Quin-zee vs Quin-see

Facebook arguments don't make it to the news much unless someone gets killed over it. Day ain't over yet...

Little things mean a lot to locals. When in Rome, do as the Romans do. It ain't what you say, but how you say it.

No catchphrase solves the issue of How To Pronounce Quincy.

It is not a unique debate. I spam these articles around various town Facebook pages for a living. Our range is Boston to North Attleboro to Westport to the end of the Cape.  By being in all of these groups, I also get the posts from 75 town pages or so. It's a Veidt-like existence, but it keeps me very informed.

Versions of the Quincy argument exist in Hingham, Duxbury, Swansea, Chatham and other towns. Berkley, which has 5000 people or so in an area about the size of Brockton, has a sizable number of people who pronounce it somewhat like "broccoli."

I was shocked to see Quincy being the town on the news with this, because I believe that blood has spilled over this issue in Eastham.

Before I answer this, I should add that I was a Quincy resident once. That's my old Grenwold Road house in the picture above. I didn't live there long, but I lived there during the critical learning-to-talk part of my life. There is some Dorchester in my accent as well, but we're probably looking at 3 miles or so between my two homes as the crow flies.

When I moved to Duxbury, I was taken from class once a day for Speech therapy. I don't have a lisp or anything, these lessons were an attempt to exorcise my ferocious Boston accent. I remember having to say "farther" and "Jimmy Carter" a lot.

It didn't work, and I maintain the accent to this day. I, like most of you reading this, know the answer already. I know it instinctively, just like you do.

It's Quin-zee.

Quincy is named after John Quincy, who was an ancestor of Abigail Adams and the namesake of Old Man Eloquent, John Quincy Adams.

The word "Quincy" is of Anglo-Norman descent. "Quince" is French for fifth. Quincy came to mean "estate of the fifth son" if you chase the etymology back to Cuinchy, which is in Pas-de-Calais, France. Cuinchy is the town from that John Quincy's name comes from.

How a word like "Quince" that doesn't have a Z in it came to be a town with a Z in her pronunciation is one of those mysteries of history. The mystery deepens when the source of the name is a town with two Cs in it.

It could be a French thing. One of our authors was born in Rouen, and she adds unnecessary Zs to everything. It's subtle, but she starts words like "this" with a Z.

The Quincy family is a political dynasty which dates back to England and Scotland. It dates forth to John Quincy and John Quincy Adams. All members of this dynasty use a kwinzi pronunciation.

That pretty much settles it, at least in America and England.

If you go to Wikipedia and look up both Quincy, Massachusetts and Quincy, Illinois, you will see two different pronunciations. The one from Illinois is incorrect.

Illinois falls into the trap of the English accent. If you can do impressions at all, try saying "Quincy" with an English accent. You end up using the C. In an era where there was no TV or radio, you can almost forgive Illinois for looking at a word with a C in it and pronouncing it with a C. Almost.

I should add that the Jack Klugman character on Quincy, M.E. pronounces his name wrong.

I should also add that my phone is auto-correcting my attempts to write "Quin-zee" and is making it "Quin-see."

Now, about that Houghs Neck thing...

Witch Rock In Rochester

Which rock in Rochester? Witch Rock in Rochester!

Witch Rock sits in some dude's yard off New Bedford Road in Rochester. She is what people call a Local Oddity.

No one knows how Witch Rock became what it is today, although I would use "no one" along the lines of "no one who posted about it on the Internet." I'm sure that once I spam this link onto the Rochester Facebook page, some old timer will be like, "Chris Grant painted it in 1847," possibly adding a "My grandfather told me that____" on before.

It is quite possible that some old-timer who is lost to history got tired of questioning along the lines of:

"My house is the one with the big rock in the yard."

"Which rock?"

So he went out, got some paint, worked carefully... and he now answers people asking him "Which rock?" with "Precisely."

We do know that the boulder dates back to 1899, as a harder-working blogger than I found a reference to it in a publication from that year.

One story links it to a Mark Haskell. Mark was ordered to serve as a juror in one of the Salem witch trials. He refused, and people said that maybe he was a witch. He fled Salem to Rochester, where the witch panic hadn't touched. He settled near the boulder, and things shook out as they did.

