after Thanksgiving, despite this morning's temperatures in the mid-teens. Could it be that our beliefs may have developed some errors over the years? Might our memories be of how we wish things were rather than how the actual occurrence?

An additional memorial occurs this weekend, tomorrow in fact, it is the centennial of the WWI Armistice (an event that even precedes our time). That's when we had the "war to end all wars." Didn't we?

Today we're grateful we never had to fight in trench warfare nor sail into a November gale on Lake Superior.

Diving into the Wreck

Adrienne Rich, 1929- 2012

First having read the book of myths,
and loaded the camera,
and checked the edge of the knife-blade,
I put on
the body-armor of black rubber
the absurd flippers
the grave and awkward mask.
I am having to do this
not like Cousteau with his
assiduous team
aboard the sun-flooded schooner
but here alone.

There is a ladder.
The ladder is always there
hanging innocently
close to the side of the schooner.
We know what it is for,
we who have used it.
Otherwise
it is a piece of maritime floss
some sundry equipment.

I go down.
Rung after rung and still
the oxygen immerses me
the blue light
the clear atoms
of our human air.
I go down.
My flippers cripple me,
I crawl like an insect down the ladder
and there is no one
to tell me when the ocean
will begin.

First the air is blue and then
it is bluer and then green and then
black I am blacking out and yet
my mask is powerful
it pumps my blood with power
the sea is another story
the sea is not a question of power
I have to learn alone
to turn my body without force
in the deep element.

And now: it is easy to forget
what I came for
among so many who have always
lived here
swaying their crenellated fans
between the reefs
and besides
you breathe differently down here.

I came to explore the wreck.
The words are purposes.
The words are maps.
I came to see the damage that was done
and the treasures that prevail.
I stroke the beam of my lamp
slowly along the flank
of something more permanent
than fish or weed

the thing I came for:
the wreck and not the story of the wreck
the thing itself and not the myth
the drowned face always staring
toward the sun
the evidence of damage
worn by salt and sway into this threadbare beauty
the ribs of the disaster
curving their assertion
among the tentative haunters.

This is the place.
And I am here, the mermaid whose dark hair
streams black, the merman in his armored body.
We circle silently
about the wreck
we dive into the hold.
I am she: I am he

whose drowned face sleeps with open eyes
whose breasts still bear the stress
whose silver, copper, vermeil cargo lies
obscurely inside barrels
half-wedged and left to rot
we are the half-destroyed instruments
that once held to a course
the water-eaten log
the fouled compass

We are, I am, you are
by cowardice or courage
the one who find our way
back to this scene
carrying a knife, a camera
a book of myths
in which
our names do not appear.

********************************************
Thanks for visiting. Come again when you can.
Please be kind to each other while you can.

Winter's here. Spring's not far behind. #phenology

This morning's dog walk took place in a 7℉ temperature, with the wind chill even lower. If we get the more seasonal temperatures forecast for next week, it will be interesting to see how much, if at all, the current ice cover retreats. There are only 110 days until the start of meteorological Spring, 129 until astronomical Spring. With this cold weather, we're a little surprised the deer haven't yet been noshing on the decorative pumpkins. After gun season ends, we'll see about putting the pumpkins out in the field and replacing them near the steps with Christmas greens.

deer-chewed pumpkins

Photo by J. Harrington

Swans and Canada geese are still hanging around, although even much of the Sunrise River is now ice covered. We admit we haven't paddled around to check, but we suspect there's open water near the center of Carlos Avery Pool 1. Large numbers of geese were seen heading out of that area about mid-day today. Waters such as Forest Lake still have large areas of open water and the row crop fields aren't yet snow covered, so waterfowl, especially the larger ones, are likely to stay until open water or food, or both, are no more. Although we enjoy seeing both swans and geese well into November, those sightings lack the abundance of hope we enjoy as they return each Spring. We know most of  them will leave, it's just a question of when. There are supposed to be swans that Winter over on the St. Croix. We'll try again this year to see if we can get some photos. It's been awhile since we've visited the river, which should still be pretty much open water.

St. Croix River, early November

Photo by J. Harrington

Our observations happened as we left for and returned from "The Cities." We made one of our seasonal trips to Birchbark Books this morning. Among other delights they had was a copy of 1621  A New Look at Thanksgiving. We once lived about 15 or 20 miles from the Plimoth Plantation in Plymouth [Patuxet] and have visited it a few times. I don't remember much emphasis on a Wampanoag perspective in those days and am glad to see the broadened version of the story in the book. Something we don't expect but would be very thankful to see this year would for our capitalist, global economy to include much more of a seventh generation perspective when considering making investments and developing projects.

