The Madwoman in the Lighthouse

Even Texas Robins flee the heat

Sorry for the darkness of this picture. Mother Robin got quite irate at my flash and I didn't dare try again. She has nested outside the Wee Cottage, she and her three chicks, not ten feet from our door. Further research showed that, whatever Texans may think, she is not a Texas Robin, but an American Robin. The birds pause for a week or so in Texas every year, before deciding that Hell comes soon enough to us all and then breezing their way up to pleasanter climes.

Fiber Artists Rock

Long Islanders talk about the Montauk peninsula, it's two centuries old lighthouse and its crashing waves in gushing terms. I'm happy to report that the enthusiasm is well deserved. And visiting Montauk provided one of those Teaching Moments for my daughter and I. When we walked into the museum part of the lighthouse, the male docent was talking about some woman with an evident lump in his throat. "She was in her 90s when she passed away a few years ago," he said. "How I wish I could have met her."

Another Great Woman Hidden from History? I thought. Well, she didn't cure the pox or invent quantum mechanics, but Giorgina Reid apparently did save the Montauk lighthouse and peninsula. An Italian immigrant who had been a textile designer, she retired with her husband to a small cabin by the sea, not far from Montauk. Within a few years, the beach at the foot of their cabin was eroded away by the steady grind of the Atlantic. Without any background in civil engineering, Reid came up with a terracing process, which she later patented, for saving her own beach front. The process, which came out of her experiences growing up in Italy, where those gardening geniuses have been terracing hillsides for millenia, became the source of her book, "How to Hold Up a Bank". She approached the Coast Guard with her ideas and stayed in their face until they basically did what she wanted, reversing their own plans to simply demolish the lighthouse. The Coast Guard's own attempts to stem the erosion had failed. The peninsula is healthy today, thanks to Reid's efforts. Her tombstone is engraved with the words, "Keeper of the Light".

The waves crashing at Montauk, against the boulders that Giorgina Reid made the Coast Guard haul to the foot of the peninsula:


Hydrangea madness

If we do end up living in the north east, I'm going to grow beauties like these: