Category Archives: Martha’s Vineyard
R is for Recovery #AtoZChallenge
Recovery is all over The Mud of the Place. Protagonist Shannon is an alcoholic with a pretty well established recovery — she’d be the first to say “recovering,” not “recovered,” and to emphasize that she’s gotten this far one day … Continue reading
Q is for Questions #AtoZChallenge
With Q drawing closer, not swiftly exactly but steadily, I was drawing — not quite a blank, but I wasn’t inspired. I solicited suggestions from Facebook friends. Quirky, quixotic, query, question, quahaug (aka quahog) . . . All worthy, but still not … Continue reading
P is for Poetry #AtoZChallenge
“I came to work on my novel.” It was a total cliché at the time — everyone, it seemed, came to Martha’s Vineyard to work on a novel. A few years later it was a screenplay they were working on, but … Continue reading
O is for Online #AtoZChallenge
When the retina in my right eye detached in early August 2004, I’d been off-island at most twice since 9/11. In the following months, I made numerous eye-related trips to Boston: ferry to Woods Hole, bus to South Station, subway … Continue reading
N is for Newspapers #AtoZChallenge
I started reading a daily newspaper — the news section, not just the funnies — relatively early in life, when I was around 10. As a preteen and then teenage Arabist I clipped stories about the Middle East, taped or … Continue reading
M is for Mud #AtoZChallenge
Mud season generally comes round in early spring, when thawing earth and April showers turn fields, dirt roads, and back yards into quagmires. (Hmm. Maybe Q is for Quagmire? I won’t know till I get there.) Except this year, when … Continue reading
L is for Lesbian #AtoZChallenge
WARNING: The first several paragraphs of this post rely heavily on “Gay on MV,” a personal history that I posted here in June 2015. This post, in keeping with my theme for the A to Z Challenge, focuses more on … Continue reading
K is for Keys #AtoZChallenge
When I moved here in 1985, maybe the most startling difference between Martha’s Vineyard and the city I’d just left was that on the Vineyard hardly anybody locked anything. If you peered into the cars parked on Main Street or … Continue reading
J is for Junk Food #AtoZChallenge
My recollection is that in my D.C. days I lived pretty much on Roy Rogers fried chicken and fries, varying it with the occasional burger. This recollection is certainly erroneous. I was baking bread regularly, so I must have made … Continue reading
I is for Islander #AtoZChallenge
Sounds pretty simple, doesn’t it? An islander is someone who lives on an island. Both the Vineyard Gazette and the Martha’s Vineyard Times initial-cap “Island” and “Islander” when Martha’s Vineyard is referred to, and so do many people who live here. … Continue reading
From the Seasonally Occupied Territories . . . 