Family

Posted on November 27, 2012 by Susanna J. Sturgis

OK, I’ve got three blog posts started but not finished. The usual excuse: deadlines, imminent and impending. One of the three is met, the second is almost, the third is still two weeks off. Rather than finish one of the posts I’ve started, I’m starting something new. Here goes.

Travvy at Camp N Pack 2012

If you know me or if you’ve been following this blog, you’ve met Travvy, my gorgeous roommate. Travvy’s full name, which mostly appears on his title certificates, is Masasyu’s Fellow Traveller.

When my old guy, Rhodry Malamutt, died, I knew I was going to get another dog. Rhodry was half malamute. I’d never had a purebred dog before, but I wanted a purebred malamute. I knew both of Rhodry’s parents; I’d seen his litter born and watched them grow up. I wasn’t going to see my new puppy born, but I did want to meet his or her parents.

 

Travvy’s daddy, Trouble (Masasyu’s Here Comes Trouble)

Long story short: In late April 2008 I drove to Canandaigua, in the Finger Lakes region of upstate New York. I met Lori Hicks and Harold Power of Masasyu Alaskan Malamutes. I played with a bunch of roly-poly fuzzballs. I met their parents, grandparents, and great-granddaddy Charles. One fuzzball, said Lori, had had his eye on me since the moment I walked in the door. I watched him. He watched me. He was my puppy.

Almost home: Travvy at 8.5 weeks

My friend Susan, an amateur astrologer, cast a chart for our first meeting. Our two lives, she said, both took a turn for the better when we met. I now know this was true. Two days and 400 miles later, we got home to Martha’s Vineyard. By then my puppy was Travvy, my Fellow Traveller.

Since then I’ve kept Lori posted on Travvy’s and my adventures and successes in Rally obedience. I’ve kept up with new doings at Masasyu: new puppies, successes in the conformation ring and in various dog sports, especially weight pulling. A couple of weeks ago I sent Lori a copy of Vineyard Seadogs 2013, the calendar that features Trav as Mr. January.

Last night a house fire destroyed Lori and Harold’s home and killed 19 dogs, including 12 puppies, and 6 housecats. Eight adult dogs were saved. I don’t yet know who lived and who died. Travvy’s mom, Mayhem (Masasyu’s Bound and Determined), lives elsewhere, so I know she’s OK. Granddaddy Charles died in 2010. All I know is that many of the Masasyu dogs were Travvy’s family, the ones I met when I visited in April 2008.

A Masasyu Fire Relief Fund has already, as I write this, raised more than $5,500 to help Lori and Harold get back on their feet. I’ve made a little contribution. So have a couple of my Vineyard dog friends, who don’t know Lori and Harold but do know Travvy. I love this and I thank them. We on Martha’s Vineyard open our hearts and our wallets for those hit by adversity. Other communities do too.

One contributor wrote: “Know that we Malamute People are a pack, and the pack cares deeply for you.”

Another — a volunteer official from several of the Rally trials that Travvy and I have attended — wrote: “I don’t know these folks but I have dog friends with Masasyu dogs, and dog folks stick together!”

Knowing this makes it easier to keep putting one foot in front of the other, mindful that at any moment one’s worst nightmare could become real.

Update, 6 p.m., Wednesday, November 28: The response to the fire relief fund has been amazing. As of a few minutes ago, almost $9,000 had been raised. I hear there’s another fundraising effort that’s also doing well, and others are working to collect immediately needed dog supplies. Some good news: The kennel runs weren’t damaged by the fire, and a hay barn on the property will be converted into kennel space. Meanwhile a recently purchased box van is being pressed into service as a temporary kennel. So the surviving dogs are able to go home instead of being fostered out. Some sad news: A tentative list of survivors was posted to the Malamute-L list earlier today. Trouble, Travvy’s dad, didn’t make it. And only one of the intact bitches survived, a youngster. This could be devastating for a breeding program, but I have a hunch that other breeders working with these bloodlines will find a way to help Lori out when she’s ready.

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Big Houses, Again

Posted on November 23, 2012 by Susanna J. Sturgis

Big Houses are on the agenda again. For a good account of the issues and various perspectives on them, see the Vineyard Gazette‘s November 21 story “Commission’s Role in Big Houses Debated.” The Martha’s Vineyard Commission (MVC) is considering revisions to its DRI (development of regional impact) checklist. Those are the guidelines that could prompt referral of a development to the MVC for review. Never mind that for five, six, or eight years it didn’t occur to the MVC that the roundabout proposed for the blinker intersection might be a DRI.

On the other hand, do mind it. It’s useful background to the discussion. Speaking of useful background, I blogged about “Monster Houses” last December. What I wrote then still holds.

I don’t care for Big Houses, unless they’re intended to be year-round homes to large extended families, which is never the case on Martha’s Vineyard. These houses are intended to be occupied by a few people for two weeks or two months in the summer. These people already have at least one home — and more likely two or three or five “homes” — somewhere else.

When I look at these Big Houses, and even plenty of not-so-big-houses, I think that those people must not like each other very much if they want to be so far away from each other when they’re under the same roof. I think they must be very insecure to need to stick it to the landscape like that. I know that they have gobs and gobs of money, but I don’t want to know too much about how they got it because it’s probably pretty ugly.

In other words, I think these people need therapy or a 12-step program or maybe just a little perspective more than they need a Big House. This, however, does not make their Big House a DRI. The same could be said of many Vineyarders who live in small houses. They, or should I say “we,” are the character of the island that everyone’s always yammering about.

“The character of the island” is a shifty concept. It means different things to different people, but many people act as if it means the same thing to everybody. Come to think of it, it’s a lot like “God.” On relatively secular Martha’s Vineyard, maybe it is God. Save that thought; I’ll probably come back to it in a later blog.

For now let’s just say that an appeal to “the character of the island” isn’t going to persuade anyone who doesn’t already agree with you. When the Vineyard Gazette interviewed me for its pre-election candidate profiles, I said that large houses should be reviewed if they have environmental impacts, but only at the town level: “At the moment I can’t imagine that a big house in any one town can really have a regional impact, which is what the commission should be focused on.”

I still agree with myself on that one.

Among the most strenuous opponents of more Big House regulation are people in the building trades. This is not surprising. The economy and the price of land being what they are, the very wealthy account for a significant portion of the builders’ business, and the very wealthy, it seems, rarely yearn for modest bungalows.

The island economy is yoked to tourism and the second-home market. Discouraging Big Houses, so the reasoning goes, hurts the island economy. I don’t have the statistics at my fingertips, but I believe this. More particularly, it hurts Vineyarders who make their livings working on Martha’s Vineyard. Many supporters of conservation groups do not fall into this category. This goes a long way toward explaining why the conservation groups are much more enthusiastic about Big House regulation than the building-tradesfolk, and also why many people who work here are not wild-eyed supporters of the conservation groups.

There is, however, a deeper truth in all this. We rarely talk about it. Adrienne Rich nailed it in her 1974 poem “Power.” She’s writing about Marie Curie, whose pioneering work in radioactivity won her two Nobel Prizes — and killed her in the end.

It seems she denied to the end
the source of the cataracts on her eyes
the cracked and suppurating skin   of her finger-ends
till she could no longer hold   a test-tube or a pencil

She died   a famous woman   denying
her wounds
denying
her wounds   came   from the same source as her power

Posted in Martha's Vineyard | Tagged , , , , , | 5 Comments

Wal-Mart R Us?

Posted on November 19, 2012 by Susanna J. Sturgis

I’ve never bought anything from Wal-Mart. I’ve never even been in a Wal-Mart.

When I say this, some people respond with “Good for you!” I demur: I can probably count on one hand the number of times I’ve been anywhere near a Wal-Mart, excluding 70-mile-an-hour glimpses from the nearest highway. Self-restraint has nothing to do with it.

We don’t have Wal-Marts on Martha’s Vineyard. The closest thing we’ve got to a big box store (I’ve never been in one of those either) is probably Island Cash & Carry, and that’s not close at all. We don’t have fast food either. Before I left D.C., I was grabbing fried chicken at Roy Rogers two or three times a week. Most of the slow food restaurants on Martha’s Vineyard were, and are, too expensive to contemplate, so my culinary repertoire expanded beyond bread. In some ways, I’m certainly better off for living on Martha’s Vineyard, but, again, virtue has nothing to do with it.

Photo plucked off Facebook. Line of transmission fuzzy. If you know where it originated, let me know.

Wal-Mart is bad news. I like to think that I wouldn’t shop at Wal-Mart even if there were one within driving distance. Does this make me virtuous? Not sure. On one hand, I’ve got the New England frugal gene. I’m a lousy consumer and I don’t have kids, which tends to up one’s need for stuff,  especially cheap stuff. On the other, I figured out a long time ago that “cheap” comes at a price, and that often that price is (a) high, and (b) paid by people who are out of my sight and therefore easy to not-see.

