On a Facebook RV group I belong to, a family has posted that they’re going to visit as many of the lighthouses on the North Carolina outer banks as are open to visitors. Their “‘”oldest” had done a lighthouse project at school and was quite excited about making this trip. It reminded me of this wonderful coffee table book I have that I used to take in to school from time to time for various purposes but the photos are amazing and there are two complete maps that show were each lighthouse along the North American Atlantic Coast is located. (I love books with maps!) So I thought I’d share a bit about it here and post them the link because I think lighthouses and their histories are amazing.
One of the lighthouses this family is planning to visit is Ocracoke Lighthouse in Ocracoke Village at the south end of Cape Hatteras National Seashore. There is a discovery centre there and although you can’t climb up to the light, you can visit the base of the lighthouse. There are lots of photos of this and other area lighthouses in this book but this is the one I liked the best.
Oracoke Light
This light was the first of 2 lighthouses on Shell Castle Island but shifting sands eroded the beach to the point that it became totally useless for navigation purposes as it was too far from the entrance to the channel. So a second light had to be built.
Cape Hatteras Island is actually a low lying sandbar. Over time, the beach there had also eroded and the lighthouse had to be abandoned in 1935. Another was built, but seawalls were erected and the beach was reclaimed until they were able to reopen the lighthouse in 1950 and its lamp was relit. When it was built in 1871, it was the tallest brick lighthouse in the world. It is still the highest structure of its kind in North America. The picture was taken in 1898.
Cape Hatteras Island 1898
The family won’t be able to see this next lighthouse because it was demolished in 1962. This is what is called a screw pile lighthouse and was erected at Old Plantation Flats. I think it’s really cool and so had to include it.
Old Plantation Flats screwpile lighthouse. Dem 1962.
The book covers lighthouses all the way down the coast of North America, from Belle Isle North End off the coast of Labrador to Sand Key, Florida. There are two chapters at the beginning of the book that tell a lot about the lure of the lights and how the buildings and the lamps themselves are built including the modern technology that allows lighthouses to be automated. There is quite a bit of variety and, of course, in the beginning, the lights were manned by humans, often at risk to their own lives. It was an isolating existence but a rewarding one, saving many ships and their crews.
I leave you with one last picture because it is my favourite. This is a shot taken of Fame Point lighthouse in Quebec, Canada. We tend to get a lot of snow here.
Fame Point, Quebec lighthouse
I hope you folks enjoy your trip to the lighthouses and post all about it when you get back. Cheers!
Based on the book of the same name (1964) by Canadian author Margaret Laurence, The Stone Angel movie beautifully captures the essence of the story of Hagar Currie Shipley (superbly played by Ellen Burstyn), an elderly curmudgeonly lady facing terminal illness and dementia. Hagar lives with her only surviving son, Marv (Dylan Baker), and his wife, Doris (Sheila McCarthy), and feels she is being forced into an old folks home, losing her possessions, her home, and her identity. Throughout the story, Hagar has flashbacks to her childhood in Manawaka, Manitoba, her early adulthood, her marriage with its highpoints and disappointments, the depression, her separation from her husband Bram (played at different stages by father and son, Wings Hauser and Cole Hauser). The early chapters of Hagar’s life as a young adult were well played by Christine Horne.
Shot on location in Manitoba, Canada, director Kari Skogland achieves stunning backdrops for the various outdoor scenes. One in particular stands out: near the end Hagar has a flashback of being swung up on a horse behind Bram and they turn and ride off into the sunset; the movie could almost have ended like that. The train scenes, especially the ones involving a bet, capture the tense excitement of the events. An extremely poignant surprise is the rendering of the hymn, All People Who on Earth do Dwell, by the local minister Rev. Troy (played by Ted Atherton) in the hospital as Hagar lies in a morphine-induced calm, dying, and his voice fills the hall and captures the attention of all the patients, family, and staff in the hospital wing.
Having read the book first, I found I had an expectation of what the characters looked like that the movie didn’t match although the actors chosen suited their parts well. Quite a bit was left out which made the story flow and not jump back and forth quite as much as it did in the book but both suited their mediums. The story was simplified by the absence of Marv’s grown children and Hagar’s escape to the seaside only had a partial setting but it worked well. The tour of the nursing/retirement home was briefer than in the book as well. The young Bram’s character seemed rather cleaner cut, less vulgar than in the novel and the differences that caused he and Hagar to separate, seemed less obvious. And Hagar uses a completely surprise argument for John to give up his girlfriend, Arlene (the Ellen Page, now Elliot Page) which made sense once I got a chance to think about it.
There were some things that were added that I thought were exceptionally appropriate: Hagar was given a special pin by her father, marking their family clan, which she in turn gave to her younger son, John, who traded it for a pen knife instead of treasuring it. In the movie, Bram found it in a pawn shop and returned it to John who gave it back to his mother. She gave it to Marv just before she died and said she probably should have given it to him in the first place. It was well played. There was much less stream of consciousness in the movie, which I missed — in the book it gave depth to Hagar’s searching her past for clues about how things turned out so differently than she expected — the kind of person she became — the reflection of the stone angel in the cemetery marking her mother’s grave.
I’m not sure it matters if you read the book before watching the movie or vice versa but you should definitely read the book. The movie is great on it’s own — a bit more sex than was necessary to the story — but there is a depth and perception to the book, a broader understanding of the social aspects and the inter-personal relationships, than can be/has been relayed on the screen. A movie worth watching. **** 1/2
This iconic novel by Canadian author Margaret Laurence (1926-1987) was published in 1964, has been part of high school curriculum and college courses, and in the 70s and 80s there was pressure on some school boards to ban it along with other of her novels. It is a gutsy yet poignant look at aging, social status, survival in the depression of the 30s, and the burgeoning role of women. Laurence, herself, developed her writing skills from an early age, continuing by writing and editing college newspapers, and eventually wrote and published her first book in Somaliland where her husband had work as a hydraulic engineer building a dam. In her college years, she had become involved with a group known as Social Gospel, an organization which applied Christian principles to issues of social justice and on graduation, faced the reality of many social issues as a journalist. Throughout her works, she highlights such injustices she saw both in Africa and at home. This is evident in the various threads throughout The Stone Angel, named for a cemetery monument which, from the main character’s early years until her death, was a reflection of herself — sightless, neglected, and lacking in an ability to express feelings.
Laurence sets Hagar Currie Shipley’s story in the fictional town of Manawaka, Manitoba, where her father, a self-made immigrant from Scotland, owned the one general store in the town which gave her a certain social status. Her mother had died giving birth to her younger brother and her Aunt Dollie came to look after the family. Both her brothers tormented Hagar, her father favoured her which is probably why she wasn’t really close to any of them. She feared her father who saw himself in her, saw her potential, but tried to order her life for her which resulted in her rebellion.
In the present, Hagar is 90 years old, living with her older son and his wife. As illness and dementia set in and she fears a loss of both freedom and possessions, the past imposes itself on her frequently and she reviews decisions she made which helped to shaped her life, trying to determine how she came to be the disgruntled, isolated person she has become, unsure of God and unable to find solace. As she lies dying, she tries “to recall something truly free that she’d done in ninety years” and can only think of two — one a joke and one a lie — both of them recent. You’ll have to read the novel to see if you can unravel her meaning.
Insightfully written with an authentic empathy, Laurence leaves the reader with much to think about concerning our cultural past and how it compares to our present, how we treat our children, our parents, our fellow man, and what we value. This novel was adapted into a radio series, later produced as an audio book (1989), a stage play (1991), and a movie (2007). *****
Our book club read this novel and also watched the movie starring Ellen Burstyn, Christine Horne and Cole Hauser. For my review of the movie, click here. *****
A blogger from Italy who I now consider a friend has posted this celebration speech today, first in Italian, followed by an English translation. It is a celebration of freedom of speech. Hurrah!
Since Easter celebrations continue to Pentecost, it doesn’t seem inappropriate to be telling you about this wonderful book even though Good Friday and Easter have come and gone. While I personally was not familiar with Ron DiCianni’s paintings, apparently they are very well known and Neil Wilson describes them in his introduction as “artistic reflections on Scripture” and many of them can be seen in the Billy Graham Center in Wheaton, Illinois. I used this book as a devotional the 30 days leading up to Easter Monday and they do, as Neil says, make you “recognize [biblical events], but also [invite you] to participate in them”.
The stories begin with Gabriel’s Message and continue through the Nativity, the Shepherds’ Visit, Jesus’ temptation, His parables, the story of the servant, the events from Passover through the cross and the empty tomb, and on to the promises of salvation and eternal life. Each story is told from a personal perspective and some offer “convicting encounters with an enduring truth”. Each one closes with a question or two or profound statements for meditation.
This book makes Jesus’ life, death and resurrection very personal and shows us the profound meaning behind the gospel message and the immense love of God for us. The paintings are amazing; the full pictures, the close-ups of parts: the baby’s hand in the cradle, Simeon’s face as he cries out to God, Bartimaeus’ blind eyes, Jesus washing a man’s feet, Christs’ chained hands as he stands before a judge, the centurion guarding the tomb nodding off. Some of DiCianni’s work inserts modern dress participants into the scene. Each painting and each story will strike you in a very individual way. It is a book that can be used over and over again.
This is a book I read for book club although once I had read the cover description it is one I might have picked up on my own. I never care whether a book is written by a Canadian author, an American or British author, or an indigenous author; I choose a book based on whether the subject interests me or not and sometimes on the recommendation of another blogger or a friend. While I believe that a great many, native/indigenous children/families went through a horrific trauma (and many did not live to tell about it), I also believe that there were other residential schools that were well run and where the children were cared for and educated to prepare them for a bi-cultural world.
Michelle Good has created a composite picture of life on the west coast of Canada and of five indigenous families dramatically affected by their children being forced into a residential school that was an absolute horror for them. It shows not only the abominable treatment of the children but the devastating effect on the adults left behind. Graduating girls only had training to be cleaners, waitresses, bar maids, or prostitutes and the boys, to work the lumber or fishing industry or be pimps. As the children in this story are thrust out on “graduation” into the seedy world of east downtown Vancouver, a few come to some kind of reconciliation with their past and create a future for themselves, some do not, and one has such a disgust for herself that she commits suicide as the only release she can see. It is a shocking episode and it is meant to be shocking. One goes through a healing process with loving, caring friends and in turn furthers her education and takes a position where she can help others who have survived similar experiences.
The story of how this all came to be is riveting and is a condemnation of a past that we have not yet entirely come through nor put behind us. There is still a lot of healing to be done. This is another book that you need to be in a certain mindset to read but one that helps to give perspective. ****
An outsider, by definition, is “someone who is not accepted by or who is isolated from society” (Oxford Languages). Dag Aabye (pronounced Obi, like Obi-Wan Kenobi) was an outsider for most of his life. Born in 1941, he was an orphan adopted by a wealthy farm couple in Norway during the Nazi occupation. His parents supported the Nazis and so when the war was lost, they faced reprisals, lost most of their wealth, and fled to Argentina along with other escaping Nazi supporters, collaborators, and war criminals. Once there, they left 4-year-old Dag with total strangers, a German couple also newly arrived, where he was surrounded by children from places he had never heard of, speaking languages with which he was unfamiliar. Meanwhile, his parents went off to start a cotton farm on an inhospitable remote and rugged land near the jungle. They found it almost impossible to clear the land, let alone turn a profit, and before too many years, they decided to return to their property in Norway and test the waters.
