Something about the fog and little cat feet

This week we had the fog.  There were some really cool pictures online of NYC where you could only see the tops of buildings, stuff like that.

Around here, we had the mysterious disappearing train station.  Here's a picture of what I call the Traviata Wall (because it looks a lot like the Met's current Traviata set).  Normally you can see things that exist on the other side.  Except when the fog comes.

 

It was one of those days when I was literally the only person waiting for a train. Which is kind of spooky all by itself.

Here's the train:

Uh huh, I think you get the idea.

Then when we were coming out of Newark, crossing the river:

All you could see was the bridge, there was no river, nor was there the town and buildings and whatever that ought to be in the background.  If I were more skilled with Photoshop or some such program, I suppose I could insert Paris or Berlin or the Alps or something as background, and totally confuse things.  But I would have just been glad to see the Passaic River and Harrison there, where they are supposed to be.

The weather has been odd here lately.  It's going to be continuing to be odd for the forseeable future.  At least it's interesting, at times.  Much preferable to the year we had six inches (or more) of snow every Weds from mid-January thru the end of February.

Today was nice, some sun, and close to 50F.  Actually enough sun so my solar light which is supposed to illuminate my back steps is working again.

My favorite part of the fog is that it gets very quiet here, and then you can hear the fog horn, wherever it actually lives, warning whoever that we're here, please don't run into us.  I don't know if it's associated with one or the other of our lighthouses, or if it's on Ambrose Lightship, which is way out at the approach to NY Harbor.  Or maybe somewhere else entirely.  I need to research that, and find out where the horn is.  The Lightship is far enough out that you can only just about see it on a very clear day, and then only if you know it is there and what it is.

As a person who doesn't do boats, this stuff is all a bit mysterious and interesting.  I imagine most local boat people already know where the fog horn is, and how far out the Lightship is, and whatever other boat-y stuff I don't know and often wonder about.  But wanting to know is not going to make me like boats.

Aha.  Here's something about the local fog horn, I imagine it is still connected to the Sandy Hook lighthouse:
In 1867, the first primitive steam-powered fog siren was installed at the lighthouse on Sandy Hook, New Jersey. Sandy Hook reaches out almost halfway across New York Bay toward Brooklyn, and it poses a serious threat to shipping in and out of New York City.
The light served warning when it could be seen. But, in fog, Sandy Hook could not be seen. It had to be heard; and this new machine was very audible. Previously, ships were warned off the rocks by repeated cannon fire. That became hopelessly expensive and inconvenient as shipping trade increased.
Historian Michael Lamm tells how, five years after that first installation, the Sandy Hook Lighthouse acquired one of the new steam sirens just patented by the Brown Brothers in New York.
The heart of their siren was a rotating slotted cylinder alternately opening and closing a passageway to either steam or compressed air. Its rotation gave the desired frequency, and it sat in the throat of a long, large horn.
Those sirens were powerful, and most were less isolated than Sandy Hook. In 1900, a newspaper called a Rhode Island siren "the greatest nuisance in the history of the state." Near a Connecticut fog siren, people found that chicks were dying before they hatched.
While people who lived by those large coastal sirens grew nervous, lost weight, and watched as sound curdled their milk, the technology raced on. An amateur organ-builder named Robert Hope-Jones created a tone generator called a diaphone for the Wurlitzer Organ Company. Then he adapted it into the classical low-frequency foghorn sound that we all know from old movies.
That design modified over the years. Meanwhile, World War II required higher-pitched sirens to operate in clear air. We needed them to warn, not of rocks, but of enemy bombers. The Chrysler Corporation built one driven by a 140-horsepower eight-cylinder automobile engine. Same basic sound production, but far more powerful -- almost twice as earsplitting as a jet engine.
The pitch of an air raid siren was near the concert A used by the oboe to tune an orchestra. But there the comparison ends. Come within a hundred feet of one, and ear-protectors give scant protection. The ground shakes, and your vision blurs.
The big, loud sirens still exist. In Hawaii, they warn of Tsunamis. Other big sirens are for other big dangers. And we think of the original Sirens. They did not repel; they attracted. Circe warned Odysseus about the legendary Sirens:

You will come to the Sirens, enchanters of all mankind. They sit in their meadow, but the beach before it is piled with boneheaps of men now rotted away ...

None of that enchantment in today's sirens. They mean danger, just as surely as they did for Odysseus. But there is no longer any come-hither message in the few of those great, wailing sirens that still remain to be heard.