Also plucked from FB. Source wanted!

Stuff is often cheap because it’s made by people who are being paid a pittance for their labor. Short-sighted employers — those who see nothing but the bottom line — love cheap labor, unorganized labor, labor that has no recourse and no alternative to taking what the bosses are offering. People in the South once welcomed such employers with tax breaks, cheap land, and cheap labor. They don’t think it’s so great when such employers go overseas or across the border in search of even better perks.

The liberal affluenza, I’ve noticed, loves to hate Wal-Mart. This may be because they, like me, have no occasion to go there. I detect more ambivalence, however, where Amazon. com (to pick another behemoth) is concerned. Amazon is not exactly a poster child for enlightened employer practices. I’ve had a serious grudge against Amazon ever since they threatened to sue Amazon Bookstore in Minneapolis for the use of the name, even though Amazon Bookstore had been using the name for more than two decades before the World Wide Web was invented.

For years I wouldn’t buy anything from Amazon. Finally convenience won out: these days I do patronize it, but as infrequently as I can. To judge by the parcels changing hands at the p.o. in my excruciatingly right-on liberal town, plenty of others do likewise. If you live on Martha’s Vineyard, boycotting Amazon.com is harder than boycotting Wal-Mart.

Wal-Mart and other giant retailers of cheap stuff are renowned for cheapskatery: they don’t pay much, and they bend over backwards to keep workers’ hours under the threshold that would require them to offer benefits. I’ve lived long enough on Martha’s Vineyard that this by itself doesn’t shock me: every job I’ve had on Martha’s Vineyard has paid by the hour, offered no benefits, and come with the understanding that as “the season” draws to a close, hours will be cut, sometimes to nothing. The big difference is that, unlike the owners of Wal-Mart and other giant retailers, most Vineyard employers are not rich and getting richer by the minute.

At the same time, plenty of Vineyard workers aren’t any better off than the workers at Wal-Mart. But it’s easier to obsess about Wal-Mart than to think about employment practices closer to home.

Posted in Martha's Vineyard | Tagged , , , , | 7 Comments

Incumbency Helps

Posted on November 14, 2012 by Susanna J. Sturgis

For the last week all the pundits and politicos have been tripping over themselves to analyze the election results. I’m itching to analyze something, but enough is enough, right? However, no one has attempted to analyze the results of the Martha’s Vineyard Commission (MVC) election, so I figured I’d take a stab at that.

Campaign material

First off, it must be noted that Karl Rove’s SuperPACs played no role in this election. To the best of my knowledge, only one candidate (Josh Goldstein) bought ads and only one (me) printed any campaign materials. Money, in other words, was not much in evidence. No one got robocalled, and no candidates made any stupid statements about rape. All the candidates were interviewed by both papers, but if the papers are to be believed, none of them made any stupid statements at all. This speaks well for Martha’s Vineyard. It may also explain why national pundits and politicos have paid so little attention to the election results.

On the other hand, election day is firmly located in the off-season, so it may not have occurred to the P&Ps that we even have elections on Martha’s Vineyard. MVC elections are also so damn complicated that most Vineyarders don’t understand how they work. The P&Ps may be wise to leave well enough alone.

Someone has to do it, however. If not me, who?

Here  is Exhibit A, the ballot that 10,884 Vineyard voters confronted on election day:

Note that incumbents are listed at the top, in alphabetical order, and identified as “Candidate for Re-election.”

Non-incumbents follow, also in alpha order. Fred Hancock and Camille Rose are listed among the non-incumbents even though they are currently members of the commission. This is because they were appointed by the selectmen of their respective towns, Oak Bluffs and Aquinnah. They couldn’t be “candidates for re-election” because they weren’t elected in the first place.

See? I told you it was complicated.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Here is Exhibit B, the election results, arranged in descending order of total votes. I stole the figures from the Martha’s Vineyard Times.

Incumbents, aka “candidates for re-election,” are marked in blue. Five of the top six finishers were incumbents. I’m no statistician (understatement of the century!), but I’ll go out on a limb and surmise that incumbency was a statistically significant factor in the results. Not just incumbency: being identified as an incumbent. Rose and Hancock, both current commissioners, weren’t identified as such. They finished back in the pack.

The names marked in pink(ish) were at the top of the non-incumbent section of the ballot. I suspect that this was also significant. Barnes’s extremely strong finish testifies to a third factor: name recognition. If you’re a well-known Vineyard character whose name is emblazoned on several big trucks (for the uninitiated, Trip Barnes runs a trucking and storage business), you don’t have to be identified as an incumbent. Trip probably would have finished near the top even if his name had been #14 on the ballot.

Was the roundabout — the highest-profile project that has come before the MVC in the last year and a half — a factor in the results? A case might be made: Breckenridge, Sederholm, and Hammarlund, all roundabout supporters, finished in a cluster, as did Fisher, Sturgis, and Rose, all roundabout opponents. The three at the bottom, Hancock (a currently serving commissioner), Miller, and Jims, all identified themselves as pro-roundabout. This doesn’t seem to have helped them. The three at the top either voted against the roundabout (Brown and Sibley) or worked against it (Barnes). A real statistician might be able to figure out whether and to what extent the roundabout influenced how people voted. My hunch is that for some voters it was significant but that for most incumbency was the decisive factor.

Last but not least, here is Exhibit C. Following its custom, Martha’s Vineyard Times editor Doug Cabral endorsed candidates in all contested races on the ballot, including MVC. Vineyard voters predictably ignored his suggestion that we vote for Romney-Ryan (the GOP ticket garnered 2,753 votes, compared to 7,906 for Obama-Biden) and Senator Scott Brown (whose 3,473 votes trailed the 7,321 cast for challenger and winner Elizabeth Warren). As far as I can tell, his recommendations didn’t have much effect on the MVC race either.

Posted in Martha's Vineyard, public life | Tagged , , | 7 Comments

“All the Leaves Are Brown . . .”

Posted on November 13, 2012 by Susanna J. Sturgis

What a difference three weeks and two big storms make!

Remember the glorious burning bush on the outskirts of my neighbors’ lawn? On October 21, it looked like this:

The leaves have since given way to small red-orange berries. The color burns more brightly now that most of the green is gone.

Trail of brown leaves with fuzzy butt

“All the leaves are brown / and the sky is gray . . .” Well, not quite all the leaves. Yellow glows in the November woods. I’m not “California Dreamin'” either. I like it right where I am.

Remember the winged sumac, October’s deep magenta-red? The huge stand of it across Old County Road from Pine Hill (left) has gone incognito. Sorry, no photos of it at its peak — but it really was this red:

Gray and white and red all over, Oct. 21

Here’s what the roadside edge of the Nat’s Farm field looked like in late October:

This morning it was more subdued:

Trav and I got caught in two downpours on our walk this morning. The first was brief, the second not so. Was I wearing raingear? I was not. We took shelter in the little entryway of an unoccupied summer house, with this holly bush for company. That’s not tinsel on the left, by the way. It’s rain sluicing off the roof.

We were both pretty wet when we got home. Trav shook most of the water off. I hung my clothes up to dry.

Posted in Martha's Vineyard, outdoors | Tagged , , , , | 4 Comments

Should We Be Required to Vote?

Posted on November 12, 2012 by Susanna J. Sturgis

Most U.S. presidential elections, the turnout hovers somewhere around 50 percent of all eligible voters. This year was no exception. After most U.S. elections, some USians notice that in Australia voting is compulsory. The turnout in Australia’s 2010 elections was 93.22 percent; in 2007 it was 95.17 percent. These USians look longingly at those figures and wish that voting were compulsory here too.

What an appalling idea. How is this idea appalling? Let me count a few ways.

  1. The most common argument against compulsory voting is that it’s an infringement of personal liberty. Some legal scholars consider it an infringement of the First Amendment: it compels citizens to speak when they don’t want to. I agree on both counts, but alone they aren’t persuasive.
  2. Some left-of-centrists are horrified because they assume that the non-voters are mostly ignoramuses who would cast their compulsory ballots for the most persuasive liar or whomever their preacher told them to vote for. Having not-voted in several elections myself, presidential and otherwise, I am not so sure about this.
  3. Australia may be one of the most democratic countries in the world, but turnouts of 90 percent and up remind me of the 99 percent majorities habitually tallied by candidates in Soviet bloc countries and other dictatorships. ‘Tain’t natural.
  4. Given the influence of Big Money, our electoral options often boil down to Doritos vs. Pringles, McDonalds vs. Burger King.
  5. Given the dismal state of the news media, particularly the visual media, becoming an informed voter requires a serious commitment of time and energy.
  6. An even more serious commitment of time and energy is required to influence the choices one gets to make on election day.