It was during this time, Dag began to suspect that he was the product of a union between a Norwegian mother and a German father, part of the Lebensborn project under Heinrich Himmler, the purpose of which was to strengthen the German master race. (This was something I was unfamiliar with and found it equally fascinating and revolting.) These children were often ostricized and beaten after the war by both school mates and their own parents. Dag’s adoptive mother took her anger for the loss of friends and fortune out on him, at one point calling him a Lebensborn, making him believe that he, indeed, had had a German father and was an outsider.
Dag skiing Whistler
Dag left home and left no trace to follow. He had taught himself to ski and so was able to work jobs at ski resorts teaching others while gaining experience on various mountains. He became an extra or stunt man in films with famous actors such as Sean Connery, Michael Caine, and Donald Sutherland. He worked as a logger in B.C. And he became an extreme skier before there was such a thing (a term Nancy Green coined to describe him). He married a woman who also loved skiing, had 3 children, and was a steady provider. Until his mother died.
It was after this point that Popplewell met Dag. Having inherited a great wealth from his parents’ estate, Dag began to change. He didn’t want the money, went through it like water, deserted his family and began living in an abandoned school bus in the parking lot at Silver Star Ski Resort. When the owners got tired of seeing the bus there, friends helped him move it to a friend’s property up the mountainside near Vernon to an incredibly isolated spot where he settled in and made himself a home. This is where Popplewell first met the 75-year-old Dag and a relationship grew where a prospective story had once glimmered with possibility.
Dag had developed an interest in marathon racing and was running for up to 7 hours a day to stay fit in order to compete in the annual Alberta Death Race. In his school bus, he had a large library which he read voraciously and he kept daily journals about current events he garnered from listening to the radio, recorded the weather, his running times, and words of wisdom he came across in his reading. Despite injuries (he was losing strength and healing less quickly as he aged), he hadn’t been to a doctor in years. His children weren’t speaking to him except for his daughter who kept in touch occasionally by leaving messages at The Rooster in Vernon, a restaurant/bar Dag visited from time to time.
Popplewell became fascinated by Dag’s story, which changed from time to time and lost its cohesiveness, but as his path began to intertwine with Dag’s over the course of 6 years, Brett decided to help Dag track down his genealogy. Outsider is about that as much as it is about a man choosing to isolate himself from society and refusing to age gracefully. Their journey back to Norway and through research on the Internet and DNA testing, is one of discovery for Dag and a kind of catharsis for Brett.
Brett tells Dag’s story weaving past and present together in a fascinating tale of searching for a truth to explain how he came to be an outsider. He treats Dag and his idiocyncracies with dignity and a levelling of fact and fiction. He portrays Dag as a bit of a philosopher, using some of the quotes he recorded in his journal as headings and retells discussions centred around Dag’s personal philosophy, such as “Solitary trees, if they grow at all, they grow stronger” (Winston Churchill) and, “Time matters most when time is running out”. Popplewell presents the picture of an Outsider who has come to terms with himself and is content, a man with a positive outlook. It is a story of courage and determination. A story worth reading. ****1/2
North to the Orient is the first published book of Anne Morrow Lindbergh and details the trip she and aviator husband Charles Lindbergh made in 1931 to map and assess the feasibility of possible routes for the new airplane industry (for Pan American Airlines) to travel more quickly between New York and Tokyo and Nanking. In her preface, Anne tells the reader that her book is “an attempt to capture some of the magic” of her experience and this she clearly does in this amazing account of what is basically 20th century exploration.
Just 25 years old, newly credentialed radio operator, novice pilot, navigator, and recent mother, Anne embarks on this extraordinary adventure that takes her and Charles, through various time zones, climates, and cultures, totally dependent on weather and hopefully awaiting gasoline supplies at various points along their proposed path.
