The Lighthouse

In honour of National Lighthouse day, here is a poem written by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow in 1848.

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The Lighthouse

The rocky ledge runs far into the sea
And on its outer point, some miles away,
The lighthouse lifts its massive masonry,
A pillar of fire by night, of cloud by day.

Even at this distance I can see the tides,
Upheaving, break unheard along its base,
A speechless wrath, that rises and subsides
In the white lip and tremor of the face.

And as the evening darkens, lo! how bright,
Through the deep purple of the twilight air,
Beams forth the sudden radiance of its light
With strange, unearthly splendor in the glare!

Not one alone; from each projecting cape
And perilous reef along the ocean's verge,
Starts into life a dim, gigantic shape,
Holding its lantern o'er the restless surge.

Like the great giant Christopher it stands
Upon the brink of the tempestuous wave,
Wading far out among the rocks and sands,
The night-o'ertaken mariner to save.

And the great ships sail outward and return,
Bending and bowing o'er the billowy swells,
And ever joyful, as they see it burn,
They wave their silent welcomes and farewells.

They come forth from the darkness, and their sails
Gleam for a moment only in the blaze,
And eager faces, as the light unveils,
Gaze at the tower, and vanish while they gaze.

The mariner remembers when a child,
On his first voyage, he saw it fade and sink;
And when, returning from adventures wild,
He saw it rise again o'er ocean's brink.

Steadfast, serene, immovable, the same
Year after year, through all the silent night
Burns on forevermore that quenchless flame,
Shines on that inextinguishable light!

It sees the ocean to its bosom clasp
The rocks and sea-sand with the kiss of peace;
It sees the wild winds lift it in their grasp,
And hold it up, and shake it like a fleece.

The startled waves leap over it; the storm
Smites it with all the scourges of the rain,
And steadily against its solid form
Press the great shoulders of the hurricane.

The sea-bird wheeling round it, with the din
Of wings and winds and solitary cries,
Blinded and maddened by the light within,
Dashes himself against the glare, and dies.

A new Prometheus, chained upon the rock,
Still grasping in his hand the fire of Jove,
It does not hear the cry, nor heed the shock,
But hails the mariner with words of love.

"Sail on!" it says, "sail on, ye stately ships!
And with your floating bridge the ocean span;
Be mine to guard this light from all eclipse,
Be yours to bring man nearer unto man!"

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

How Hiroshima Rose from the Ashes

The atomic bomb detonated on August 6, 1945 courtesy baltimoresun.com.

It was on August 6, 1945 that the Enola Gay dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan.  Sixty-nine percent of its buildings were completely destroyed; another 7% were badly damaged.  Three-quarters of the schools were destroyed.  A large portion of the city was flattened.  Somewhere between 90,000 and 140,000 people died as a result.  Anywhere from 2000 to 6500 children were rendered orphans. Many unborn babies died.  With temperatures in the tens of millions of degrees, anyone within half a mile of the explosion was incinerated.  Survivors suffered severed burns.  Radiation lingered long after the mushroom cloud disappeared.  Skeptics warned that it would be 75 years before any vegetation would grow in the radiation-soaked soil.  Thirty newsreels, taken in the weeks after the bombing, were absconded by the American military in an effort to hide the horror.

A flattened Hiroshima courtesy theworldinourbackyard.wikispaces.com.

The end of the Second World War did not see the end of the suffering in Hiroshima.  In the post-war years, the city lacked food and shelter.  The black market flourished.  The incidence of cancer, particularly thyroid, breast, lung and leukemia skyrocketed.

Hiroshima survivors courtesy japanfocus.org.

So how did Hiroshima rise from the ashes?  Hiroshimans worked around the clock to clear 2.4 million acres of debris in the four years after Japan's surrender.  A 30-acre park was laid out dedicated to peace called Peace Memorial Park.  A museum was built, also called Peace Memorial.  Inside its walls are artifacts to help its visitors remember the horrors of nuclear war:  remnants of clothes, a twisted tricycle and a lunch box filled with charred food.

A twisted tricycle in the Peace Memorial Museum courtesy images.travelpod.com.

By the 1980's, Hiroshima had been completely rebuilt, resembling a modern city.  The damaged buildings were gone.  The radiation had diminished.  No longer rationing, Hiroshima boasted a strong economy. While skeptics warned that nothing would grow in Hiroshima's soil, they were wrong.  The first flower to poke its head out of the charred rubble, the oleander, has become the official flower of Hiroshima.  But there is one constant reminder of the bomb -- "the atomic dome" -- a burnt out shell of a government building.