Other stories exist. One says that Wampanoags revered the rock, settlers viewed Native American religions as witchcraft and that the rock got named from that.

Another said a witch was hung from a tree next to the rock, although I could find evidence of only one witch trial in Plymouth County/Colony, and that ended in an acquittal. John Alden's son was tried in Boston, but that was laughed out of court.

Another story references Shirley Vaughn, but she is credited with keeping the story alive rather than creating it.

Naturally, local lore speaks of voices emanating from the rock, mist rising from cracks in it and even whole ghosts running around near it.

It is probably the best spot in town for a kids Halloween party, although I plan to be anywhere else on the planet at midnight on a misty Halloween.

The Army Of Two

America has produced some tough folks, people like Wyatt Earp, John Henry, Mike Tyson, Chuck Norris, LT, Sasha Banks, Batman... 

However, none of them turned back 200 of the world's best Marines. I'm not sure if Sergeant York can claim those kind of stripes, or even Captain America. In even his silliest movie, Arnold Schwarzenegger didn't try to sell himself as being capable of taking on 200 elite Marines.

So, naturally, this feat was performed by two young girls from Scituate. They were unarmed, of course. They had no backup, and may have been raped or even hung as spies if they lost. As is generally the case when two girls decide to make a stand against 200 Marines, they used Fear as their weapon.

The War of 1812 was very unpopular in New England, and we discussed seceding from the US over it long before the Confederacy made it fashionable. This meant little to the British, other than an opportunity to perhaps drive New England out of the war if they made life hard enough for them.

Understand that Massachusetts was the first colony to send the Brits packing in the Revolution. We had already attacked British soil in Canada. The British had been chased with their tails between their legs from Marshfield, one town to the south, in the previous squabble almost 40 years earlier. There was no love lost, and the British Navy wasn't going to use the kid gloves when they decided to send a raiding party ashore in Scituate, Massachusetts.

Her Royal Navy spent quite some time smashing up Massachusetts ports. We were known as a haven for pirates/privateers, Falmouth, New Bedford and Wareham were torn to shreds by the British Navy in this war, and they had already whipped up on Scituate a few times. Scituate had ships stolen and burned. The British had shown up off of her shores in the summer of 1814, demanding provisions under the threat of more ill treatment.

The local militia assembled, and the British never came ashore. They never went away either, but the militia did. The Brits heard about this (Marshfield was heavily Loyalist when the Revolution started, and some holdovers may have been giving information to the Limey sailors) and prepared to pay Scituate back for not providing the provisions.

Keep in mind, the scholarship of this story is limited, and really good superhero stories tend to grow with time. This is especially true in areas with lots of fishermen. We're just going to give you the basic legend, and leave all of that further-study stuff to the reader.

In September of 1814, the British Navy made their move on Scituate. A ship, La Hogue, dropped anchor about a mile off of Scituate Harbor. They loaded the barges with Marines and started rowing towards the town. They had raided Scituate three times before, but had never come ashore, limiting themselves to burning/stealing ships. This time, they were coming to burn the town.

They chose a stealth approach, rowing towards isolated Old Scituate Light. Their luck was better than they could have hoped, as the lighthouse keeper (Simeon Bates) was away with most of his family. Only his wife and two daughters stayed at the station, and they were the first to see this less-musical British Invasion coming.

Rebecca and Abigail Bates were no weak sisters, however. They knew that the militia had dispersed, and that there was no way to get them assembled before Scituate was set aflame. Their home, a very valuable lighthouse that treacherous local shipping was dependent on, was probably the first thing that would be set aflame when John Bull got the matches out. They would also be the first young girls that 200 marauding sailors would get their hands on after a long time at sea.

There then commenced what I would say may have been the coolest teen-girl chattering that ever happened in America (I'm thinking hard on this, and can't get past 90210), and the two sisters decided that the British raid would be getting no further than them.

They chose an Audio defense. Grabbing a fife and drum, they hid behind a dune and started making a racket. History disagrees on who was playing what instrument, but they played loudly as they walked back and forth behind the dunes. Maybe they snuck a peek over the dunes now and then, or maybe they just put their heads down and had faith in the plan.

