50 Years Ago Today

… A freighter carrying iron ore was sunk on Lake Superior in hurricane-force winds.

I don’t follow the shipping news and even if I had I’d never have heard of this particular tragedy if it weren’t for a song by Gordon Lightfoot, the Canadian musician who died in 2023. The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald is a masterpiece of storytelling and melody.

Every year the Mariners’ Church in Detroit tolled its bells 29 times to commemorate the lives lost on the freighter. After Lightfoot died they changed it to 30.

How we as humans choose to memorialize our dead is an interesting question I’m pondering as I’m planning a trip to Bodega Bay tomorrow to have my own memorialization of my parents…