Jim Thomas leads the Spirituals Choir at Bob Lee’s memorial. That’s Bob’s photo on the left.
Bob Lee (1947-2013)
Bob Lee died suddenly on August 11. His death was a shock: he’d been in poor health for some time, but he got around, sang and drummed in the M.V. Spirituals Choir, and frequented the West Tisbury post office — which until I joined the choir last year was probably where most of our conversations took place. No one expected him to die. But die he did, swimming one bright Sunday morning in a pond he loved not far from his home.
Word spread fast. Friends flooded Bob’s Facebook timeline with memories, anecdotes, and wonderful photos. Everyone, it seemed, was connected to Bob somehow, in ways small and large, past and present.
The celebration spilled into real space and time this past Saturday at the Ag Hall, in one of those grand community potlucks that the island, and especially West Tisbury, does so well. Facebook lets you look at pictures of food, but on Saturday we got to eat it, lots of it, enough to feed the throngs who came to reminisce, sing, laugh, dance, eat, fly kites, and do any number of things that Bob would have approved of. Quite a few people swear that Bob was there, and I won’t say they’re wrong.
So after the Spirituals Choir sang, I took my gear out to my car, which was parked way the hell down Panhandle Road — did I say the place was mobbed? As I was opening the hatch door, a familiar car rolled to a halt beside me. Behind the wheel was an elected official from my town, a savvy, well-connected guy who knows his way around the island. “I thought that was you,” he said. “What’s going on?”
“Bob Lee’s memorial bash,” I said. “It’s huge.”
“I can see that,” said my friend. “Who’s he?”
Which took me aback, first because I’d pretty much convinced myself that no one on Martha’s Vineyard didn’t know Bob and second because I couldn’t describe who Bob was in a pat phrase or two, and forget about conveying why vehicles filled every available nook and cranny on the Ag Hall grounds and lined Panhandle Road from the State Road intersection to where the road bends sharp left near the Janes Way gate. I tried, but what came out of my mouth didn’t begin to explain.
If you didn’t know Bob or had only a nodding acquaintance with him, his Martha’s Vineyard Times obituary will give you an idea of the range of his interests and his passionate involvement in all of them, not to mention his gift for connecting with and staying connected with people.
Back in the Ag Hall, grabbing a plate and a place in the food line, I took a more discerning look at the crowd. Most of the people I recognized fell into at least one of two overlapping groups: Vineyarders who moved here in the 1970s or were already in residence by then, and those connected to the grassroots arts scene, especially the musical part of it. The friend who passed me on Panhandle Road belongs to neither category. Some town officials and politicos do, of course, but I didn’t see all that many of either in this particular crowd.
So no, everyone wasn’t at the party, and everyone didn’t know Bob Lee. Those who did can count themselves blessed. Little Martha’s Vineyard is complex enough that nearly all generalizations about we are wrong. Maybe the only one that holds water is Everyone has something to say about the Steamship Authority.
Shortly after New Year’s, though, I did devote a blog post to 
Some of what comes floating down the river sparkles with its own light. The day is off to a good start when the first thing you see is a rhyming comment on island life. D.A.W., fictional character, is a frequent contributor. (So is Dan Waters, but that’s another story.)
Whatever rut you’re stuck in, mental or physical, spiritual or emotional, he’ll kick you out of it.
Travvy and I crossed the road. The driver, a pleasant woman probably about my age, asked if I knew S.C. I thought and said, “I don’t think so.” The woman said she was supposed to be meeting S.C. at Nat’s Farm.
The last time anyone took a serious nonfictional look at Martha’s Vineyard was in the mid-1970s. Milton Mazer’s landmark People and Predicaments was published by Harvard University Press in 1975. Milt Mazer was a psychiatrist and he focused on islanders in trouble, but People and Predicaments is the portrait of a community, its strengths, its weaknesses, and its challenges, painted by a man with the detachment of a trained professional who also had his feet in the mud of this place, to borrow Grace Paley’s line yet again. (Part 1, the first five chapters, is still indispensable to understanding the “character of the island,” now as well as then.)
So the TBDA is sponsoring several events on Martha’s Vineyard this Sunday. As it turns out, the Spirituals Choir in which I sing is already scheduled to perform a few songs at the TBDA fundraising dinner Sunday night, 6–9 p.m. at the Grange Hall in West Tisbury. The day’s first event is the 
It was appalling, even to me, who’d learned long before how the news media can look right at something, not understand what they’re seeing, and be totally oblivious to the possibility that they might be missing something. The following spring a snippet from a Grace Paley interview leapt out at me from the pages of The New Yorker: “If your feet aren’t in the mud of a place, you’d better watch where your mouth is.” I took that as a challenge — if not me, who? — so the First Clinton Visit, or rather the media coverage thereof, did help inspire my first novel. (I could go on; I have in the past and I will again, but for now I’ll spare you.)
In broad daylight my little point-and-shoot couldn’t do justice to the letters on the electronic signs, so after sunset I revisited the sign on State Road near Takemmy Farm. It has three faces. Here they are, in order:
Last night, however, I drove myself to Oak Bluffs for “Fish Out of Water: The Moth on Martha’s Vineyard” at the Tabernacle. The Moth is a public radio show that touts itself as “True Stories Told Live.”
From the Seasonally Occupied Territories . . . 