We do know that they played "Yankee Doodle" over and over.

As the Brits got closer to shore, there were five sounds they could hear. One was the ocean, one was the rowing, one was their officers' exhortations... and the other two were a fife and drum. Fifes and drums meant "Militia."

Two hundred British marines (I am making that number up based on a force that they used for a similar attack on Wareham) are nothing to trifle with, but even they couldn't stand up to what could be 1000-1500 men, all familiar with the territory, all crack shots who have to shoot their own supper a lot and who have had months to prepare for just such a siege. The British turned around and ran like scalded dogs. OK, they were in a boat, so they didn't technically run, but I don't have a metaphor for Rowing. "They had to Row like Versus Wade".... OK, I have nothing.

Exact records for the Battle of Scituate are hard to find. The girls both lived to old age, and would tell their story for anyone who'd pay a dime to hear it. Stories may get embellished that way. It's tough for a skeptic to debate a living, breathing Primary Source.

Likewise, the British have no record of the encounter. Very few men who wanted to advance in Her Majesty's Navy (I don't know if they had a Queen at the time, I just like saying "Her Majesty's Navy") reported back to the crown that "Well, your Majesty, we were going to burn Scituate, but my 200 toughest Marines got scared off by a couple of teenyboppers pretending to be Jethro Tull." Career suicide.

(Editor: References to the aborted raid on Scituate exist in the journals of some British officers)

American soldiers have been in some tough spots. Little Round Top was defended by a bayonet charge against an enemy who had guns. The Battle of the Bulge had Americans surrounded in a snowstorm by Hitler's best troops. The Minutemen gathered on a town square and stood toe-to-toe with the world's best light infantry..

The Bates Sisters have them all beat. Two unarmed girls went to war against a veritable boatload of British Marines. I wouldn't touch those odds with a six and a half foot Pole, and neither would Rob Gronkowski. It matters not... the girls ended the day in possession of the battlefield.

The Bates sisters and their victory were not lost on military historians. General John Magruder used similar deceptions in Virginia during the Civil War. It even came full circle, with the Chinese using whistles to intimidate when attacking Americans in the Korean War. Some even say that the Vietcong used a similar strategy at Khe Sanh.

The Bates sisters did it better, though... and they have a sign to prove it.

Music hath charms...

How Hot Does It Get In EMASS?

Eastern Massachusetts is in for some broiling temperatures this weekend. It will be hot. Red hot. Hot enough that cows are giving powdered milk. Hot enough that Jehovah's Witnesses are using Skype. Hot enough to detour funeral processions through Dairy Queen. Chickens-laying-omelettes hot.

This naturally leads to the question of how hot does it get in Massachusetts.

Let's look at the planet, first... or, how hot does the world get. Skipping past avoidable things like Lava and Blast Furnaces, we will use the standard of 1.5 meters above the ground.

There are several claimants. The World Meteorological Organization recognizes Furnace Creek Ranch, California. They hit 134.1 degrees Fahrenheit on July 10th, 1913. If Furnace Creek isn't named well enough for you, know that it is in Death Valley.

This figure is disputed. It was taken during a sandstorm, which may have fouled the readings. If you believe that, then the record of 129.2 is shared by both Death Valley (2013) and Mitribah, Kuwait (2016).

The WMO no longer recognizes the 136° figure taken from Aziziya, Libya in 1922, which makes my childhood copy of the Guinness Book obsolete.

Massachusetts doesn't have a Libyan climate, so our temperatures don't get that high. We are the 35th warmest state for summer temperatures, averaging 69 degrees for June, July and August (remember, the average includes overnights). It varies from the Cape to the Berkshires, but that's a good number to work with.

We get over 90° 5-15 times a year, although the Cape averages less than one 90+ day per year.

Individual highs vary from Town to town, and from source to source. We tend to have an oceanic rather than continental climate once you move east of the I-95 corridor.

Here are some record high temperatures for individual towns in our area:

New Bedford, 107°  August 2, 1975... New Beffuh has the state record.

Barnstable, 99°, July 5, 1999

Boston, 103°, July 22 2011

Brockton, 104°, August 28, 1948

Chatham, 95°, July 6, 1999

East Wareham. 100°, August 28, 1948

Edgartown, 99°, August 27, 1948

Hingham, 101°, July 22, 2011

Kingston , 102, July 26th, 1952

Norton, 101°, July 20, 1991

Plymouth, 102°, July 26, 1952

Rochester, 102°, July 22, 1991

Taunton, 102°, August 2, 1975

Fort Phoenix And The Battle Off Fairhaven

The Fort Phoenix State Reservation is a small park in Fairhaven. It is on the site of a Revolutionary War fort, and it is armed well enough to chase off Captain Jack Sparrow.

Military purposes aside, it's a lovely spot to spend a day. We did just that a few weeks ago, and it was cool enough that we're writing now to recommend it to you.

For starters, there aren't that many (there are some, especially around here) parks where the expressed purpose of said park is to Kill Englishmen.

You gotta like that!

That's a cannon-eye view of the mouth of the Acushnet River, the wet way into New Bedford. You may have been some big bad Brit admiral, but you weren't getting into New Beffuh without dealing with the hastily-mobilized toothless farmer enjoying this same view two centuries ago.

New Bedford and Fairhaven were very, very important to the colonial era economy, as well as to the colonial era military efforts. They were active ports, bringing and sending out goods that drove the local economy. They could host American warships. They were also excellent privateer bases.

Of course, stuff like that is going to attract the attention of the people you are at war with or in rebellion against. That's why little Fairhaven has a Marne-like history, with multiple military activities.

Now, in an era where you can whip out the ol' nuclear football, push a button and obliterate 500000 people on the other side of the world, a fort with a few cannons aiming out at the ocean isn't really a big deal. Strategically, Fort Phoenix is a zero.

However, it is (and was) of great Tactical value, especially back in the Day. If you have to sail what is essentially a big wooden kid's fort into the Acushnet River, a bunch of cannons aimed at you from a hill overlooking the harbor is what stereotypical Native Americans in old cartoons call Heapum Big Trouble.

Yes, you could pretty much dictate what would and wouldn't be coming in and out of New Betty by boat if you could put a few cannons on a hill over the harbor. "A cannon on a hill" is pretty much why the English fled Boston not that long after winning The Battle Of Bunker Hill.

The only way to neutralize those cannon was to hack down a forest grove, build a big floating platform for 45 cannons, sail it halfway around the world and send it headlong into direct kill-or-be-killed conflict with a bunch of whiskey-crazed English hinterland rebels. The English felt strongly enough about the Acushnet River that they took more than one crack at just that course of action.

Fort Phoenix is 1-1-1 in fights with the British, but the L was a big one.

The fort, nameless to me at least, was put up in some form before the start of the American Revolution... perhaps even to fight the French, I'm not sure. True to the hardcore nature of the South Coast, the fort was involved in several fights almost immediately.

Not a lot of people know this, or at least not a lot when compared to those who can tell you about Bunker Hill, but the first naval engagements of the American Revolution went down off of the South Coast.

The British sloop Falcon appeared off of the New England coastline shortly after the entertainment at Lexington/Concord. Both sides were scrambling to get men and supplies up to Boston for the imminent Big Squabble. The Falcon was able to bag two 'Murican ships in one day. One (the Champion) was full of supplies from Maryland intended for the rebels, and they kept that.

The other, a now-nameless sloop from Nantucket, was given a skeleton crew and some scant firearms. It was then sent to Dartmouth (Fairhaven was still Dartmouth at the time), where the Falcon had heard that a smuggler's vessel was docked. They seized that vessel, and went off to find the Falcon. They anchored off Martha's Vineyard for some reason, about 3 miles apart.

The South Coast was having none of that, and assembled a militia of 30 men carrying every gun they could get their hands on. They jammed this militia onto the whaling sloop Success, armed it with two swivel guns, and set off to kick Brit Butt.

Finding the English off of Martha's Vineyard, they immediately seized the Dartmouth ship without firing a shot. They then aimed both vessels at the British sailors on board the Nantucket ship, and closed before the Brits could flee. Shots were fired, and three Limey Poofters dropped.