Every aspect of their journey was carefully calculated. Everything to go on board their pontoon plane, Sirius, had to be essential and accurately weighed, and everything meticulously packed into the storage area. (Charles’ job, done so carefully after each stop that he easily spotted a stowaway when they were preparing to leave Osaka, Japan because 2 canteens were out of place.). The route was well thought out, stopping points arranged, supplies ordered, yet when they arrived in Ottawa (their first stop outside of the U.S.) and faced a reception of experts on northern Canada, their plans were challenged and the experts tried to dissuade Charles from the routes as if he were an inexperienced, irresponsible boy but he stuck to his guns. Next day, the adventure truly began.
Along the route, the Lindberghs encountered people on isolated outposts of the north who hadn’t been “out” for decades, were unable to grow vegetables, and got their newspapers a year late. They met shy Inuit (at the time called Eskimos) who gathered to greet them and share with them what little they had. In Nome, Alaska, the community put on a sports festival for them and were extremely hospitable. The pair were entertained in a Russian village by ordinary people they had much in common with. Anne shared photos of her young baby Charles (who she had to leave in the care of her mother to go off on this adventure) and exchanged stories of motherhood. Anne marvels at the reality of these people, places, and cultures as she compares them to her preconceived notions in a world so foreign to us today, a world where communication and travel was much more limited and isolating.
The Lindberghs experienced threatening weather conditions, faced a fire in Japan, and arrived in China to find devastating flooding conditions. They used their plane to provide humanitarian aid: to map the areas and establish the needs and to fly doctors and medicine to the areas where they would do the most good. They were almost swamped by desperate people in sampans and finally had to return home by ship when the Sirius was damaged while being winched back into the water for one final aid effort. (It had been raised out the night before by the British ship Hermes for fear of the raging Yangtze and being swamped by refugees in junks and sampans).
A.M. L.
The story is exhilarating and you feel Anne’s excitement and fascination in the eloquence and humour of her words. The trip is described to a lesser degree in her book of diary entries and letters, Hour of Gold, Hour of Lead, this, of course, being the Hour of Gold. Her book creates a wonderful snapshot of a bygone era facing the emergence of air travel and all the shrinking of world relationships that implies. Anne’s descriptions are captivating and incisive as she and Charles explore not only air routes but various cultures not usually available to the rest of us. A thrilling read. *****
Last Thursday I spent a delightful evening enjoying the retro jazz tunes as performed by the 17 piece Five Alarm Jazz Band.
The 90 minute concert included tunes from Gershwin, the Beatles, other well known names and others new to me. Various members of the band were featured in different pieces. There are two pianists who were quite versatile: one played the xylophone and the piano, while another played the piano and the saxophone. There wasn’t a programme and I can’t find a website so I don’t have names of the players, conductor, or the music but perhaps you will recognize the music in this video (there are more on my FaceBook page). Perhaps members of the group will contribute names on my FaceBook page or in comments below.
The concert was held at Woodroffe United Church and was a charity event to support the Ottawa Food Bank and the Britannia United Church Afghan Refugee Fund.
Perhaps a member of the band can direct us to their schedule of concerts so more people can enjoy their wonderful music.
This is the second in a series of Anne Morrow Lindbergh’s diaries published in the early 70s and, as the title implies, it captures the extreme highs and extreme lows of her life between 1929 and 1932, beginning with the impending announcement of her engagement to aviator Charles A Lindbergh and ending with her sister Elisabeth’s wedding and an ominous foreshadowing.
One of the delights, if one can use that term under the circumstances, is the Introduction to each of the two sections, where AML, looking back 30 odd years, is able to bring a unique perspective to her story and why she has decided to share such intimate details of elation and devastation in turn. We often think of the wealthy and famous as having no worries, of being insulated from care and even tragedy, but here is the story that shows courage in exploration and in devastation. Although most, if not all readers will already know the outcome of these stories, the reading of it through AML’s beautiful writing draws us in to the seemingly charmed life and through the kind of tragic loss most of us will never experience.
