Lighthouse of the Week, June 7-13, 2026: Cleveland West Pierhead Lighthouse, Ohio, USA

 

When you look at the map, this week's lighthouse looks like it's on an island. But the satellite version shows it's attached to the land and the city of Cleveland by a breakwater.

So, let's see where the Cleveland West Pierhead lighthouse is.  MAP  Satellite

By the way, it's for sale. But you might want to think carefully. See the pictures and the description.

Now, let's find out about it (Lighthouse Directory is the source):

"1911 (station established 1884). Active; focal plane 63 ft (19 m); flash every 5 s, alternating red and white. 67 ft (20 m) round cast iron sparkplug style tower incorporating 3-story keeper's quarters and attached to a 1-1/2 story cast iron fog signal building (1916); solar-powered 300 mm lens (?). Building painted white, lantern black with red roof. The original 4th order Fresnel lens is on display at the Great Lakes Science Center. Fog horn (2 blasts every 30 s) as needed. The lighthouse is floodlit at night. ... The first lighthouse was relocated here from the Rochester, New York, West Pierhead. In 1911 the breakwater was extended and the older light was demolished. In 2007 the lighthouse was offered for transfer under the National Historic Lighthouse Preservation Act. There were no takers and in 2010 the lighthouse was offered a second time. Again there were no takers. In 2021 the lighthouse became available for transfer a third time under NHLPA and again there were no takers. The lighthouse was then sold at auction, in September 2023, for $425,000. The new owners were Heather Moore and Jim Brown. It's not known what happened to their restoration plans, but in March 2026 the lighthouse became available, for the fourth time, under NHLPA. A new group, the Cleveland Light Keepers Collective, is one of six groups applying for ownership."

Lighthouse Friends page

 The pictures are below.

 

U.S. (tennis) open thoughts

 

I didn't do very great with my Wimbledon picks, so I accidentally waited a bit longer to evaluate this year's U.S. Open.   So ...

Rybakina looks fantastic.  She bombed Naomi Osaka off the court.  The only question is her foot injury from Cincinnati, which doesn't seem to have bothered her thus far.   So, with top seeds likely ahead of her, it will be more difficult.  But I can't pick against her.

On the men's side, Alcaraz looks just like he usually does -- great.  It will be interesting to see if Shelton can make a dent in his defense.  Much as I'd like to see Shelton advance, I can't picture it.

So, speaking of pictures, here's Anastasia Potapova on and off the court. She suffered an unfortunate injury late in the match against Andreeva, but she'll be back.

What's the weather like in your world?

 

Quick pointer to this article in The Conversation about climate modeling for Middle Earth (setting of The Lord of the Rings) and Westeros (setting of Game of Thrones).

Do Middle‑earth and Westeros make sense? Climate scientists modelled them to find out

For Middle Earth, "The highest precipitation fell on and to the west of the Misty Mountains, with a drier “rain-shadow” effect to the east. This effect is caused by prevailing westerly winds forcing moist air to rise and cool over the mountains, condensing water vapour into rain or snow before it reaches the eastern side."

It can also have wizard blizzards, of course.

Catching up with Amber Valletta

 

Amber Valletta was a 1990s high fashion supermodel. The Daily Mail provided an update on her a couple of months ago, which I'm revisiting here.

Amber Valletta, 52, was a '90s Vogue model who made movies with Sandra Bullock and Kate Hudson, see her now

Below, I have a picture of Valletta on the runway in 1997, and the current state (both in pink, coincidentally).  Also, the article about here has a poignant comment, which I have at the end.

"Amber - who shares son Auden, 25, with ex-husband Chip McCaw - admitted she 'wants to cry' whenever she thinks about climate change and the future of our planet. She added: 'I'll be dead, but my great-grandkids? To live in a world where they wouldn't experience this. Where they couldn't see elephants or a whale."

Time -- and the planet we live on -- are precious things.

 

Not a place for a picnic

 

NASA's Earth Observatory featured a lake in Antarctica that is quite remarkable.

A Most Unusual Lake

It's called Lake Unter-See.  According to the article,

"Hidden below the ice is one of the lake's most remarkable features: large, conical microbialite structures spread across the lake's floor. The structures, formed by photosynthetic microbes that trap and bind sediment, were first discovered by geobiologist Dale Andersen and colleagues in 2008. The formations are thought to be modern, living examples similar to some of Earth's oldest fossils—stromatolites found in places such as southwestern Greenland and Western Australia. They offer a glimpse back to a time more than 3 billion years ago, when microbes were the only form of life on Earth."