The Americans then boarded the English ship. English military dudes were among the toughest on the planet. You could dunk them in Boston Harbor in April, march them on soaking foot to Lexington and Concord, and still go 1-1 against every Patriot in Massachusetts. Perhaps the only tougher people on the seas that day were South Coast whalers... especially if they had 30:11 odds.

They took the ships back to the yet-to-be-named Fort Phoenix, and the South Coast had a W in the books against the Empire On Which The Sun Never Sets.

The English had a measure of revenge in 1778. A series of operations known as Grey's Raid resulted in 4000 Brits burning New Bedford in a blaze that could be seen in Newport, Rhode Island. They then destroyed the cannon in Fairhaven before being run off by militia. The fort was rebuilt, hence the rising-from-the-ashes "Phoenix" moniker

The British took another crack at the Acushnet River during the War of 1812. The troublesome British raider HMS Nimrod made a run at New Bedford during action where they also attacked Wareham.

This story has a couple of different endings, one of which looks suspiciously like that of the Army of Two story where a pair of Scituate lighthouse keeper daughters used a fife and drum behind a dune to fool the British into thinking militia were gathering. In this one, it's a bugle or something.

Others say it was a gathering militia and fire from Fort Phoenix which made the British take a pass on tangling with New Betty. There is even a case to be made for the British feinting at Fairhaven to put the militia there, too far away to race the ships to Wareham, which was the true goal of the English visit. If that was the plan, it worked like a charm, because the British beat ?ham down like she stole something.

The burning of New Bedford's docks in 1778 was done under the orders of Sir Charles Grey. His kid, the 2nd Earl Charles Grey, is who Earl Grey's Tea is named for... something New Bedford and Fairhaven people should keep in mind when making tea purchases. Some people forget, but not Cranberry County Mother***ing Magazine.

Things were pretty peaceful since then, although the cannons are still pointing to sea.

Now, it's a nice little park on a beautiful bay, perfect for grabbing a bench and reading a book. 

There is a "Charlie Don't Surf" aspect to this park, as the Brits were misusing the area before Uncle Sam put in the basketball court and the pretty sunbathers.

A day spent watching the boats come in is a lot more enjoyable if you don't have to worry about those ships disgorging 4000 British marines to burn New Bedford. 

A distinctly American primordial urge did jump into me once or twice when I pondered using the cannon against barges and rich people boats that were sailing by, but it passed.

Aggressive Turkeys Running Amok

You may or may not have noticed the Turkey Aggression going on around you.

Turkeys are not a creature that you should fear, and that headline up there is more me not knowing what else to write than an attempt to start a Mercury Theater-style panic. A turkey can injure you, make no mistake, but we'll get to that later in the article.

In the Spring a young man's fancy lightly turns to thoughts of love, and half or so of the turkeys are male. Love is in the air if you're a turkey, as it is mating season. I'd like to meet the person who scientifically named the turkey's mating season "the Gobbling."

Gobbling starts in mid-March, the peak runs mid-April through May, and broods start appearing in June. Turkeys get a bit aggressive during mating season, and can also be touchy when the Bay Bays are around.

Take that, tie it into our headline, and you'll see where we're headed today.

I know that broods aren't supposed to appear until June, but this guy started early and had his Bay-Bay payoff before Tax Day... unless those are hens, at which point I apologize to the turkeys in question.

Turkeys are native to America, and the nation of Turkey has no native, primordial population of them. That's nobody's business but the Turks.

Turkey/country lent her name to Turkey/bird via the European poultry trade with the Ottoman Empire. 

Opinions vary on the specifics (colonists may have mistaken American turkeys for Turkish guineafowl, which was imported all over the Mediterranean from Constantinople/Istanbul), but that's the basic etymology.

Massachusetts was crawling with turkeys by the time the Pilgrims arrived, and the Native Americans were eating them by 1100 AD or so. European explorers introduced the turkey to England in 1550.

As the Other White Meat sailed over from Europa and expanded across Massachusetts, they cut down the forests and used the leftovers for farmland. Turkeys, being both a forest-dwelling bird and a tasty bird, did not fare well following the arrival of Mr. White and his family. Turkeys did not survive the 19th Century in Massachusetts, with the last native one being killed (on Mount Tom of all places, wokka wokka wokka) in the 1850s.

