For the greater part of two decades, Sally Snowman has lived and worked contentedly on Little Brewster Island, a craggy patch of bare rock, crabgrass, concrete, and dilapidated buildings in Boston’s outer harbor. Under the auspices of the Coast Guard, she serves as the keeper, and the historian, of Boston Light. The lighthouse, opened in September, 1716, was the first in the American colonies, and Snowman is the last official keeper in the United States.
The lighthouse is a white tower, eighty-nine feet tall, whose east windows face across the North Atlantic toward the English coast, some three thousand miles away. Snowman, a plainspoken New Englander with mariner roots that reach back three centuries, maintains a crisp official manner while on duty. But sometimes, standing in the lantern room, she contemplates what it was like to undergo the voyage to the New World on a merchant’s galleon—made by hand from little more than oak, rope, tar, and flax cloth. Along with violent seasickness, passengers suffered from fever, dysentery, boils, scurvy, mouth rot, rat bites, and lice so copious that they could be scraped off the body. When gales raged, one emigrant wrote, people “cry and pray most piteously,” and “everyone believes that the ship will go to the bottom.” A woman on that crossing, incapacitated by a stalled labor, was shoved through a porthole into the sea. “It was a horrible trip,” Snowman said. “Imagine what they felt when they spotted the light.”
Denne historien er fra November 06, 2023-utgaven av The New Yorker.
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Denne historien er fra November 06, 2023-utgaven av The New Yorker.
Start din 7-dagers gratis prøveperiode på Magzter GOLD for å få tilgang til tusenvis av utvalgte premiumhistorier og 9000+ magasiner og aviser.
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YULE RULES
“Christmas Eve in Miller’s Point.”
COLLISION COURSE
In Devika Rege’ first novel, India enters a troubling new era.
NEW CHAPTER
Is the twentieth-century novel a genre unto itself?
STUCK ON YOU
Pain and pleasure at a tattoo convention.
HEAVY SNOW HAN KANG
Kyungha-ya. That was the entirety of Inseon’s message: my name.
REPRISE
Reckoning with Donald Trump's return to power.
WHAT'S YOUR PARENTING-FAILURE STYLE?
Whether you’re horrifying your teen with nauseating sex-ed analogies or watching TikToks while your toddler eats a bagel from the subway floor, face it: you’re flailing in the vast chasm of your child’s relentless needs.
COLOR INSTINCT
Jadé Fadojutimi, a British painter, sees the world through a prism.
THE FAMILY PLAN
The pro-life movement’ new playbook.
President for Sale - A survey of today's political ads.
On a mid-October Sunday not long ago sun high, wind cool-I was in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, for a book festival, and I took a stroll. There were few people on the streets-like the population of a lot of capital cities, Harrisburg's swells on weekdays with lawyers and lobbyists and legislative staffers, and dwindles on the weekends. But, on the façades of small businesses and in the doorways of private homes, I could see evidence of political activity. Across from the sparkling Susquehanna River, there was a row of Democratic lawn signs: Malcolm Kenyatta for auditor general, Bob Casey for U.S. Senate, and, most important, in white letters atop a periwinkle not unlike that of the sky, Kamala Harris for President.