In Hour of Gold, AML enters into whirlwind wedding arrangements for the beginning of her life with Charles Lindbergh (CAL), a life constantly intruded upon by the press to the point of harassment. Their stories are often inaccurate and blown out of proportion, reporters disrupting what should have been a peaceful honeymoon on a yacht, and crowds intruding on their privacy everywhere as they are instantly recognized from their photos. AML becomes a true partner in CAL’s mapping of airline routes, learning to navigate and operate a radio, flying with him everywhere during the infancy of public air travel. Amidst all the crisscrossing of the United States, the couple are expecting their first child and plan how they can do this without enduring unwanted publicity. Anne gives birth to a beautiful, sturdy baby boy they name after his father and the parents are soon ready to explore new flight routes across the Arctic Circle to Japan and China.
Anne becomes a licensed radio operator and leaving Charles Jr. in the care of her mother, she and Charles begin a flight that takes them from New York, north through Canada to Point Barrow, then southwest through Nome, Petropavlovsk, Nemura, Tokyo, Nanking, and Hankow, China. Together they visit isolated outposts, in some cases, where no white woman has been before. They marvel at the dedication of the post operators, ministers, and doctors who live “outside” and only receive supply shipments once a year if the ship delivering them can get through the ice. They are welcomed and entertained by Eskimo tribes (remember this was written in the 30s) and banquets prepared where no fruits or vegetables grow except possibly in a window box, but not really. They are overwhelmed by the generosity of the people they meet and wished they had realized and had had the space in their extremely pared down and jam-packed pontoon plane, Sirius, to bring something special like a current newspaper or a tomato that would have been so appreciated. They move through the land of the midnight sun of the far north where they could fly as long as their fuel allowed, to the cloudy, dark & turbulent weather of the north Pacific where it was crucial that they find a sheltered lagoon to moor overnight. (To learn more about their exciting adventures check out my review of AML’s book North to the Orient.)
The Lindberghs’ return to the States after humanitarian efforts to map and alleviate the devastation of the 1931 flooding of the Yangtze River and Canal far into the Chinese countryside, was thwarted when their plane, the Sirius, was damaged and had to be taken aboard the HMS Hermes. The plan at this point was to have it repaired at Shanghai and then continue to fly home but Anne received word of the death of her father and so they returned by ship.
The Hour of Lead part begins with the Lindberghs’ return to the building of their first home in a rather isolated wooded area in New Jersey, a home they named Hopewell. Here is where we witness the intimate details of the aftermath of the senseless abduction and killing of their then 18-month old son, Charles Jr. How soul-searing and mind-numbing it had to be with all the investigating and questioning going on around them as they tried to grasp the events and find comfort in each other. By releasing the diary, Anne hopes that sharing her grief process will help others. In her Introduction she writes…
… when all is said about the universality of tragedy and the long way out, what can be added to human knowledge or insight by another example? I can only say that I could not bear to expose this story if I did not believe that one is helped by learning how other people come through their trials… As the reader will see, I am familiar with the false roads: stoicism, pride, remorse, self-pity, clinging to scraps of memories. I have not named them all; they are legion.
Here is where we relive the day to day pain of loss and begin to understand the following mindset of their journey to protect their children and themselves from the ever-pursuing press and the ever-curious public. It is exceedingly sad. In the beginning, they have no way of knowing their precious son died that very first night on the way down the ladder when the kidnapper stumbled on a broken rung and hit Charles Jr.’s head against the side of the house. They live through hope after hope of messages from supposed kidnappers demanding ransom for the return of their child. Then there are the constant news articles of what becomes known as “the crime of the century”. This story can be difficult to read but is an important story well told for it is as real as it is heartbreaking. Rereading it 50 years after I first read it, after it was first published, it still has a huge impact. You will need a certain mindset to approach it but it is well worth reading. *****
I occasionally receive complimentary books from publishers or book review programs but the opinions stated here are my own and are not solicited, nor are positive reviews required. I don't represent any publisher, author, or bookseller.
Ms M's Bookshelf 