Welcome to Business in Great Waters. Thanks for tuning in;. I’m Jen Holmgren.
Here on the North Shore, as in other areas of the United States and the world, a severe drought has gripped us for the majority of this summer. Local fire departments, the National Guard, and the Mass. Bureau of Forest Fire Controls and Forestry have battled wildfires in Gloucester, Rockport, and now in the Lynn Woods Reservation and Breakheart Reservation in Saugus. Thankfully, the Gloucester fire has been extinguished. Hot spots continue to flare up in Rockport. The Lynn Woods fires just started a few days ago, scattered, but taking up a total of 26 acres. Lynn Woods is the second largest municipal park in the United States and was founded in 1881. Breakheart is part of the Massachusetts State Park system, the Department of Conservation and Recreation. As of this episode’s recording, I am thankful to report no lives have been lost. Dedicated, amazing firefighters and first responders have been working overtime to keep the blazes under control, blazes which have come perilously close to people’s houses and thickly settled neighborhoods. In our corner of Gloucester, varying winds blow the smell of smoke into our house. Our grass is brown and scorched. We have given up on our vegetable garden. Even the weeds seem thirsty, except for the crab grass.
We are used to unpredictable weather here in New England, but I don’t recall a time in my 42 years when we ever went this long without a good rainstorm. I mean, it’s been weeks. We’re in what many call a “micro-climate.” Because of our position on the coast, stuck out in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, we feel the benefit of more moderate temperatures than those North Shore cities and towns closer to Boston. Also because of this, though, we have seen some neighborhoods get rain while others stay dry. When it does happen, it hasn’t been much rain, maybe a few minutes to a few hours. Nowhere near enough. I keep checking the Cape Ann Weather page, run by Rockport’s Chris Spittle, for the most accurate reporting. We are all holding our breaths waiting for the rain.
As I’ve said several times, I have some pretty exciting plans for upcoming episodes. Ideas flow, and I begin writing. I double-check my sources. I have made amazing connections. You listeners have encouraged and inspired me, and I know I am on the right path.
Today, though, I’m feeling a little stuck. And a little sad. To help cheer us all up, I’ll throw this tidbit out there – the City of Gloucester has worked for years to help mitigate the effects of climate change. We are a Massachusetts Designated “Green Community” and have been for 12 years and counting. Gloucester is a coastal city, and we have all seen what is happening with the tides. With the weather. With pollution. A lot of work has been and is being done to combat the effects of all these things and to help prevent them from getting worse.
In particular, I want to highlight the good work of the City’s municipal Clean Energy Commission. There are amazing things the volunteers on this Commission have done, in conjunction with our City departments and government, to help lower our collective carbon footprints. Municipal buildings have had upgrades to boilers and HVAC systems. Building “stretch codes” have been adopted from the state building code for new construction projects so that new buildings are more energy efficient. A small point of contention has been the installation of LED streetlights around the city. They are very bright. But, they use far less electricity than their traditional counterparts. About 9 years ago, the city permitted 3 large wind turbines to produce energy at Blackburn Industrial Park to help offset energy consumption. The turbine owned by Applied Materials, one of our largest employers, unfortunately lost a blade a couple of weeks ago. I’m not sure when a new one will be reattached. The other two turbines are still spinning. They feed into Gloucester’s power grid under a public-private partnership. The energy they produce generates hundreds of thousands of dollars a year for the city in buy-backs from National Grid, our power company.
Plans to further resilience against climate change are being discussed and implemented as we speak. We are all – all of us in the world – stakeholders in this because it affects all of us. Especially our children, our flora, our fauna, and our future as a species on this planet.
The Wreck of the Hesperus
It was the schooner Hesperus,
That sailed the wintry sea;
And the skipper had taken his little daughter,
To bear him company.
Blue were her eyes as the fairy-flax, 5
Her cheeks like the dawn of day,
And her bosom white as the hawthorn buds,
That ope in the month of May.
The skipper he stood beside the helm,
His pipe was in his mouth, 10
And he watched how the veering flaw did blow
The smoke now West, now South.
Then up and spake an old Sailòr,
Had sailed to the Spanish Main,
‘I pray thee, put into yonder port, 15
For I fear a hurricane.
‘Last night, the moon had a golden ring,
And to-night no moon we see!’
The skipper, he blew a whiff from his pipe,
And a scornful laugh laughed he. 20
Colder and louder blew the wind,
A gale from the Northeast,
The snow fell hissing in the brine,
And the billows frothed like yeast.
Down came the storm, and smote amain 25
The vessel in its strength;
She shuddered and paused, like a frighted steed,
Then leaped her cable’s length.
‘Come hither! come hither! my little daughtèr,
And do not tremble so; 30
For I can weather the roughest gale
That ever wind did blow.’
He wrapped her warm in his seaman’s coat
Against the stinging blast;
He cut a rope from a broken spar, 35
And bound her to the mast.
‘O father! I hear the church-bells ring,
Oh say, what may it be?’
‘’Tis a fog-bell on a rock-bound coast!’—
And he steered for the open sea. 40
‘O father! I hear the sound of guns,
Oh say, what may it be?’
‘Some ship in distress, that cannot live
In such an angry sea!’
‘O father. I see a gleaming light, 45
Oh say, what may it be?’
But the father answered never a word,
A frozen corpse was he.
Lashed to the helm, all stiff and stark,
With his face turned to the skies, 50
The lantern gleamed through the gleaming snow
On his fixed and glassy eyes.
Then the maiden clasped her hands and prayed
That savèd she might be;
And she thought of Christ, who stilled the wave, 55
On the Lake of Galilee.
And fast through the midnight dark and drear,
Through the whistling sleet and snow,
Like a sheeted ghost, the vessel swept
Tow’rds the reef of Norman’s Woe. 60
And ever the fitful gusts between
A sound came from the land;
It was the sound of the trampling surf
On the rocks and the hard sea-sand.
The breakers were right beneath her bows, 65
She drifted a dreary wreck,
And a whooping billow swept the crew
Like icicles from her deck.
She struck where the white and fleecy waves
Looked soft as carded wool, 70
But the cruel rocks, they gored her side
Like the horns of an angry bull.
Her rattling shrouds, all sheathed in ice,
With the masts went by the board;
Like a vessel of glass, she stove and sank, 75
Ho! ho! the breakers roared!
At daybreak, on the bleak sea-beach,
A fisherman stood aghast,
To see the form of a maiden fair,
Lashed close to a drifting mast. 80
The salt sea was frozen on her breast,
The salt tears in her eyes;
And he saw her hair, like the brown seaweed,
On the billows fall and rise.
Such was the wreck of the Hesperus, 85
In the midnight and the snow!
Christ save us all from a death like this,
On the reef of Norman’s Woe!
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882)
http://www.capeannweather.com/forecast.htm
Business in Great Waters 