Farmland began to revert to forest in Massachusetts during the Industrial Revolution, as farm goods were imported into the state by the new railroads. This presented an opportunity for turkeys to return, although resettlement efforts in the first 70 years of the 20th Century failed in Massachusetts. Part of the problem is that these efforts involved farm-bred, Butterball style turkeys, and they fared poorly upon their release in the wild.

1972 saw the importation of wild turkeys from New York, and these 37 birds (and overflow from neighboring states) prospered into the 15,000 or so thought to exist in Massachusetts today. They were fully situated in SE Massachusetts by the time of a 1996 study.

Remember, kids... you can run down and have one of them, or you can walk down and have EACH one of them.

This talk of turkey resettlement means little to you if you stay out of the forest, at least for most of the year. However, just like humans, turkeys get a bit sloppy during their mating season. This leads them out into your neighborhood, and potentially into your lives.

First of all, they are promiscuous. They are not monogamous... when business is concluded, Tom Turkey is raisin' up off the cot. Toms may mate with every hen in the area. Hens will mate several times a season, and egg incubation takes a bit less than a month.

Early batches of eggs only have a bout a 40% survival rate, primarily due to weather and egg/hen predation.  25-50% of hatchlings survive, with foxes, hawks and chilling spring rains offing the other offspring. Like many rural families, they have large families in hopes of having offspring survive to succeed them.

This is why Tom Turkey is so busy about gettin' busy, folks. He has offspring odds to offset. Pimpin' ain't easy, as the rappers say.

This means that from March through May, the party is on in Turkeytown. Much like high school kids, they care little if business takes them into your yard. This leads to increased human-turkey interaction.

Turkeys get a bit cocky around Easter, as they aren't a major menu item for this holiday. He wouldn't be Doin' The Butt at my photographers in November, I can tell you that.

Turkeys live by a code known as the Pecking Order. Turkeys assign everyone in their lives a role in their pecking order, and this role usually involves attempts to assert dominance. Humans fit into this pecking order, and the turkey assigns a sex to a human based on his/her perception of the human's behavior. A "male" human may be challenged (or deferred to) by a tom and followed by a hen.

Being followed by hens is flattering in a way, but being challenged by a Tom is a bad thing. Turkeys can give out a painful peck, and one turkey attack victim described it leaping into the air and doing a dropkick-style move with the talons.

An adult human should be able to beat down even the angriest turkey, but it won't be a pretty fight and you're probably going to come out of it with some scars. A child or an old person may be less equipped to fight a large turkey.

Don't be afraid to stomp an aggressive turkey. It ends the immediate threat, and it teaches the other turkeys who the dominant primordial beast is. Turkeys are dumb enough to attack their own reflections (they are not thought to be self-aware), and one good smackdown is worth a hundred good arguments with that crowd. The sooner they learn it, the sooner they will regard humans as the turkey-sandwich-eating dominant species.

This might save them from a scenario where they would have to be "removed" from a neighborhood. They don't do trap-n-release with nuisance turkeys. Trapping methods used by hunters in the forest don't work on Elm Street in Suburbia, USA. Suburban turkeys who become a nuisance get the ol' Smith & Wesson haircut.

It takes a village of people beating down turkeys to make a positive change. Everyone has to do it, and they have to be consistent. If you get the neighborhood bully to go beat down the baddest bird, the turkeys will learn to fear just the bully, rather than humans in general. If the next human they see looks like a sucker, the turkey aggression begins anew. If they are chased from neighborhoods, it lowers the risk of human/turkey interaction.

S'up?

Two of my own photographers have suffered turkey attacks this April.

Jessica shot the bottom picture in the article when a flock of turkeys marched right through urban traffic and attacked her car. She informs me that it was very Hitchcockian, but the turkey fled in a minute when she pulled out some Stove Top.

In the picture just above, a turkey attacks the home of Cranberry County Magazine photographer Karen.

Unfortunately for this turkey, Karen has two Rottweilers named Fury and Wrath, they roam the yard from time to time, and they enjoy fresh poultry.

Nature is a cruel mistress, and one man's mommy might be another man's sandwich meat. Ideally, we'd each have our own realm to roam. However, as we noted earlier, the nation of Turkey is full of people...