Below the picture from space is a picture of the microbial structures on the bottom.

It's around here somewhere

 Bafr

In the state of Maryland, there is a place called Ridge.

This is where it is located.

It's south of the more famous St. Mary's City, and north of the somewhat famous Point Lookout, which has a lighthouse. 

Ridge does have a house that is on the National Register of Historic Places:  Bard's Field.

Picture below.

Cooling off in the summer -- not exactly

 

Alexandra Stepanova and Ivan Bukin are a champion Russian (that's a problem) ice dancing pair. They are still competing, winning the Russian championships as recently as a few months ago in 2026.

The main reason for making this post is this YouTube video.  I really like the pretty, fit female athletes. More on this later.

But for now, watch the video. It takes confidence and fearlessness to be a world-class competitive ice dancer. Even more in what she's wearing here.

Another nice example of her world-classness:

A big bang from ... KRAKATOA?

 

Even people who aren't that familiar with volcanoes might have heard of Krakatoa/Krakatau, which provided the big blast in 1883 which caused a lot of damage (tsunamis, ashfall), created the loudest sound ever heard in the world, and also blew out the center of the former island, where there is now an underwater caldera.

In the center of the caldera there's a smaller volcano that grew there after the major explosion of 1883, named Anak Krakatau, meaning "child of Krakatau". It has been frequently active, and a couple of years ago caused a local tsunami that killed some folks at a coastal music festival.

Well, this is timely (unlike many of my other posts as I catch up over the coming weeks and months), because little Anak acted up on September 5, with a pretty potent eruption of its own. Now, preliminary estimates put it about 10 times less than the 1883 cataclysm, but given how big that was, this one was pretty heavy.

I've got a NASA image and a short news story below.  All that brown stuff is ash in the atmosphere, and the white plume is the steaming aftermath.

Video -- the first part of this Australian news story has the best compilation of video of the eruption that I've seen.

Cathay Pacific's pretty plane

 

Cathay Pacific airlines, which is based in Hong Kong (as far as I can tell), recently celebrated their 80th anniversary.  They had one of their planes painted in a fancy style to mark the occasion.  The article below the picture here has another picture of the tail section.

Cathay Pacific unveils latest 80th anniversary livery on Boeing 777-300ER

If you want to fly the friendly skies of Cathay Pacific, here's their website:

Cathay

Lighthouse of the Week, May 31 - June 6, 2026: Westerheversand Lighthouse, Germany

 

This is a bit strange; even though I'm catching up on Lighthouses of the Week for the past several months, the one I'm featuring for the week of May 31 - June 6 is one that I just saw on the Bing.com homepage. I always look at their daily rotating image and take the three question quiz, even though I don't use it for searching (does anybody)?

So the lighthouse is the Westerheversand Lighthouse.  I'll be including the Bing homepage picture below.

First, though, the location, which is here on the map. I had to zoom out a bit, so it was possible to see where Kiel is, the nearest city of note.

Now, we can find out more about it, via the Lighthouse Directory's entry (it's actually pictorially featured on the North Frisia page, which is where it happens to be located):

"1908. Active; focal plane 41 m (135 ft); white, red, or green light, depending on direction, occulting three times every 15 s. 40 m (131 ft) round cast iron tower with lantern and double gallery, mounted on a 1-story concrete base and flanked to either side by two 1-1/2 story keeper's cottages. Lighthouse painted with red and white horizontal bands; lantern, watch room, and galleries painted black. ... This beautiful tower is one of the best-known lighthouses of the German North Sea coast. It is such a popular site for weddings that one of the keeper's cottages is a registrar's office; the other is a national park office. The lighthouse wsa restored and repainted in 2023. Located near the beach at the northwestern corner of the Eiderstedt peninsula, west of Osterhever."

I'm sure there's a video, and there are lots of pictures. The Bing.com picture is the first one.  One of the other ones isn't even a photograph, but I liked it.

Just a nice article about penguins

 

The Daily Mail featured king penguins (my second-favorite version of penguins, after the rockhopper) in an article, which were photographed on the Falkland Islands. As one might remember from the World Cup, Argentina is still not happy that they are affiliated with England, but England wants to keep them.