"The Atomic Dome" courtesy www.atomicarchive.com.

May Hiroshima continue to heal.

Hiroshima today courtesy imageshack.us

Sources:  www.time.com

               www.pcf.city.hiroshima.jp

School on Wheels

archives.queensu.ca

Canadian Fred Slocum found himself on the battlefield in France recovering from a war wound.  Beside him lay a fellow soldier, missing one arm and one leg.  Fred would tell stories to his comrade to keep his spirits up and write letters on his behalf to his wife back home.  Surprised to learn that his fellow Canadian couldn't read or write, Fred found out that he hailed from Northern Ontario where there were no schools.  Finding it hard to believe that Canada would send its citizens to fight, but would not educate them, he decided that when he returned to Canada, he would teach the children of the North.

Once he recovered, Fred returned to his hometown of Clinton, Ontario.  He attended Normal School and started teaching.  Soon he met a fellow teacher named Cela and they married in 1923.  Three years later, with a baby in tow, the Slocums set out on their adventure.  With a 52-foot long railcar (#15071) they headed north to Capreol to teach the children of the bush.

Mr. Slocum poses with his students courtesy schoolmuseum.wordpress.com

Mr. Slocum met his first class that September composed of children of woodsmen, hunters, trappers and Natives.  Without roads to travel on, the students arrived by foot, by canoe or by handcar (when winter arrived they would travel by dogsled or snowshoes).  For a week, Mr. Slocum would teach these children, ages 5 to 19.  He would not just cover the three R's, but also subjects like geography (a giant map hung from the wall), history (books sat in shelves on the walls), math and more.  Immigrant children Theresa and Antonia Spano remember Mr. Slocum teaching them English and showing them their hometown in Italy on his classroom map.  Children and parents were often homesick and so their teacher arranged to get a copy of a film taken in Italy which was rolled so many times it wore out.  Once the seven days expired, the children said goodbye and the railcar travelled to its next stop.  This cycle went on for five weeks as the school car made its way from Capreol to Foleyet.

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In 1940, the Slocum's were grateful to receive a new school car (#15089).  The second one was much larger at 80 feet long, which made it easier to incorporate their growing family.  By now, the Slocums had five children, four girls and one boy.  Mrs. Slocum played a vital role on the school car.  She would start her day baking a fresh loaf of bread.  Laundry needed to be done with a scrub board and a metal wash tub.  River water had to be fetched and heated.  Mrs. Slocum cooked the day's dinner on a primitive woodstove. Her evenings were often spent entertaining the immigrant mothers of her husband's students, teaching them how to sew and care for their children (fathers would come for English lessons taught by Mr. Slocum).  On frigid nights, she would make thousands of cups of coffee to warm up her guests, served with freshly baked cookies.  When the weather was inclement, Mr. Slocum's students would spend the night in the school car and Mrs. Slocum would feed them supper.  During the Depression-plagued 1930's, hobos would show up at the school car door, and Mrs. Slocum would serve them a meal.

While Mr. Slocum worked his students hard, he also made room for fun.  Occasionally the students would go on a field trip to North Bay.  If they were really lucky, they travelled all the way to Toronto.  Mr. Slocum financed these trips with money he made from his short stories, which he would type on those frigid nights when he got up to put more coal in the furnace.  Probably the most exciting event for the schoolchildren was the royal visit by King George and Queen Elizabeth in July of 1939.

Port Arthur, Ontario visit on royal tour of 1939 courtesy collectionscanada.gc.ca.

The 1960's saw a declining enrolment in the school cars.  Mr. Slocum retired in 1965 and he and his family returned to the family home in Clinton to live.  The program was discontinued two years later.  Railcar #15089 was slated to become a museum stationed at North Bay.  However, those plans fell through.  And the railcar was abandonned.  Mr. Slocum passed away in 1973.  In the meantime, his daughter Cela and Margaret discovered their old home sitting in a Toronto salvage yard, in a state of disrepair.  The daughters convinced the Clinton Town Council to buy the car and restore it as a museum.

Mr. Slocum's former students will never forget how he went above and beyond the call of duty to educate them (and sometimes their parents).  An idea that formed on the battlefields of France helped generations of children in the backwoods of Ontario.  Thank you, Mr. Slocum!

creativehuron.com

Greenfield Village

Henry Ford once said:  "History is bunk".  However, what he meant by history was the history of kings and queens, people he couldn't relate to.  Ford really liked everyday history,the history of how ordinary people did extraordinary things to build America.  

blog.thehenryford.org

So Ford set out to build a village filled with buildings that once housed Americans who had contributed to the growth of America. He purchased a 240-acre plot of land and set to work clearing it.  Then he started buying, moving and restoring the buildings.  In 1928, Henry Ford brought the first of his buildings to Greenfield Village, the Watford, Michigan General Store.