Borden Flats Lighthouse

One of my favorite lighthouses around is in Fall River. This is odd, because I tend to romanticize lighthouses as isolated things on the end of a lonely beach. In that regard, it's odd to see one while I'm eating Popeye's chicken in the car.

Borden Flats Lighthouse sits at the mouth of the Taunton River, where it empties out into Mount Hope Bay. If I were a better photographer, you'd see how cool it looks there, but that's why you can read this for free.

Borden Flats Lighthouse was erected in 1881. It, and the flats it sits on, are named for the famous Borden family of Fall River. The Bordens may have had a daughter turn up in the news at some point for some reason or another, I'm not sure....

I think the Borden family may have been into hotels, because the Lizzie Borden house is now a B&B. The Borden Flats Lighthouse, which looks pretty much like a lighthouse to me, is actually a hotel!

The actual good pictures are lifted from the Borden Flats Lighthouse website.

Fall River, a bustling textile town in the 1800s, got a lot of shipping traffic, as well as steamboat ferry action. Mount Hope Bay is rather shallow, and Borden Flats were ship-wrecking treacherous. It was formerly marked by an unlit beacon. $25K was set aside for construction of the lighthouse.

It went into action on October 1, 1881. It had a kerosene-fed fourth order Fresnel lens, and you know that I have no idea what that means. It got a modern plastic lens in 1977.

It was electrified in 1957, automated in 1963, and the fog bell was replaced by an electronic foghorn in 1983... a mistake in my view, but I also don't live near/have to listen to it.

The 1938 hurricane didn't topple Borden Flats Lighthouse, but it did give it a Pisa-style tilt that you notice once someone points it out to you. They built an additional caisson around it to keep it from having a ruined-castle style look.

In 2000, the lighthouse was auctioned off to Cindy and Craig Korstad, who are in the Buy Lighthouses And Turn Them Into Hotels business. I think they dropped $53K on it, then many K more renovating it.

It stands 50 feet tall, it has a 250 mm white light that flashes every 2.5 seconds, The foghorn goes off every 10 seconds, or- as Elwood Blues said when showing his apartment to Joliet Jake- "so often you won't notice it after a while." It is an active US Coast Guard aid to navigation, and is of the "Spark Plug" variety.

It seems to be tastefully decorated, and it looks delicate enough that I will be on the "Don't touch anything!!" prohibition orders from my photographer when we tour it.

That's right... you can tour it for $20 a pop. You can also stay the night, for rates as low as $299 a night off-season.

Here's what I can learn about it from the website without calling the people like a real reporter does:

- Swimming is "strongly discouraged"  as this is both a shipping channel and not too far down the coast from where the last fatal shark attack in Massachusetts happened. The current is around 7 knots, and the lighthouse is surrounded by large, diver-paralyzing rocks.

- It runs off solar panels, so having Chief Brody kill the shark by tricking it into biting the electric wire running to the lighthouse isn't a viable exit strategy.

- Just like when it was built in 1881, the lighthouse has a DVD player and can get local stations on the TV. It lacks WiFi.

- The best access is from Borden Light Marina, the trip takes 5 minutes. I'm not sure if they ferry you over themselves. It would be a heroic swim, especially while carrying luggage.

- BYOB allowed, no smoking inside.

- You call 911 for emergencies, unless you know the Sea Mafia or perhaps even Aquaman. They say that the Justice League only keeps Aquaman around in case trouble arises at the Borden Flats Lighthouse.

- The Coast Guard has 24/7/365 access rights to the lighthouse.

- Sunsets are amazing from the lantern room. I'd imagine that the rest of the day is pretty nice up there, too.

- The lighthouse, like every other one, is haunted. The ghosts seem to be a giggling little girl, a classical music fan, and one of the keepers entering the lower floor while you're on an upper one.

- If you dream of buying a lighthouse, understand that there is Herculean maintenance involved. "You can't buy it and visit it once a year, your investment will wash into the sea." Much of the hotel revenue is poured back into the lighthouse via renovations and maintenance.

- Two guests only, and no pets allowed... even seals.

- There is also a hotel/lighthouse in Bourne.

- The picture below is from US Coast Guard, circa 1900: