the Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald

Speaking of repetitive music..........

Save for a guitar lick here and there, Gordon Lightfoot never strays from the pace and tone during the entire 1 hour and 17 minute song.   What?  It's only 6:29 ????

Huh. Could have fooled me. 

We are at the 50th Anniversary of the sinking of the Edmund Fitzgerald. 

I remember the morning. Our NuTone wall mounted radio / intercom was playing WJR (AM radio, thank you!), something Dr. Spo will know, as it did every morning. The morning news was all about the previous night's sinking and disappearance of the ship. 

Freezing cold drowning in huge huge waves seems a horrible way to go, no? And in the dark. I guess the Titanic wasn't any better - though more of them. And less waves.

The title image I took up at the National Museum of Great Lakes when I was in Toledo for their half-marathon earlier this year. 

The museum had two items that had been recovered from the wreckage. Possibly the only two things that were recovered, It seems like I could find that out easily enough with a internet search, but I just don't want to, or care enough to do so. 

The museum wasn't dedicated to that ship or any ships. It goes in depth (no pun intended) into each for the five lakes. Some of them being maritime related. 

Lightfoot sings “Superior, it’s said, never gives up her dead”, which more or less true. None of the 29 bodies has ever been recovered. That has more to do with the lake than anything. And I found it horribly interesting

....and the following I'm just lifting (i.e. copy / paste) from the intertubes - though I looked at multiple sites with similar results.....

Superior is the coldest of the Great Lakes with an average year-round temperature around 40 degrees Fahrenheit near the surface, reaching perhaps the 50’s at the surface close to the shore in the summer months. The lowest temps can be found at the bottom, generally hovering in the 30’s Fahrenheit. And at the surface in cold months, an effect known as supercooling, an effect most commonly obtained at the polar ice caps, allows water to resist freezing while dipping below standard freezing temps, typically in a range of roughly 29-34 degrees Fahrenheit) 

At such cold temperatures, the bacteria typically responsible for decay and putrefaction, the microorganisms causing the bloat and gas associated with decomposition, cannot thrive. Such organisms are categorized as mesophiles (“middle-loving”), having adapted to moderate temperatures (such as those found in the live human body) as an optimal habitat, from a low end of room temperature (about 68 Fahrenheit) to about 113 degrees Fahrenheit. A dead body subjected to Lake Superior’s cold environment results in a kind of frigid stasis, with nearly all bacterial activity halted until the temperature rises. 

But the process of breakdown doesn’t cease altogether. There’s an incomplete level of decay which frequently leads to the formation of adipocere, a thick layer of wax-like substance known as corpse wax resulting from the partial breakdown of lipids. Without bacteria generating the gases which typically bring submerged remains to the water’s surface, Lake Superior’s victims’ remains frequently stay in the vessels they went down with. Some even sink to the lake’s sandy bottom, resting in the dark, currentless cold nearly intact. 

The shipwrecks themselves, in fact, in depths at these temperatures also do not break down and decompose as they might in more temperate waters. The watery surroundings serving as a super cooler for crew and vessel, allowing remains to rest undisturbed for decades, greatly unchanged.

So.............science!

On a lighter note.........and one I wrote about years and years ago, but I'm sure unremembered by most.....

710 and I were in Monterey, CA on an Monday night in April. Hardly the center of activity. We could only find one place that was open to eat after 20:00, after we stumbled into town. And it was a sports bar at the Marriott. 

Mind you, it was Final Four time and it was a sports bar, right?  While neither of us cares that much for college basketball, we resigned ourselves to seeing it on multiple screens while we at dinner.  .....but someone had other plans for us. 

Live entertainment!  In a sports bar.  During one of the bigger sporting events of the year. 

No just entertainment, but one dude with an acoustic guitar and microphone. 

He opened - and I cannot stress that part enough - his set with "the Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald". 

I suppose he only did this because the score from Schindler's List was still a half decade from being written and recorded??

Blobby - being Blobby - could not contain himself and burst out laughing. It all just seemed so absurd to me on so many levels. Looking back, since the place was sparsely populated, there was no way the performer didn't notice. Maybe he didn't know it was about his set selection. 

There seems to be a lot of 50th somethings happening lately. It doesn't make me nostalgic as much as it makes me feel old(er). Still, I can see my parent's kitchen, the wallpaper, the red wall phone, the table where I ate breakfast as the radio gave grim views of the night before. 

I have no great wrap-up here. But I got to use the image I took in April 2025, so it kind of all works out one way or another. Now I can delete it from my phone. 

Song by: Gordon Lightfoot