Beware November’s gales and other storms

On this, the 46th anniversary of the sinking of the Edmund Fitzgerald, we offer for your consideration

• The National Weather Service’ story of the aftermath of the tragedy


• Gordon Lightfoot’s haunting rendition of his song about the sinking


• Previous postings on My Minnesota about the Edmund Fitzgerald


• A reminder that the Split Rock light will be lit this evening in memoriam

Split Rock light house

Photo by J. Harrington

Although not a November gale, today’s weather forecast brings a threat of the season’s first local snowfall sometime during the next several days with significant snowfall forecast for northern Minnesota and Canada. We’re hoping that whatever we get will melt shortly after it falls. We’d be happy if we got lasting snow on Christmas Eve that melted about New Year’s, but our drainfield tells us it needs the insulation of snow cover.

Storm Fear

Robert Frost - 1874-1963

When the wind works against us in the dark,
And pelts the snow
The lower chamber window on the east,
And whispers with a sort of stifled bark,
The beast,
‘Come out! Come out!’—
It costs no inward struggle not to go,
Ah, no!
I count our strength,
Two and a child,
Those of us not asleep subdued to mark
How the cold creeps as the fire dies at length,—
How drifts are piled,
Dooryard and road ungraded,
Till even the comforting barn grows far away
And my heart owns a doubt
Whether 'tis in us to arise with day 
And save ourselves unaided.

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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.

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

Home, again?

© harrington

Welcome. Thanks for coming. Today's photo you may recognize. It's Duluth harbor. It's there today to remind me of where I came from, Boston, another harbor city. I'm proud of being a New Englander. I'm even more proud of being a Bostonian, born and raised there. Today, my heart is full of sadness for my fellow Bostonians and even more full of anger at whoever bombed us. On the drive home today, Minnesota Public Radio had a newspaper columnist from my hometown talking about the aftermath of yesterday's horrific event. He said something to the effect that "we are a belligerent people who care mostly about sports, politics and revenge." I thought, "that's me" in that portrait, even after a generation in Minnesota, a place I have come to love, but not my home. Home, to some, is found in Robert Frost's great definition in The Death of the Hired Man from "North of Boston,"

“Home is the place where, when you have to go there,
They have to take you in.”

To me, home is where I am most comfortable, most "at home." That is, and always will be, Boston, with its non-grid streets that I memorized as I learned to drive them. With its "T" and its harbor and its harbor islands and  Back Bay and Dorchester, the neighborhood where I grew up in the middle flat of a three-decker with my grandmother and uncle living on the floor above and "the tenants" down below. In Minnesota, it is still April. It is still National Poetry Month. In Boston, home will never be the same. I believe that at least some of My Minnesotans know that feeling. Louis Jenkins would be one. Here's his prose poem, Back Home, from "The Winter Road" [Holy Cow Press, Duluth].

BACK HOME

The place I lived as a child, the sharecropper's farmhouse with its wind-bent mulberry trees and rusted farm machinery has  completely vanished. Now there's nothing but plowed fields for miles in any direction. When I asked around town no one remembered the family. No way to verify my story. In fact, there's no evidence that any of what I remember actually happened, or that the people I knew actually existed. There was my uncle Axel, for instance, who spent most of his life moving from one job to another, trying to "find himself." He should have saved himself the trouble. I moved away from there a long time ago, when I was a young man, and came to the cold spruce forests of the north. The place I thought I was going is imaginary, yet I have lived here most of my life.

Maybe tomorrow we can pick up again with Gary Snyder and nature poetry. Thanks for listening. Come again when you can. When you gotta come here, we gotta take you in. Rants, raves and reflections served daily.

Working harbor

© harrington

I was born in Boston MA and grew up mostly on the south shore and Cape Cod areas of Massachusetts. That probably helps account for why I find Duluth so appealing (despite its lack of salt water aroma). Working harbors have long been a part of My Minnesota. Duluth on Lake Superior, St. Paul and Minneapolis on the Mississippi River, are watery connection points to the rest of the world. Many of the river towns south of St. Paul, such as Hastings, Red Wing and Winona, retain a wonderful historic patina. Duluth, which recently experienced and is recovering from, a "storm of the millenium," is expected to be among the leaders in demonstrating how cities can adapt to climate change associated events. New York and New Jersey will now no doubt also be pursuing adjustments to rising sea levels and higher storm surges. Resilience has always been required of those who live in My Minnesota. Resilient development will be necessary for a sustainable future here.