 

www.wrenscottage.com

 

The same year, the Clinton Inn, an old stage coach inn from 1831 situated on the Chicago Road, was purchased by Ford.  His agents feared that the crumbling structure might collapse as they surveyed the building when purchasing it.  Moved to Greenfield Village, the inn was the site of the lunch served the day that Thomas Edison visited to recreate his invention of incandescent light.

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In 1929, Ford bought and restored the Scotch Settlement School, a solid brick building complete with a bell. Having attended the Dearborn school, Ford carved his initials in one the desks, just as he had done as a little boy.

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Nineteen twenty nine saw the appearance of another building at Greenfield Village, the Smith's Creek Train Depot.  Smith's Creek was a town situated north of Detroit.  This was where Thomas Edison had been thrown off a Grand Trunk Western train for accidentally setting fire to the baggage compartment.  Not surprisingly, he lost his job because of the incident.

home.frognet.net

Nineteen-twenty-nine also saw the completion of the re-building of Thomas Edison's laboratory from Menlo Park New Jersey.  Long since reclaimed by nature, Ford arranged an archeological dig to find the foundation of the original building.  He had seven train carloads of New Jersey clay shipped to Michigan to re-build the new lab on.  Workers found original photos of the laboratory which was reconstructed and ready for Light's Golden Jubilee on October 21 of that year.

www.geniaconnell.com

Henry Ford visited Postville (now Lincoln), Illinois to find a building related to the work of Abraham Lincoln. He decided to purchase the 1840 courthouse where Lincoln used to practise law.  The sale raised a fervor in the community.  Residents were about to lodge a protest in the courts, but Ford had already had the building dismantled before they could do so.  A month later it sat on the village green at Greenfield Village.

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Ford admired aviation pioneers Orville and Wilbur Wright.  He visited Dayton, Ohio and arranged to have their Cycle Shop and family home transported to the Village in 1938.  Their historic heavier-than-air-powered flight had taken place in 1903.  Since then, Wilbur had passed away.  However, Orville, still living, was present at the dedication of the two buildings.

Wright Cycle Shop before its dismantling courtesy www.wright-brothers.org.

Noah Webster, the author of the famous dictionary which took 25 years to complete, had lived in New Haven, Connecticut.  His 1823 home was slated for demolition in the 1930's.  Ford learned of the plan and decided to purchase and restore the home.  It came to Greenfield Village as well.

Henry Ford could not find a chapel suitable to his liking so he built one in Greenfield Village.  It was named the Martha-Mary Chapel after his wife Clara's mother, Martha Bench Bryant, and his mother, Mary Litigot Ford.  The bricks were reclaimed from Clara Bryant Ford's childhood home in Greenfield Township, where she and Henry had married in 1888.  The beautiful chapel, with its magnificent spire, would sit on a slightly raised piece of land opposite the Postville Courthouse.  In recent years, hundreds of weddings have taken place at the chapel.  

www.wrenscottage.com

And Greenfield Village would not be complete without his birthplace, which was scheduled for demolition back in 1919 due to the impending construction of a road.  

blog.thehenryford.org

With his buildings in place, now Ford's task was to fill them.  A collector of everyday items like shoes since 1906, Ford was able to pull some of these items out of storage.  However, he also started travelling the country to find artifacts suitable for his Village.

1940's postcard courtesy amazonaws.com.

By the 1940's, Greenfield Village boasted about 70 buildings.  Today it includes almost 100 buildings which cover an area of 90 acres (150 acres are undevelopped).  It is a great tribute to America, created by a man who helped build it.

Source:  Telling America's Story:  A History of The Henry Ford (Miller, Endelman, Braden & Bryk).

Light's Golden Jubilee

"Imagine the checkered effect of black and white evening dress, the brilliant splashes of color provided by the uniforms of military attaches and the great stylists of Paris and Fifth Avenue...I have attended many celebrations, but I cannot recall even attempting to describe one staged in a more perfect setting." (Graham McNamee, NBC broadcaster)

www.thehenryford.org

Five hundred guests converged on the Edison Institute (later the Henry Ford Museum) in Dearborn, Michigan on October 21, 1929.  They wore suits and ties, evening gowns and hats, as they stepped out of their Model T's and Model A's.  Surveying the scene, they got their first glimpse of the magnificent museum, a brick building with a giant tower, patterned after Independence Hall in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.  Famous names peppered the guest list: scientist Marie Curie, Kodak's George Eastman, millionaire John D. Rockefeller, humorist Will Rogers, flying pioneer Orville Wright, millionaire J.P. Morgan, inventor extraordinaire Thomas Edison and President Herbert Hoover.  Their host?  Henry Ford, owner of the Ford Motor Company and longtime fan of Edison's.  Their purpose?  The 50th anniversary of the invention of electric light. 

