The Bourne Bridge.
A couple days ago I posted “Docu-soaping Martha,” a letter of mine published four years ago in the Martha’s Vineyard Times. It got more hits in a shorter time than photos of sunset, snow, and/or Travvy. Thus encouraged, I’m here reprinting something I wrote even longer ago, in April 1988. It was published in both the Times and the Vineyard Gazette. At the time I’d lived on the rock less than three years. I didn’t know what I didn’t know. Calling myself an “Islander” at that early date now strikes me as more than a bit presumptuous. Another thing I didn’t know was what a PITA traffic to and from the Vineyard is to people in Falmouth. If I had known, I would have proposed an out-of-town location, like maybe the Mass. Military Reservation, aka Otis Airbase, at the Bourne rotary.
Alas and alack, my proposal was never implemented. Now that Martha’s Vineyard: The Theme Park has come into its own on this side of the water, it probably never will be. But perhaps if it included a casino . . . ?
It’s spring, and this Islander’s fancy lightly turns to the usual subject: how to make some money this summer (1) while maintaining some semblance of sanity, and (2) without exacerbating any of the problems related to overdevelopment. Walking home from the post office, I hit upon the following scheme, and since, as a penniless writer, I haven’t the capital necessary to implement it, I offer it to your readers, in the hope that one may put it to good use.
In the Steamship Authority parking lot at Woods Hole, or perhaps one of the two overflow lots in Falmouth (which with any luck will be rendered redundant by the implementation of this scheme), a small theater will be constructed, in order to offer the following (air-conditioned) program to prospective visitors who can’t get ferry reservations, can’t afford hotel and restaurant bills, or don’t want to buck the summer Island traffic or the frazzled tempers of the natives. Upon entering the auditorium, guests choose their seats from those constructed to simulate those found on buses, cars, carousels, bicycles, ferries, hay wagons, or mopeds.
Visitors may view the island’s dangerous flora and fauna in complete safety.
Every hour on the hour, the lights go down and immediately the guest is surrounded by cinematic color and sound. Under his or her feet, asphalt (or, occasionally, rutted dirt) flows dramatically backward, mirrored overhead by the sky, which is by turn blue, clouded, and stormy. On either side pass beloved roadside scenes: forest, farms, fields sweeping down to the sea, horses standing behind split-rail fences and classic stone walls, gingerbread cottages and elegant captains’ homes. Famous people appear in their summer habitats: the airport, Alley’s porch, expensive Edgartown boutiques, and chic up-Island cocktail parties. With terrifying verisimilitude the moving pictures sometimes lurch sideways to make room for a trio of moped jockeys riding abreast. Headsets are available at no extra charge for those who want to know where Jackie Onassis and Carly Simon live or how John Belushi died.
Having toured all six Island towns and some places far off the beaten path, guests will file out into the skylit concession area, where representative Island concerns offer their wares for sale: gourmet vinegars from Chicama Vineyards, raw milk and cream from Fred Fisher’s, beaded jewelry from the Aquinnah Shop, a selection of Henry Beetle Hough’s books from Bunch of Grapes, and commemorative T-shirts from Marianne’s. For an extra dollar mature adults can slip into one of the dark, curtained booths at the back and hear year-round Islanders Tell All About What They Really Do in the Winter.
Child and pet care is, of course, available on the premises and, for those not impressed by scenery, a modest video arcade. The most popular games include “Moped!,” in which a single player attempts to negotiate his or her way from the rental shop to Gay Head and back again without landing in either The Jail or The Hospital; and “King Rat!,” in which two players vie to amass by fair means and foul the necessary permits, environmental impact statements, and funds to squeeze 200 buildable lots into 150 acres of overgrown farmland.
Upon leaving the theater, each guest receives an assortment of authentic Island postcards, a complimentary copy of the Gazette/Harris poll, and a cookie of his or her choice from the Black Dog Bakery. Anyone still interested in actually setting foot on the Vineyard is invited to enter his or her name on the two-year waiting list for round-trips originating in Woods Hole.
Making a snow angel is hard when you’ve got a dog in tow and there’s no one around to help you up. Nevertheless, I gave it my best effort.
This is last night’s sunset reflected in my west-facing window. Memo to self: When leaving the house, it’s OK to look back. You won’t turn into a pillar of salt, and you won’t get stuck with Hades.
Travvy and I headed off down Pine Hill on our morning walk. No Yaktrax needed: the walking was easy.
We walk this way almost every day, sometimes in one direction, sometimes in the other. It’s not an especially scenic vista, but it catches my eye again and again, no matter what the season. The trail. The snow-dusted trees. The texture of the yellow grass rising above the snow.
Cold cotton, I thought, maybe because I’m reading Isabel Wilkerson’s The Warmth of Other Suns, a stupendously good book about the “Great Migration” of black people from the South to the North and West during the twentieth century. One of the main threads follows a woman who was a sharecropper on a Mississippi cotton plantation in the 1930s. The descriptions of the back-breaking work, the heat, and the virtual servitude in which the planters kept the sharecroppers are very, very vivid. 
I’ve been listening a lot lately to Eric Bibb’s Friends CD, which includes the song “Just Look Up” (Michael Jerome Browne and B. Markus). Tree, snow, clouds, sky. Yeah. Just look up.
My downstairs door was likewise frozen shut, but the wind had done a good job of clearing the snow from the studio door so I went out that way. The stairs up to my deck looked, well, lumpy.
I tramped up the steps. The handle of my shovel was lined with ice. The snow piled in front of my door was crusty, icy, and hard. One poke with the shovel and my back yelped. Shovel in hand, I went back down the steps. The side door was easier. I sometimes go out that door. Travvy rarely does. When I called him to join me at the foot of the inside stairs, he gazed at me as if to say, You’re kidding, right?
Malvina Forester was decked out in snow. I didn’t worry: we weren’t going anywhere.
Here’s my little house. My apartment is on the second floor. My deck and front door are around back. The door you can see is the one to my neighbor’s studio. My side door is out of sight on the left.
A plow was hard at work clearing the West Tisbury School parking lot. The driver had been at it most of the night.
Travvy, having broken trail for about half a mile, was ready for a break. Everyone thinks he must love snow and cold weather. He doesn’t mind snow and cold weather, but he’d just as soon be inside where it’s warm and dry and food occasionally falls off the counter.
The fence at the tennis court looked like a snowy honeycomb.
Travvy and I went for another walk after sunset. We got home in full dark. I opened the front door — and the telephone was ringing! I had phone! I had internet! All was right with the world.
Snow added texture to the disk. The absence of snow added mystery to the deck. Posted on Facebook, the photo on the right elicited a range of guesses, among them a prehistoric tennis ball, a hole from the Yellow Submarine, a black and white cookie with the icing licked off, Jupiter, an eclipse, a canteen cover, and a hockey puck. I thought it looked like the business part of an outhouse. Cut the wood out and you’d see gravel about 10 feet down.
Lest the disks forget where they came from, their incubator makes an appearance. Dish, disk, or Kong, everyone gets dusted with snow.
This purple chair came with my otherwise unfurnished studio apartment. (The dog did not.) It’s a comfortable chair. Since Hekate the laptop moved in in July 2010, it’s been my primary workspace. That’s Hekate in the photo, sitting on my lapdesk. I spend hours a day in that chair.
From the Seasonally Occupied Territories . . . 