Stamp of the Day: Lighthouse (Svenska Högarna, Sweden)

Anybody that has read Tove Jansson's books about the Moomin Trolls knows that she has a special relationship to the sea.  The book Moominpappa at Sea ('Pappan och havet' in Swedish) takes place during a summer at a lighthouse far out in the archipelago on a little island, remote, scary, and beautiful.  Lighthouses are amazing buildings, sturdy by design, but isolated and lonely.  To get up to the action, the light, you have to step and step and step upwards through dark stairs, like a tunnel through a mountain.

These days lighthouses are endangered.  Most have no living people in them, and many have stopped shining.  Some are for sale. Some are taken by the oceans.  And most ships has GPS monitors that take you through the night.  Just 100 years ago, a blip in the time on Earth, there was just the sea, a boat, and a light at the distance, and nothing else to rely on.  Well compasses too, of course.  And sunrise and stars.  

Now it is all electronic, and abysmally insecure, unfortunately. A few irate or unresponsive electrons (=no juice!) and you are met by a black screen.  Few people in the past had a non-functioning compass (unless you put an iron rod next to it), but I think we all have swore over bad GPS directions or digital maps that suddenly show you driving in a river when in fact you are on a street in a city.  GPS is so convenient and insecure at the same time, it is scary.  It is like a teddy bear that can be lost at any time, and then what do you do.

Today's stamp is from Sweden, and shows the lighthouse at Svenska Högarna (which means 'The Swedish Mounds', which is here on Google Maps. It is out in nowhere, in the Baltic Sea between Sweden and Finland.  Tove Jansson could have used this as her lighthouse for her book, that is for sure. It is one of the few lighthouses in Sweden that still has staff year-round.

EH snapshot: Godahoppsudden Askö Södermanland

Travel report from EH, out kayaking in the Baltic archipelago of Sweden.
" Vi paddlade nära Julafton och rundade Godahoppsudden... (Julafton är en fyr nära Trosa)"

Translation: We kayaked near Christmas and around the Cape of Good Hope... (Christmas is a light house near Trosa and Askö).

OK snapshot: Fresnel-tulip

EH's blommor sedda genom DH's förstoringsglas.
(EH's flowers seen through DH's magnifying glass, and an iPhone)

(A Fresnel lens is a special type of lens developed by A-J Fresnel for
lighthouses)

Fall is here, again

(Japanese maples in our garden)

Whenever fall (autumn) comes around I always feel so surprised. I have been waiting for it, longing for clear sky fall days and colored leaves, but it always sneak up on you while you were planning to do a little more harvesting in the garden or a little more yardwork. But now it is here, and the geraniums and tropical fern is taken in from the porch, only a few tomatoes and peppers are left in the garden, and the leaves are accumulating. Most trees still have their leaves, but they are not mainly green anymore. One morning I woke up with a Finnish-Swedish song on my head called Höstvisa (Autumn song), with lyrics written by Moomintroll-author Tove Jansson. I love the lyrics, and the sadness and hope it portrays. It is about human relationships as well as the end of summer. Here is just a little piece of it:

Nu blåser storm därute och stänger sommarns dörr,

det är för sent för att undra och leta.

Jag älskar kanske mindre än vad jag gjorde förr

men mer än du nånsin får veta.

Nu ser vi alla fyrar kring höstens långa kust

och hör vågorna villsamma vandra.

En enda sak är viktig och det är hjärtats lust

och att få vara samman med varandra.

Skynda dej älskade, skynda att älska,

dagarna mörknar minut för minut.

Tänd våra ljus, det är nära till natten,

snart är den blommande sommaren slut.

Loose translation in English:

Now storms are blowing outside and the door to summer closed,
and it is too late to worry and search.

I might be loving less than I did before,

but more than you will ever know.

Now we see all the lighthouses along autumn's long coast,

and hear how the waves are wandering.

Only one thing is important and that is the will of the heart

and to be together with each other.

Hurry my darling, hurry to love,

The days are getting darker minute by minute.

Light our candles, it is soon nighttime,

soon is the flowering summer gone.

Stamps of the day: Lighthouses

I just read LS book review below and I love lighthouses too, as do many of us. I think they are symbols of strength and solitude, and a respect for the forces of nature.

Famous lighthouse, "Gustaf Dalén" remembered from many weather reports on a scratchy old radio in the sailing boat as a kid. The very same radio that we listened to "sommarlovsföljetongen" a radio theather for youngster.

This one is special for me, I love maps, in my imagination I can go anywhere just to look at a map.

Book review and stamp of the day: Lighthousekeeping by Jeanette Winterson

The book Lighthousekeeping by Jeanette Winterson is not what you expect from the title. Sure, it is about growing up and tending to a lighthouse, but that is not really the point. Her words and sentences are usually not long, not complicated, and oh so beautiful. Winterson is known for her unusual, lyrical writing and this is the first book I have ever read by her. I read it straight through, it captured me. The story is several stories weaving between an old blind lighthousekeeper, an orphaned girl named Silver, an unhappy minister with a light and dark side to him and two separate lives as well, and with Darwin and Robert Louis Stevenson mingled in here and there. It is not a simple story, it is not just a story, it is bigger than that and it is about love and time through life and death. Here are some parts I really liked.

"Salts. My home town. A sea-flung, rock-bitten, sand-edged shell of a town. Oh, and a light house."

"But today when the sun is everywhere, and everything solid is nothing but its own shadow, I know that the real things in life, the things I remember, the things I turn over in my hands, are not houses, bank accounts, prizes or promotions. What I remember is love - all love - love of this dirt road, this sunrise, a day by the river, the stranger I met in a cafe. Myself, even, which is the hardest thing of all to love, because love and selfishness are not the same thing. It is easy to be selfish. It is hard to love who I am. No wonder I am surprised if you do."

"If the earth's history was fossil-written, why not the universe? The moon, bone-white, bleached of life, was the reolic of a solar system once planeted with Earths. He thought the whole of the sky must have been alive once, and some stupidity or carelessness had brought it to this burnt-out, warmless place. [...] Now the sky was a dead sea, and the stars and the planets were memory-points, like Darwin's fossils. There were archives of catastrophe and mistake. "

I have always been fascinated with lighthouses. They are unreachable in a way, even if they are on land. They tower over you, provide protection for seafarers, but are distant buildings for the land bound people. Once in France, many years ago, I saw an exhibit at a photo gallery of remote lighthouses in storms. The photos must have been taken with helicopters, and on one you could see a lighthouse surrounded about giant waves about the crash and a tiny person standing in an open door at the bottom of it - hopefully ready to close the door the second after the photo was taken so he wouldn't be pulled off by the strength of the waves when they passed by. Lighthouses provide refuge and safety, but are in themselves isolated places, what a contradiction. Tove Jansson's wonderful book Moominpappa at Sea ('Pappan och havet') is also a tribute to lighthouses and lighthousekeeping.

I think Winterson's Lighthousekeeping is really about living your life, in isolation and not, in fear and not, and with time and stories drifting by.

Here is a suitable stamp of the day, a recent issue from the US of Edward Hopper's painting The Long Leg. The lighthouse in the distance is Cape Cod's Long Point Lighthouse in Massachusetts. Hopper liked lighthouses too, of course.

PS. I found the photo of the French lighthouse - it is by Jean Guichard and is of Jument lighthouse.