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The festivities began with the arrival of President Hoover and Thomas Edison at the Smith's Creek Train Station in Greenfield Village, Henry Ford's newly opened pioneer village adjacent to his museum.  Smith's Creek, bought by Ford and moved to the Village, was the train station where a young Edison used to sell newspapers to train passengers.  A throng of media snapped photographs of the new arrivals.

www.thehenryford.org

The guests of honour were then whisked away.  Ford gave Hoover and Edison a personal tour of his Rouge River Plant.  Then the elderly Edison headed to Ford's Fairlane mansion for a nap.

President Hoover and Henry Ford returned to Greenfield Village where they lunched with hungry guests at the Clinton Inn, another building bought and restored by Henry Ford.  Women then climbed into carriages, careful not to catch their long gowns, followed by their husbands, and sat back for a ride through the Village, a tribute to both agricultural and industrial America.  

Guests then headed to the museum for dinner in the front gallery, adorned with crystal chandeliers.  They feasted on fine fare and then sat back to digest their food.

www.thehenryford.org

In darkness, President Hoover, Henry Ford, Thomas Edison and his assistant Francis Jehl crossed Greenfield Village, to the restored Menlo Park Laboratory from New Jersey, to recreate the invention of incandescent light.  Edison sat in a chair and performed his magic.  Commentator Graham McNamee described the scene:  "Mr. Edison has two wires in his hand; now he is reaching up to the old lamp; now he is making the connection.  It lights! Light's golden jubilee has come to a triumphant climax!"  

imageshack.us

Immediately Henry Ford's museum was bathed in light.  The replica Liberty Bell in the belfry peeled.  Guests craned their necks as a plane flew overhead trailed by the word EDISON and the dates 79 and 29.  And Americans hunched over cathedral like radios in their dark living rooms, listening to the whole production. When Edison lit the wires, it was their signal to turn on their lights.  Whole towns even held elaborate light displays.

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The guests of honour returned to the museum where Thomas Edison delivered a speech (Henry Ford declined to speak, not wanting to steal his mentor's thunder).  Edison received congratulations from President Hoover, Marie Curie and Albert Einstein, via news feed from Germany.  

With full tummies and stimulated minds, guests bid their host goodnight and returned to their vehicles.  The ceremony had been a fitting tribute to a great innovator by another great innovator.  While the lights in the tower of the museum went out, the tribute to American inventors would continue for decades to come as new generations of guests went through its doors.  

An Old Clock, A Hidden Staircase & A Bungalow

upload.wikimedia.org

My daughter Jacqueline found a dusty old box in our furnace room full of Nancy Drew books.  I opened up the first volume The Secret of the Old Clock and saw my Aunt Jill's name written in it, dated Christmas 1965. Jacqueline decided she is going to read every one.  It is nice to see yet another generation of girls enjoying the mystery series.  I did an inventory and realized that I am missing 23 of the first 56 titles (I did read every title; I must have borrowed some from the library).  I thought it would be a great project for my husband, who likes to visit flea markets and antique book dealers for old comics, to find the titles I am missing.

In the meantime, I researched Nancy Drew.  Here is how it all began.  Back in 1926, Edward Stratemeyer conceived the idea of a detective series for boys called the Hardy Boys.  Many girls were interested in the books and so he created a female detective with a possible name of Stella or Diana or Nan.  In 1930, he hired Mildred Wirt (later Benson), under the pseudonym Carolyn Keene, to pen the first three titles of the Nancy Drew series:  The Secret of the Old Clock, A Hidden Staircase and The Bungalow Mystery. Grosset & Dunlap would publish the trilogy which was so successful more books followed.

www.createpositivespin.com

Nancy Drew was an 18-year-old titian-haired beauty whose mother passed away when she was only 3 and who lives with her father, Carson Drew, and her housekeeper Hannah Gruen.  Nancy has two good friends who help her with her cases named Bess and George.  She also has a boyfriend who attends college named Ned Nickerson.  Not only adept at solving mysteries, Nancy also paints, speaks French fluently, swims expertly, cooks gourmet dishes and rides a horse with ease.

