Lighthouse News

Lighthouse News has recently added a Flickr RSS stream to the bottom of the page. These are the latest photos tagged “Lighthouse” on Flickr. They change as new ones are uploaded by photographers. Hope you enjoy them.

Some of you may have seen a suspended page when visiting last week. After getting slammed by comment spammers, which ate up the resources (so I’m told) at my shared host, I was arbitrarily suspended for resource abuse. So I bit the bullet and moved to a new private server, and hopefully won’t have that problem again. This is a lot more expensive, but it’s worth it if the site stays up.

On that note, you may have noticed some weirdness yesterday, with no articles or pages appearing. That was due to the move, and working out some issues, but hopefully everything is up and running for good.

The Sun Herald last week posted an update on the Hayes Bolton property controversy with the city of Biloxi. Apparently Mr. Bolton asked for another week extension on the fence design issue because he didn’t know anything about the meeting. But he was present at the meeting, so how could he not know about it? Ah, his attorney wasn’t present. And now he claims he has an offer to buy the property from someone else, and so doesn’t want to improve appearances with a fancy fence.

It never ends. According to an article at the Port Macquerie News, vandals have once again hit the Tacking Point Lighthouse, this time by spray painting grafitti on the light. This happened over the night on Monday, 28 January.

The author of the article calls for closing off access to the site at night, which to me is a shame it has to come to this. One of the most rewarding evenings is heading out to your local lighthouse after dusk and enjoying the peace and beauty of these beacons shining their lights out to sea. And at my local lighthouse, that also means listening to the wonderful song of the Pemaquid Point bell buoy.

The Coast Guard, writing in Military.Com, has issued a note of reassurance to Sanibel Island residents that the lighthouse will not go dark. A recent story here quoted longtime resident Sam Bailey as saying the Coast Guard doesn’t know the lighthouse exists, and he fears the fact it’s being excessed will mean the light is extinguished.

From the Military.Com site:

“We would like to assure Sanibel Island residents, local mariners and lighthouse enthusiasts that we will continue to maintain the light,” said Capt. Joseph Servidio, Commanding Officer of Coast Guard Sector St. Petersburg. “The lighthouse has served for more than 120 years as a beacon for safe navigation, and the Coast Guard will continue to see that this piece of Florida history shines brightly.”

The Canadian Post Office issued a statement today, January 9, that they will be correcting the misprinted lighthouse stamp when they reissue the next printing, possibly in June. Pachena Point’s lighthouse keeper, Iain Colquhoun, was one of several people who’d spotted the error, and he called Sen. Pat Carney about it, who brought it to the Canadian PO’s attention.
The Post Office has printed 800,000 of the sets, and Jim Phillips, Director of Stamp Services, said they would be notifying the 350,000 philatelists (stamp collectors) who’d purchased the sets about the reissue. Generally, the stamps with mistakes are worth more, but due to the amount sold, there are a lot in circulation, so they won’t be worth as much, according to him

The Belle Toute Trust has announced that they will be releasing a press release in the next day or two after discussions among the trustees. It has been confirmed that the price has been drastically reduced on the lighthouse. Perhaps we can soon hear some great news about this iconic lighthouse in Sussex.

The Morning Journal has a little more in depth article about the Lorain Lighthouse lens controversy with Charlotte Genesee Lighthouse. A few quick quotes from the story: Fred Amato, president of the Charlotte-Genesee Lighthouse Historical Society, said they consider the lens in question to be theirs. They received it in 1984.
Amato said he hasn’t seen anything that actually proves their lens is from Lorain’s lighthouse.
He said he has heard there may be a lease agreement that allows the Charlotte-Genesee Lighthouse to have the lens until 2011. However, they haven’t been able to find anything indicating there was a lease that was actually signed. To read a little more about this mild disagreement, check out the story at the Cleveland Morning Journal.

I’ve taken the blogroll off the sidebar and added a links page instead. There were too many I wanted to list and didn’t want the sidebar to grow huge. Thanks to Guilherme Zühlke O’Connor for providing the plugin to make this possible. If you would like to have your lighthouse related link added, please contact me via the contact page. I can’t guarantee I’ll add it, but I will check it out. Thanks.

The bidding on the auction for Point No Point Lighthouse has been delayed until at least January, according to the GSA auction page. A new addendum has been added, explaining the delays. The text of this addendum is below.

POINT NO POINT LIGHTHOUSE

CHESAPEAKE BAY, MD

4-U-MD-0615

The purpose of this Addendum is to notify all bidders and prospective bidders regarding an extension of time of the suspension of bidding for the Point No Point Lighthouse.