Lighthouse of the Week, May 17-23, 2020: Coney Island, NY, USA

Leading up to the Memorial Day Weekend during the strange year of 2020, when Memorial Day will be like no other (did I suddenly channel The Bachelor?), I chose the Coney Island Lighthouse.  Most of the time, people would go to New York's Coney Island for Memorial Day weekend.  This year, not so much.

But the lighthouse is still there.

Let's learn about it.

Well, there's a lot to learn.  Coney Island Lighthouse at Lighthouse Friends

Simply, according to the Lighthouse Directory, the Coney Island Lighthouse is a "Sanibel Class" skeletal tower.  Here are the characteristics of these towers:

"Beginning in 1884, the Lighthouse Board adopted a standard plan for skeletal lighthouses having a square footprint. This plan was used for lighthouses with heights up to about 100 feet. The lighthouses have octagonal watch and lantern rooms, each with a gallery. In taller towers, a distinctive feature of the design is an extra leg running about half way up the side of each face. Shorter towers (65-75 feet) have only three sections and lack these extra legs."

The Coney Island tower is the first of the shorter design.

Below, three pictures and a four-minute trailer from a movie about the lighthouse.

This one is a model, and a good one.

A Bendtner article

For some reason (and you can search this blog for the name "Bendtner" if you doubt me), I've been fascinated by the soccer playing career of Nicklas Bendtner.

So here's an update.

'I lost a lot of money, an unrealistic amount': Nicklas Bendtner reveals he frittered around £5.4m gambling on poker during his early days at Arsenal

I was surprised to find out that he's still been playing -- though with a few exceptions, nobody's playing right now.   He is currently on the team from Copenhagen, his hometown.

One of the most unique spellings ever

While I am sorry that the woman in the story was attacked by a bison -- they are, after all, wild animals, so these things happen -- I had to note the unique spelling skills of the Daily Mail's sub-headline writers.

Old Faithful is a hot spring of water that periodically produces eruptions when the water below the surface boils and forces a column of water into the air.

The general name of this phenomenon is geyser (from the Icelandic geysir).

So where Old Faithful is located is Yellowstone's Upper Geyser Basin.

I have no idea where the Upper Greyson Basin is located.

I just have to provide this in case it's hard to find

The remarkable two-facedness of Senator Lindsey Graham, illustrated by Lindsey Graham, playing both sides of himself.

I'm not sure I agree

Paul Waldman wrote in the Washington Post the following:

Republicans have already decided Trump is going to lose

I'm not sure I agree with him, but I sure hope it works out that way.   Still, even if I don't agree, I sure like this quote:

"Republicans are genuinely fearful that people will be too thankful if government helps them too much and that the crisis will make the passage of stronger safety-net programs more likely in the future."

Wouldn't that be just too bad?

Highway 41 gets ready for Rockville

Be prepared for a few rapid posts on the Highway 41 end-to-end Streetview trek.   There are some really great places coming up, and Rockville, Indiana is one of them.   So first, let's get ready.


A wooded zone south of Rockville.  Not all of Indiana is farm fields, as can be seen here and as we will see in the several of the next posts on the trek.




"Stonebraker". On the map, it shows a bed. I have no idea what that is, so I looked it up. It's a Homestay. I have never heard of that before.



And now Highway 41 is crossing Rock Run.



Next, we're going to have to take a look around Rockville, because it's historic, and scenic.

Winslet's in it

I didn't know until I read this article that Kate Winslet, who did a really good job in James Cameron's Titanic both vertically and horizontally, dressed or not, and wet or dry, is in the Avatar sequel.  In addition to that news, the article has a couple of concept art shots that indicate it will still be pretty interesting to see -- and there are other impossible geologic formations floating around.


PICTURED: Behind the scenes of Avatar sequels where Kate Winslet reunites with Titanic director James Cameron trained to 'hold her breath for nearly seven minutes underwater' after cast had to learn to free dive for grueling scenes in 900,000-gallon tank

Here's the sequelish pictures.