[HN Gopher] A Lighthouse Keeper Hangs Up Her Bonnet
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A Lighthouse Keeper Hangs Up Her Bonnet
Author : samclemens
Score : 82 points
Date : 2023-12-27 02:23 UTC (20 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (hakaimagazine.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (hakaimagazine.com)
| tappaseater wrote:
| What a wonderful calling to have had in life.
| Borrible wrote:
| Robert Eggers' "The Lighthouse" would have appeared in a
| completely different light with her as the lighthouse keeper
| instead of William Dafoe.
|
| https://www.imdb.com/title/tt7984734/
| jxf wrote:
| It's a children's book, but I bet Sally Snowman would love Hello
| Lighthouse [1], winner of the 2019 Caldecott Medal. It's a huge
| hit with my kids and adults who read to them, including me.
|
| [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hello_Lighthouse
| susiecambria wrote:
| Thanks for the mention. Have ordered the book for one of my
| grand kids for Valentine's Day.
| helsinkiandrew wrote:
| > .. as the only female lighthouse keeper in the Boston Light's
| 307-year history.
|
| Maybe its a Boston thing but there's been plenty of women
| lighthouse keepers in the rest of the US for 250 years:
|
| https://www.history.uscg.mil/Browse-by-Topic/Notable-People/...
| Retric wrote:
| I would assume Boston had relatively few lighthouses due to not
| having that much shoreline, but I am not sure how to look that
| up.
| pivo wrote:
| Right, Boston proper doesn't have any lighthouses actually.
| This one is technically in Hull, MA. It's the lighthouse for
| Boston Harbor, and it's also the first lighthouse built in
| the US. The first tower on the site was built in 1716, though
| as the article says, that was torn down by the patriots,
| rebuilt and then blown up by the British in the revolutionary
| war. This one was built after the war in 1783.
|
| It's been kind of a fantasy for me to live in this
| lighthouse, I'm very tempted to apply for the job. Too bad
| it's not possible to live there anymore.
| keithwinstein wrote:
| You're definitely right that Boston Light is officially in
| Hull, but The Graves (still a USCG-managed lighthouse, and
| bigger than Boston Light) is in Boston. See https://arc-
| gis-hub-home-arcgishub.hub.arcgis.com/datasets/m...
| don-code wrote:
| There are actually a number of lighthouses in Boston Harbor.
| Historically, there had been many more. Some are described at
| the National Park Service website: https://www.nps.gov/boha/l
| earn/historyculture/lighthouses.ht...
|
| Not all of these are "lighthouses", per se. Nixes Mate is
| actually just a concrete-and-paint reflector:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nixes_Mate
| Fatnino wrote:
| Every lighthouse I've visited in California has a small automated
| light attached somewhere to it which is the real navigation aid,
| and everything else is just a history museum now.
| jrex wrote:
| The last lighthouse keeper.
|
| https://youtu.be/PgDQTKJuqwA
| lucb1e wrote:
| I read Botnet and first thought this was about smart light bulbs
| ikari_pl wrote:
| what a potential!
| keithwinstein wrote:
| I met Sally Snowman a few times -- we used to visit Boston Light
| 1-2 times every summer on MIT's sailboat with a group of
| students. She was super-welcoming and shared a ton of knowledge
| and stories about the lighthouse and station. We really enjoyed
| seeing the lens, etc., and thinking we were like the MIT students
| in the 1890s who lived out there to try to understand how sound
| traveled across the sea and create a better foghorn, I think not
| with a ton of success.
|
| One time we arrived at Little Brewster and I was wearing a
| "captain's hat" that some friends had gotten me from West Marine,
| and the Coast Guard auxiliarists who helped us dock gave me a
| hard time, Boston-style. I think they don't love it when
| recreational sailors wear pretend rank insignia. They were
| smiling about it but I didn't wear the hat on later visits!
|
| I hope she has a great retirement and they find somebody even
| half as dedicated to be her successor. The only reason Boston
| Light still has a keeper at all (the only one left in the
| country) is because Ted Kennedy and John Kerry sponsored an
| amendment to the 1989 Coast Guard Authorization Act to the effect
| that "The Boston Light shall be operated on a permanently manned
| basis." I just went back to look at it and in Ted Kennedy's
| remarks he says, "Thousands of visitors a year come out in Boston
| Harbor to visit to Boston Light. They learn about the history of
| the Light from the museum exhibits at its base. They climb the
| historic tower, and enjoy the view of the Boston skyline and the
| charm of Little Brewster Island. Most important, they gain a new
| understanding and appreciation of the important work of the Coast
| Guard and the role of Boston Light in our Nation's history." The
| part about thousands of visitors coming out I think is sadly no
| longer true. :-(
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(page generated 2023-12-27 23:01 UTC)