The Lightkeeper's Blog

We have arrived once again at my favorite time of year. Cool nights and sunny days and the crowds settle down to a manageable number.

It has been quiet this summer without the fireworks that marked others. Look back in the posts and you will find some reckless souls making their way down to the Lighthouse at night in past summers.

The first news to share is that several of the cameras have been improved. There is a new Walkway camera and camera labeled Edgerton Bell; both offer a greater resolution and a wider angle than before. The Sunset camera has been improved as well. A camera that has had a number of names is now called Mouth of the Harbor and that too has been improved with a better quality camera.

The angles now take you all around the cottage with only one small blind spot at the corner of the utility room.

The other news you can see in three of the images. Scaffolding has gone up around the Tower to service the rebuilding of the top in anticipation of the new lantern room. This process began last week, was revised at one point to focus on the top and not on the lower levels, and was completed today. Forms for pouring concrete seems to be the next step but I may be wrong.

We await the flowering of the Montauk daisies. I have been out in the gardens trying to work on the weeds. I would say I have cleaned up about 75%. With a week to go before school begins I will be trying to wrap up that effort in the next couple of days.

Painting has been the other task of the summer. The fence was highlighted in a past blog. The kitchen windows inside were painted over the weekend. The front room facing the harbor is next. I started with a green that is a near perfect match and only have to make a few repairs to several cracks in the wall to get that finished.

To wrap up I will offer this: I shared a print out of the scaffolding used in 1930 with the crew that was on the job today. They were amazed at the lack of rails and the wooden ladder and the bare bones nature of the effort. I thanked them for taking the extra steps and for recognizing that conditions are quite different here now. The population of Scituate in April of 1930 was 3118. There is a good chance that 25 percent were Litchfields.