A Guiding Light on the Coast of Maine
From Wood Island to Gatsby to Kamala Harris
To hear the 5-minute audio file that I uploaded today as my Morning Journal flash briefing for Alexa devices, please click on the play button:
Let’s Go!
Happy Independence Day from Ocean Park, Maine!
At 3 a.m., from my chair in the bedroom, I had a clear view of the Wood Island Lighthouse, casting green and white light across Saco Bay.
I can’t remember what had up in the middle of the night—probably the usual snarl of worries, from the personal to the political and beyond.
The Wood Island Lighthouse was first lit in 1808. Tha was 32 years after the day we celebrate today, the adoption by the Continental Congress of the Declaration of Independence in 1776.
Fifty years after that, the current structure was built, so what I was looking at was built in 1858. It started as a steady white light. Color was added later. In 1924, the current pattern of green light and white light was established. That was about a decade before my great-grandfather, Col. William B. Skelton of Lewiston, Maine, bought a cottage here in Ocean Park for his wife, Florence. Our family has been coming here each summer ever since.
The green light from Wood Island made me remember The Great Gatsby from Mr. Duncan’s high school English class. From his mansion, Jay Gatsby could see a green light across the water on Daisy Buchanan's dock.
Fitzgerald ended his novel with this:
Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that's no matter – tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther... And one fine morning – So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.
A lighthouse helps mariners avoid crashing on the rocky Maine coast. It's a beacon that guides you toward something.
In these current dark and scary times, I feel as if I am looking for a beacon. Where do I go to find out what's really happening?
Turning to The Financial Times on my iPad, I came across an article titled “Is this Kamala Harris’s Moment?”
I find the FT’s reporting to be solid, intelligent, and well-written. The story described Vice President Harris’s reactions to the Biden debate debacle in an interview by Anderson Cooper as “crisp and commanding.”
A Democratic operative told the FT that the was evidence that Harris has been "stepping into her own voice" in recent months, shedding some of the insecurities that have plagued her vice presidency.
The source added this:
"My phone was blowing up with every scenario under the sun other than Kamala Harris. Now folks are starting to say, 'All right. Well, if it's going to be her, let's go.'"
At the top of the hour I will be stepping off as part of the Ocean Park Marching Kazoo Band, proudly marching in our village’s humble and spirited celebration.
I love that moment when the parade begins.
Let’s go!