Anyhow, despite the cold, cold air and the cloudy, cloudy sky, there's been much to appreciate about today, unlike 42 years ago for some. Thanksgiving must have been very tough that year for the families of the crew of the

SS Edmund Fitzgerald     * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
* = ship's bell rung

Thanksgiving

Ella Wheeler Wilcox

We walk on starry fields of white
   And do not see the daisies;
For blessings common in our sight
   We rarely offer praises.
We sigh for some supreme delight
   To crown our lives with splendor,
And quite ignore our daily store
   Of pleasures sweet and tender.
Our cares are bold and push their way
   Upon our thought and feeling.
They hand about us all the day,
   Our time from pleasure stealing.
So unobtrusive many a joy
   We pass by and forget it,
But worry strives to own our lives,
   And conquers if we let it.
There’s not a day in all the year
   But holds some hidden pleasure,
And looking back, joys oft appear
   To brim the past’s wide measure.
But blessings are like friends, I hold,
   Who love and labor near us.
We ought to raise our notes of praise
   While living hearts can hear us.
Full many a blessing wears the guise
   Of worry or of trouble;
Far-seeing is the soul, and wise,
   Who knows the mask is double.
But he who has the faith and strength
   To thank his God for sorrow
Has found a joy without alloy
   To gladden every morrow.
We ought to make the moments notes
   Of happy, glad Thanksgiving;
The hours and days a silent phrase
   Of music we are living.
And so the theme should swell and grow
   As weeks and months pass o’er us,
And rise sublime at this good time,
   A grand Thanksgiving chorus.

********************************************
Thanks for visiting. Come again when you can.
Please be kind to each other while you can.

In memoriam SS Edmund Fitzgerald #phenology storms

On this day, forty-two years ago, the ill-fated Edmund Fitzgerald left a dock in Superior, WI. The next day she was in trouble as "... the skies of November turn gloomy." The Great Lakes weather report for today includes gales of November  on the water and Winter storms in nearby coastal areas.

calm but gloomy Lake Superior in Summer

Photo by J. Harrington

Somehow, over the past few years, we seem to have missed the notice that Gordon Lightfoot revised one of the lines in the lyrics when he performed live versions of "Wreck." The changes are attributed to a 2010 report in the Toronto Star which, in turn, was based on a television documentary.

"In a documentary by a Toronto film company that debuted earlier this year on History Television, a father-and-son diving team suggests the ship was in fact sunk by a rogue wave _ a massive wall of water that can reach up to 10 storeys high but was previously dismissed as a sailors' myth." [NOTE: one storey is about 10 feet, making such a wave a 100 footer]

The details of The Storm That Sunk the Edmund Fitzgerald are described on a page at the University of Michigan Sea Grant's site. The original National Transportation Safety Board's report, issued in 1978, found "The National Transportation Safety Board determines that the probable cause of this accident was the sudden massive flooding of the cargo hold due to the collapse of one or more hatch covers."

small Summer whitecaps, large ship on Superior

Photo by J. Harrington

Even if one or more of the 29 crew members, all of whom perished when the ship sunk, had survived, it's not clear that the real reason for the sinking would be less of a mystery. We don't have any problems envisioning a "rogue wave" contributing to the collapse of hatch covers and other conditions that that led to

"And later that night when 'is lights went outta sight
came the wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald."

Each time you leave those you love, be sure to hug them and tell them that you love them. Remember, whatever the cause of the sinking:

"The searchers all say they'd have made Whitefish Bay
if they'd put fifteen more miles behind 'er.
They might have split up or they might have capsized;
they may have broke deep and took water.
And all that remains is the faces and the names
of the wives and the sons and the daughters."

At a minimum, please honor those lost with a minute of silence tomorrow, for them and others lost due to Great Lakes weather. Cindy Hunter Morgan has a very recently published book of poems, Harborless, inspired by shipwrecks of the Great Lakes. Here's a sample:

PHILDELPHIA, 1893

Lake Huron
The ship sank with a load
of cast-iron stoves, which tumbled,
lopsided, through white foam,
green water, teal water, water
as dark as coal, then darker.
From deck to lake floor,
they dropped 200 feet,
plummeting past the white faces
of lost men, who stared, gaping.
One man, hit by a stove, grasping
for something, swung his legs around the belly
of another stove singing beside him
and rode it to the bottom.
When it settled in silt,
he slipped off—an arm floating across his forehead—
and slumped, exhausted, near the hearth:
wreck of a boy in November
done with chores.

********************************************
Thanks for visiting. Come again when you can.
Please be kind to each other while you can.

It's not wise to fool with Mother Nature

A year ago today, we were in the midst of getting ferociously snowed on. Starting late tomorrow we're forecast to get a bunch of rain. Forty years ago today, the Edmund Fitzgerald sank near Whitefish Bay in the midst of a storm on Lake Superior. The Armistice Day blizzard, seventy-five years ago tomorrow, killed almost 150 people. More recently, the 1991 Halloween blizzard was another clear example of the gales of November coming early.

November 6, 2013 snowfall

Photo by J. Harrington

Much of what I've read about the effects of global warming on the weather notes that storms will be more intense. Future Novembers hold the prospect of being very interesting, and dangerous, if past events are a baseline for intensity and volatility. Now, while we're enjoying today's sunshine and relative warmth, imagine if either of the recent train derailments in Wisconsin had occurred in the midst of any one of those historical storms. Cleanup and restoration of rail service would be even more challenging. Depending on the weather, environmental cleanup might not even be possible. Would you care to speculate why today's politicians behave as if they've successfully repealed Murphy's Law? There's limited concern expressed about acute disasters like oil train explosions in heavily populated areas. Less so, by quite a bit it seems to me, regarding chronic issues such as elevated mercury levels in a high percentage of children in the St. Louis River watershed. Then, when I look at the field of Republican presidential candidates, I'm willing to confirm the Murphy was an optimist. The more I consider who we elect theses days, and what they do to us after election, the more I find Homo sapiens to be a notable misnomer. Or, are we actually smart but just unlucky? I grew up in a neighborhood that firmly believed "fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me." After the next election, will we end up ashamed of ourselves? How will we know?

The New Optimism

By Dean Young 

The recital of the new optimism

was oft interrupted, rudeness

in the ramparts, an injured raven

that needed attendance, pre-op

nudity. The young who knew everything

was new made babies who unforeseeably

would one day present their complaint.

Enough blame to go around but the new

optimism didn’t stop, helped one

pick up a brush, another a spatula

even as the last polar bear sat

on his shrinking berg thinking,

I have been vicious but my soul is pure.

And the new optimism loves the bear’s

soul and makes images of it to sell

at fair-trade craft fairs with laboriously

knotted hunks of rope, photos of cheese,

soaps with odd ingredients, whiskey,

sand, hamburger drippings, lint,

any and everything partaking of the glowing

exfoliating cleanup. And the seal

is sponged of oil spill. And the broken

man is wheeled in a meal. War finally

seems stupid enough. You look an animal

in the eye before eating it and the gloomy

weather makes the lilacs grow. Hello,

oceans of air. Your dead cat loves you

forever and will welcome you forever home.

********************************************
Thanks for visiting. Come again when you can.
Please be kind to each other while you can.

No safe port for the storms of climate change?

My Better Half is at a conference in Duluth for a few days. She reports today that the big lake has "visible whitecaps and breaking waves far out on the lake." Her message reminded me that it's getting to be time to dig out my CD of Gordon Lightfoot's songs with The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald on it. (When she gets home, I'll have to thank her for the inspiration for today's posting.)

rain squall, Lake Superior's south shore

Photo by J. Harrington

The current constriction of the international steel markets may be reducing the iron ore being shipped through Duluth. Although much (all?) of that is headed for domestic markets, I keep reading about "foreign steel dumping." Continuing reductions in coal burning, needed to respond to climate change, will also reduce transshipments of that cargo I imagine. On the other hand, increased development of wind power will probably bring more turbine pieces through the port for the foreseeable future. I've seen the blades being hauled up the hill on I-35 just south of Duluth. I've never seen one unloaded though or even seen one on a ship. That's something to keep my eyes open for when I visit in the future.

freighter headed to Duluth Harbor

Photo by J. Harrington

I grew up in a port city, Boston, which is facing a future imperiled by rising sea levels. Follow this link. The Inner Harbor is comparable to Duluth. Scroll down to the Dorchester Section. The beach I swam from as a teenager will be lost. Further south by about forty miles, in Marshfield, the neighborhood in which I lived just before moving to Minnesota will be underwater (literally, not just mortgages) with a four foot rise in sea level. Climate change is really starting to hit home. My past is going to be washed out to sea, just the opposite of what the folks around Lake Superior can expect, according to the folks at Sea Grant.

For Edwin Wilson

By A. R. Ammons 

Did wind and wave design the albatross's wing,

honed compliances: or is it effrontery to

suggest that the wing designed the gales and

seas: are we guests here, then, with all the

gratitude and soft-walking of the guest:

provisions and endurances of riverbeds,

mountain shoulders, windings through of tulip

poplar, grass, and sweet-frosted foxgrape:

are we to come into these and leave them as

they are: are the rivers in us, and the slopes,

ours that the world's imitate, or are we

mirrorments merely of a high designing aloof

and generous as a host to us: what would

become of us if we declined and staked out

a level affirmation of our own: we wind

the brook into our settlement and husband the

wind to our sails and blades: what is to

be grateful when let alone to itself, as for

a holiday in naturalness: the albatross, ah,

fishes the waves with a will beyond the

waves' will, and we, to our own doings, put

down the rising of sea or mountain slope: except

we do not finally put it down: still, till

the host appears, we'll make the masters here.

********************************************
Thanks for visiting. Come again when you can.
Please be kind to each other while you can.

Seasonal adjustments

Although the wind isn't howling yet, today's weather in and around the Twin Cities is a reminder of the storm that sank the Edmund Fitzgerald 39 years ago, with the loss of all 29 members of her crew. Gordon Lightfoot created a haunting ballad of remembrance and Prudence Johnson's songs from 10 November also focus on that tragedy. Locally, I imagine that, if our neighborhood bear hadn't decided to hibernate yet, today's snow should convince him or her that it's time. After s/he trashed one of the bird feeders last Spring, we threw it out but then lost track of the need to replace it for this Winter.

bear eating the sunflower seeds and the sunflower seed feeder

Photo by J. Harrington

As daylight revealed this morning, snow has accumulated. Watching bird visitors plus some free loaders adds color and activity to our Winter landscape. Local critters survived for years before we put up feeders, but we weren't here in those days to watch them. Local non-feathered, non-hibernating critters do show up from time to time if we have a full feeder that birds can scatter seeds from. The next time I'm out running errands, I'll remember to pick up a replacement to go in the front yard and hope to take it down before the bear uses it as a tooth pick. Rabbits and birds, but not squirrels, impose less wear and tear on feeders than bears do.

cottontails sometimes appreciate messy birds at feeders

Photo by J. Harrington

I hope you and your loved ones enjoy the holidays coming up, and stay safe and warm this Winter. Remember, it should only be another five or six months until we've seen the snow all melt. El Nino anyone? Or, shall we, as does Patricia Clark, find the best of the deal we have?

Fifty-Fifty

By Patricia Clark 

You can have the grackle whistling blackly 

        from the feeder as it tosses seed,

if I can have the red-tailed hawk perched

        imperious as an eagle on the high branch.

You can have the brown shed, the field mice

        hiding under the mower, the wasp’s nest on the door,

if I can have the house of the dead oak,

        its hollowed center and feather-lined cave.

You can have the deck at midnight, the possum

        vacuuming the yard in its white prowl,

if I can have the yard of wild dreaming, pesky

        raccoons, and the roaming, occasional bear.

You can have the whole house, window to window,

        roof to soffits to hardwood floors,

if I can have the screened porch at dawn, 

        the Milky Way, any comets in our yard.

********************************************
Thanks for visiting. Come again when you can.
Please be kind to each other while you can.

Safe harbor

© harrington

A ship in the harbor is safe, but that's not what ships are for. Thirty-seven years ago, on November 10,1975, the Edmund Fitzgerald sailed from Superior, Wisconsin. It was lost, together with its crew of 29, on the way to Zug Island on the Detroit River. It left behind a great mystery and greater miseries suffered by the crews' families and loved ones. Superior is one of the Twin Ports, the other Twin is Duluth. Taconite, grain and wind turbine blades are shipped through the Twin Ports contributing to the past and future economies of My Minnesota. I suspect many of us who daily commute by car to our jobs seldom give a thought to those who actually risk their lives to earn a living. With so many wonders and opportunities in our Minnesota, do we daily take safety and beauty for granted and so fail to appreciate what we have?