Fancy a morning dip? King penguins on the Falkland Islands spotted after their sunrise swim

Lighthouse of the Week, May 24-30, 2026: Isla de Lobos, Uruguay

 

One more for Uruguay, and that will get me out of May.  Three more months to catch up on. So I'm finishing with Uruguay's tallest lighthouse, which the Lighthouse Directory says (as you'll see below) is one of the tallest concrete lighthouses in the world.

Thus, this lighthouse is the Isla de Lobos ("Island of the Wolves", naturally) lighthouse, which is probably on that island. Let's check by looking here. Yes, it is -- east of Montevideo. It's the most notable thing on the island, which I suspect does not have any wolves.  Pictures, as well as the Wikipedia article, indicate it has lots of southern sea lions and fur seals, and it's a nature reserve.  Southern right whales show up there, too.

Now, we can find out more about the lighthouse:

"1906 (station established 1858). Active; focal plane 66 m (217 ft); white flash every 5 s; the tower also carries a continuous red light at a focal plane of 53 m (174 ft). 59 m (194 ft) round tapered concrete block tower with lantern and gallery, mounted on a round stone base. Lighthouse painted white; base unpainted; lantern and watch room painted with red and white vertical stripes. ... Uruguay's tallest lighthouse, this is also one of the tallest concrete lighthouses in the world. The 1858 lighthouse was short-lived: sealers protested that it scared away the animals, so the light was moved to Punta del Este in 1860. The 1906 tower was designed by Victor Benavídez and built by José María Claret. Located on a small (36 ha, 90 acre) island about 13 km (8 mi) southeast of Punta del Este. Accessible only by boat. Site and tower closed (the island is a wildlife sanctuary protecting a huge colony of seals)."

Pictures of the big white tower are below. One is a stamp that is mentioned by the Lighthouse Directory; I didn't include that part. The lighthouse on the stamp doesn't look like the one in the island now; it appears to be based on the earlier lighthouse, shown in the black-and-white photo. 

She's a Guess girl

 

Going all the way back to Anna Nicole Smith at her best, and probably back further than that, and certainly since then (including Amanda Cerny), Guess has produced gorgeous women photographed gorgeously.

This relatively new one (I don't know exactly when she showed up in print repping Guess) is Violetta Seleznova.  For all of her Instagram pictures, go to her Instagram account.

For a few selections, look below this line.

Antarctica is losing ice -- that's certain

 

That's a lot of water

I'm providing a reference to a recent paper about the continuing loss of ice from the continent of Antarctica.

Antarctica Is Losing Ice the Size of Los Angeles Every Three Years

Nearly one-fourth of Antarctica's glaciers are undergoing aggressive melting.

Here's a major excerpt explaining what's going on and where the data is coming from.

"The ice sheet has been retreating from the grounding line at an average rate of 442 square kilometers per year. The most dramatic changes occurred in West Antarctica’s Amundsen Sea and Getz sectors, where glaciers retreated 10 to about 40 kilometers. Pine Island Glacier retreated 33 kilometers, Thwaites Glacier 26 kilometers, and Smith Glacier an extraordinary 42 kilometers.

“Where warm ocean water is pushed by winds to reach glaciers, that’s where we see the big wounds in Antarctica,” explained Rignot, who’s also a senior research scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. “It’s like the balloon that’s not punctured everywhere, but where it is punctured, it’s punctured deep.”

Researchers compiled data from multiple satellite missions, including the European Space Agency’s ERS-1/2 and Sentinel-1, Canada’s RADARSAT 1, RADARSAT 2 and RADARSAT Constellation Mission, Japan’s ALOS/PALSAR and ALOS/PALSAR-2, Italy’s COSMO-SkyMed, the German Aerospace Center’s TerraSAR-X and Argentina’s SAOCOM.

According to co-author Bernd Scheuchl, UC Irvine project scientist in Earth system science, the study represents a landmark achievement for NASA’s Commercial Satellite Data Acquisition program, marking the first major success involving commercial synthetic aperture radar data providers for polar research."

And then there's the troubling excerpt.

" “The flip side is that we should perhaps feel fortunate that all of Antarctica isn’t reacting right now, because we would be in far more trouble,” Rignot said. “But that could be the next step.”

That's not something to wish for.

