Tag: life in the time of covid-19

Marconi South Wellfleet Station

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From this site on January 18, 1903, Marconi sent the first two-way transatlantic wireless communication between the US and Europe, to Cornwall, England. It was a message from US President Theodore Roosevelt to British King Edward VII.

Wireless communication helped save hundreds of lives on board the Titanic in 1912 after a distress signal sent out by the ship’s radio operator was picked up by the ”Marconi Man” aboard the RMS Carpathia, about 60 nautical miles away from the Titanic. In turn, the disaster led to laws for improving radio communications and safety at sea.

The station was decommissioned in 1917 and most of the equipment that was not salvaged, has succumbed to erosion and fallen into the sea. Still, standing here trying to imagine what Marconi would have heard back then, was fascinating. And the walk to the adjacent White Cedar Swamp Trail, a welcome and shady break from the heat.

July 9th, 2020

Hopperscape

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Edward Hopper spent every summer of his life in Cape Cod, from 1930 – the first time he visited – until his death in 1967. And while a lot will have changed from the time he produced some of his most distinctive works in Cape Cod, there is something unmistakably Hopperesque in this landscape.

Images of the Wood End Lighthouse which, seen from a sailboat, would have looked a lot like the one from ”The Long Leg”, Hopper’s painting of 1930; and Highland Lighthouse, which Hopper depicted in watercolour, again in 1930 – although the lighthouse has since been moved 450 feet away from the eroding cliff’s edge, to safer ground.

Provincetown & Truro, MA

July 7th, 2020