Macy's Department Store was unprepared for the public's response to Nancy Drew:  they ordered 6000 copies for Christmas of 1933, all of which were sold out within the first few days.  According to Fortune magazine in 1934, "Nancy is the greatest phenomenon among all the fifty-centers."

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More titles followed including The Password to Larkspur Lane (1934) and The Clue of the Tapping Heels (1939).  The Forties saw the appearance of The Quest of the Missing Map (1942) and The Secret in the Old Attic (1944).  The Fifties gave us The Clue of the Velvet Mask (1953) and The Haunted Showboat (1957).  The Sixties gave us The Moonstone Castle Mystery (1963) and The Mystery of the 99 Steps (1966).  The Seventies saw the appearance of The Crooked Bannister (1971) and The Secret of the Forgotten City (1975).  With the Eighties arrived The Secret in the Old Lace (1980) and The Kachina Doll Mystery (1981).

www.newworldzorro.com

At this point, Nancy Drew rights were sold by Grosset & Dunlap to Simon & Schuster.  The yellow hardcover titles were replaced by green paperbacks.  Dozens more titles were added.

The series finally came to an end in 2003.  In total, 175 volumes were published.  Eighty million copies have been sold.  The books have been enjoyed by the likes of Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, journalist Barbara Walters, and First Lady Barbara Bush.  And now we can add Jacqueline Jonasson.

The Girls of Atomic City

Shift change at the Clinton Engineer Works circa 1943 courtesy www.dailymail.co.uk.

It was a town that had more mud than a pig pen, more secrets than a sorority, more busses than a bus depot and more electricity than New York City.  And yet it didn't even appear on a United States map.  What was its name?  Oak Ridge, Tennessee -- otherwise known as the Atomic City.

Oak Ridge, Tennessee courtesy www.lovethesepics.com.

In 1940, Oak Ridge was a 59,000-acre swap of land in the Appalachians which was home to 3,000 farmers.  By 1942, the American government confiscated the land and built a city:  roads appeared, huts sprung up, trailers were parked, factories were built, all in the space of a few months.

Muddy roads circa 1944 courtesy www.lovethesepics.com.

Tens of thousands of young women were recruited from Southern farms, Midwestern towns and Eastern cities of the United States with the promise of solid wages.  Some were hired to be secretaries, others statisticians; some operated blow torches while others used Geiger counters.  "Rosie did much more than drive rivets."  While their work may have been monotonous, it was very important:  it was war-ending work.

Worker at the CEW courtesy www.acontinuouslean.com.

Even though most of these women did not know what they were actually producing, they were sworn to secrecy by the American government.  In the hills of the Appalachians, workers saw billboards spring up with reminders of the top secret nature of their work.

Billboard swearing workers to secrecy courtesy www.dailymail.co.uk.

Work continued at the Clinton Engineering Works in Oak Ridge day in and day out.  The women would punch in, complete their shift, hop the bus home, take off their muddy shoes and dusty clothes and climb into bed, exhausted.  But work wasn't the only order of the day.  Oak Ridge's demographic was quite young.  At night, the town came alive with dancing.  Many a courtship was struck up at these dances.  Many a marriage was performed at the Chapel on the Hill.

The Chapel on the Hill courtesy blogspot.ca.

One day in July of 1945, a great blast went off in the desert of New Mexico.  It was kept hush-hush and many Americans did not find out about it.  Then, on August 6, the Enola Gay flew over Hiroshima, Japan and dropped "Little Boy", the first atomic bomb, killing 166,000 people.  The world was stunned.  For the first time, the women at the Clinton Engineering Works knew what they were producing -- the bomb.  They were processing uranium to make the atomic bomb.

Atomic bomb over Hiroshima, August 6, 1945, courtesy www.dailymail.co.uk.

With no talk of peace from the Japanese government, President Truman ordered a second atomic bomb to be dropped, this one on Nagasaki three days after Hiroshima.  On August 14, the Japanese government surrendered.  The war was over.

Harry Truman courtesy commemoration.gov.

For the women of Oak Ridge, many were laid off as the men came back from the war.  Some factories were shut down.  Bit by bit, the trailers were removed, the huts were dismantled.  All that was left was the mud. Oak Ridge, which had boasted 75,000 residents at its peak, became a ghost town almost overnight.  Many of the women returned to the South, the Midwest and the East.  Some made new starts with their new husbands.  All were part of the Manhattan Project, which did not start in the desert of New Mexico, but in the hills of Tennessee.

Clinton Engineering Works employees circa 1943 courtesy www.brainpickings.org.

For more information, read The Girls of Atomic City by Denise Kiernan.