E. Rignot,B. Scheuchl,J.B. Barre,V. Brancato,L. Charrier,H. Chen,E. Ciraci,A. Dinh,S. Herreid,S. Jeong,X. Li,T. Mitchell,Y. Mohajerani,S. Shamsian,V. Tolpekin,I. Velicogna, & M. Wollersheim, Thirty years of glacier grounding line retreat in Antarctica, Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 123 (10) e2524380123, https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2524380123 (2026).

Lighthouse of the Week, May 17-23, 2026: Colonia del Sacramento, Uruguay

 

Continuing my extended catch-up efforts for Lighthouses of the Week, and covering lighthouses of Uruguay, the next one is the Faro de Colonia de Sacramento, which is likely the closest Uruguayan lighthouse to Argentina, which lies both to the north by land and to the south by water. This lighthouse is on a small extension of Uruguay into the Rio de la Plata, the big estuary that Buenos Aires notably lies on.

See where that is here.

The Lighthouse Directory provides this basic information:

"1857. Active; focal plane 34 m (112 ft); red flash every 9 s. 27 m (88 ft) cylindrical brick tower with lantern and gallery, lower half square, upper half round. Lighthouse painted white; lantern painted with red and white vertical stripes. ... The lighthouse is built within the ruins of the Convento de San Francisco Javier, built by Portugal in 1682. Construction of the lighthouse began in 1845 but it was interrupted by a prolonged civil war, the Guerra Grande, which finally ended in 1852. Adjacent to the light station is the municipal museum of this historic city, which faces Buenos Aires across the broad Río de la Plata estuary. Located in the historic district of the city, on a peninsula extending into the Río de la Plata."

Due to the visual interaction with the ruins of the convent, it provides a good photographic subject.

 

Mercury is bad, so this wasn't good

 

(Click on this to view it larger, it's a good graphic image.)

I noted this back in February, and after I put the link to the article in this post, I'll see if there is any current status update.

To review, mercury in the environment is really bad. It's toxic at very low levels, and it makes a neurotoxin when methylated. It gets into the aquatic food chain, so higher level predators also known as game fish concentrate it in their tissues.  Mercury is good for a lot of things, but being in the environment is not one of them.

Power Plants Will Be Allowed to Release More Than Twice As Much Mercury Into the Air

"The new rollback eliminates parts of the Mercury and Air Toxics Standards (MATS) finalized under the Biden administration. The 2024 updates strengthened limits on mercury and other hazardous air pollutant emissions from coal-burning power plants.

As a result of the repeal, coal-burning power plants will be allowed to emit more than twice as much mercury as they currently do. Specifically, they will no longer need to adhere to the limit of 1.2 pounds of mercury per trillion British thermal units of heat input (lb/TBtu) and instead must comply with the previous mercury release limit (set during the Obama administration in 2012) of 4.0 lb/TBtu.

The repeal also relaxes limits on emissions of arsenic, cadmium, chromium, lead, and nickel from coal-burning power plants."

OK, so is there an update?

In fact, a couple of them.

In March: 

Health, environmental groups sue EPA for rollback of mercury rule

And in early August:

Congress Divided Over Hazardous Air Pollutant Standards

From the latter:

"Congress has taken an active interest in recent EPA rulemaking related to the regulatory impact of HAPs standards. The stakes are high: the Trump administration's rollback of the 2012 Mercury and Air Toxics Standards (MATS) rule will increase mercury and non-mercury heavy metal emissions while producing hundreds of millions of dollars in compliance cost savings for the power industry, according to EPA's own analysis. By contrast, EPA projected no effect on retail electricity prices from the repeal."

So, more emissions, more profits for the companies, no net savings for the public.

Also from the article:

"On the other side, Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) introduced the Fair Air Enforcement Act of 2025, which would repeal citizen suit provisions of the Clean Air Act with conforming amendments to Section 112."

So, as I said, mercury is bad.

So are Republicans.

 

Commercials featuring James Bond

 

I admit to having a fascination for the Bond movies -- they are/were entertaining, stylish, and adventurous.  I found this video with commercials made from Bond footage and actual commercials, and it's great. The one which commences at the 7:15 mark is fabulous.

It's a valid question

 

Oh, just watch. You know you want to.

"I asked twenty women to pick the perfect penis size"

The Boundary Waters mining battle

 

Back in February, the Senate voted 50-49 to allow a copper and nickel mine near the pristine natural wilderness of the Boundary Waters of Minnesota, in a watershed that flows into the protected area.  This vote is a travesty.

So, two weeks ago (kind of keeping up, aren't I?) Governor Tim Walz issued an executive order banning the state from issuing any permits for the mine to proceed.  GOOD move.

But -- Walz won't be governor next year. As one would expect, the evil Republican woman running for the seat immediately advocated the mine, and opposed Walz's executive order. This is in keeping with the GOP tradition of besmirching and attacking our natural heritage.

Senator Amy Klobuchar, who voted NO against the lifting of the ban, has not apparently said much about Walz's executive order, and what she'd do if elected. I really hope she plans to do the right thing, and I hope she gets elected so she can indeed do the right thing.

Here's what she said. (As the article notes, copper-nickel-precious metal mining is much more dangerous than iron mining. That's because those ores are sulfides and the mining process will release acidic waste.)  "Klobuchar said she has serious concerns about mining next to the BWCA, but also noted that “there is other mining going on across the Range, including Mesabi Metallics iron ore mine about to open up, and some other proposed mining projects that don’t endanger the Boundary Waters, that I think it is important to continue to allow pending environmental reviews to go forward.”

Editorial from the Washington Post:

A copper mine would turn much of this paradise into an industrial zone

The new Spinosaurus

 

A new version of the dinosaur Spinosaurus (one of the best names ever given to the beasts, in my opinion) was recently described based on fossils found somewhere in the Sahara desert.

There's a scientific paper about it:  Scimitar-crested Spinosaurus species from the Sahara caps stepwise spinosaurid radiation

(I'm sure there's a tongue-twister in there somewhere.)

And back when it was announced, there were lots of articles about it, including this one, which is great, and quite detailed:  

New ‘scimitar-crested’ Spinosaurus species discovered in the central Sahara

Apparently it specialized in something, which was to eat fish.

"Another striking feature of the skull is its interdigitating upper and lower tooth rows, which make a deadly trap for slippery fish. Interdigitating teeth, where those of the lower jaw protrude outward and between those of the uppers, is a time-honored adaptation among fish-eaters in the fossil record — including aquatic ichthyosaurs, semi-aquatic crocodile and airborne pterosaurs. Among dinosaurs, it sets Spinosaurus and closest kin apart."

Quite a striking specimen.  This artist's recreation was by Dani Navarro.

Lighthouse of the Week, May 10-16, 2026: Farol de Cabo Polonio, Uruguay

 

Yes, indeed, I promise, to the best of my effort, to catch up with the Lighthouses of the Week for 2026, and not miss a week.  I have a lot of work to do.

As promised (awhile ago, but I did promise) I'm going to feature a couple more lighthouses from Uruguay.  While I was dropping the ball, I also found a really historic lighthouse in the USA that will show up here, too.  There are going to be a lot of lighthouses.

So, kicking this into gear, this week's featured lighthouse is the Cabo Polonio light.  This handsome tower is located here. It's in Uruguay, of course.

Here is information about it, from where I usually get information, the Lighthouse Directory.

"1881. Active; focal plane 40 m (131 ft); white flash every 12 s. 26 m (85 ft) round brick tower with lantern and double gallery rising from 1-story keeper's house. Tower unpainted except for three narrow white horizontal bands; lantern and watch room painted with red and white vertical stripes. ... The lighthouse marks a rocky point in an otherwise sandy area; nearby offshore are several islands with colonies of seals. The area was declared a national monument in 1976. There's no public road access, but the light can be reached by hiking on the beach from nearby resorts."

Pictures are provided below. 

 

Ice Cube adds more strings

 

Back in February, the Ice Cube neutrino array at the South Pole added new strings of detectors to make the clarity of a detected event much better.

IceCube Neutrino Observatory gets a major upgrade beneath the ice

IceCube is headquartered at the University of Wisconsin - Madison, and I think has survived budget cuts, so far.

There's more information here:  Beyond IceCube

It's a pretty impressive place, in a James Bond villain kind of way. Below the lab picture is the new detector, which also has a bit of a Bondian quality.

I like the way she plays

 

Susanna Giovanardi goes by the moniker "Tennis Girl" on Instagram.

To support that, she has pictures like the following, as well as videos demonstrating that she's got a pretty good game (including a solid two-handed backhand):

She also has pictures like this, indicating that she's outstanding from both sides.