With #4, #5, and #6 we’re getting somewhere, to wit:

Postcard on my fridge

Not voting is a choice. It may not be a conscious, carefully thought out choice, but it’s a choice nonetheless. Of all things I can do on election day, goes the hypothetical non-voter’s thought process, going to the polls is so far down the list that it doesn’t get done.

Quite possibly it doesn’t make the list at all.

When I’m working with Travvy and he doesn’t do what I want, it’s usually either because he doesn’t understand what I want or because he doesn’t think it’s worth his while. I work the same way. I do cost/benefit analyses in my head: Should I take this job? Do I want to go to that concert? When I hesitate, increasing the incentives or decreasing the disincentives can make a crucial difference.

Across the six towns on Martha’s Vineyard, voter turnout in last week’s election hovered around 80 percent. Pretty good, eh? In September’s primary and last spring’s local election, the turnout was much less impressive: in the low to mid 20s, if I remember correctly. What this suggests to me is that most of us don’t vote out of some abstract sense of civic duty; we vote because we think it matters. When it doesn’t matter, we don’t vote.

For about 50 percent of eligible U.S. voters, the election just passed didn’t matter. For some 75 percent of civic-minded (so we like to think) Martha’s Vineyard voters, last spring’s local elections and September’s primary didn’t matter.

Compulsory voting would surely lift the percentages, but would it make voting matter?

No, it wouldn’t. It’s a superficial fix for a much deeper challenge. People fight hard and even die for the right to vote, but all too often once we’ve got it, voting doesn’t seem worth the effort. What’s going on?

Posted in Martha's Vineyard, musing, public life | Tagged , , | 7 Comments

Rallying Up North

Posted on November 10, 2012 by Susanna J. Sturgis

Last weekend Travvy and I headed north for a Rally obedience trial in Raymond, New Hampshire. Raymond is due east of Manchester, a three-hour drive from Woods Hole. Like most Rally trials, this one was hosted by a local training center. Dog training centers require plenty of open floor space, especially if they offer agility classes, and dog training is not the world’s most lucrative business. As a result, they’re often housed in abandoned factories or converted warehouses. Bo-Gee Agility occupies one of the latter, in a small mall on N.H. Route 107. Trav and I were there last May. I knew how to get there. We didn’t get lost.

Aside: You know how I don’t have a cell phone, of either the smart or stupid variety? I don’t have GPS either. I do have some roadmaps in my car. Occasionally I remember to look at them.

Finding the venue was only one of the challenges. If you live on Martha’s Vineyard, “trialing” (sorry, sister and brother editors: we dog people verbed “trial” a long time ago) nearly always involves at least one night away from home. Hotels and motels that accept dogs are few and far between, and if you’re on a budget your options are even more limited. I’ve become a big fan of the pet-friendly Motel 6 chain. We stayed at the one in Nashua. Actually there are two Motel 6s in/near Nashua, both within a stone’s throw of U.S. Route 3. The one we stayed at is known as Nashua South. It’s a 40-minute highway drive from Bo-Gee.

So Travvy was a trouper and we had a very good trial. We achieved our goal: we finished our Level 3 title! Level 3 is the highest level in APDT Rally. It’s fun but very challenging, so I’m proud of us — not least because a year and a half ago I was thinking we’d never work off-leash again. Level 3, like Level 2, is all off-leash, and several of the exercises ask the handler to leave her dog and give directions from a distance. Not a huge distance, mind you — 10 to 15 feet, usually — but far enough that you have your dog’s attention only as long as he chooses to give it to you. Travvy did so choose, and I’m grateful.

Trav and his Level 3 title ribbon. He doesn’t like the Motel 6 beds because the bedspreads are too slippery.

Just over the hill from the Motel 6 is a sprawling mall. It’s an easy walk, but the traffic on Spit Brook Road (love that name) is heavy and continuous so I minded the crosswalks and used the request light rather than sprint across four lanes (two in each direction) of fast-moving cars. Friday evening, supper was high on the agenda, so I headed in the general direction of the Burger King. En route a modest sign caught my eye: “Chipotle,” it said. Hmm, thought I, and changed direction to check it out. It turned out to be a burrito place. The burritos are briskly prepared assembly-line style by a friendly staff. The food was good, and they sold beer as well as high-end soft drinks. I had supper there both my nights in Nashua.

Spit Brook Road at U.S. Route 3, at the end of the Motel 6 driveway.

At the Rally trial, you never would have known that the presidential election was a scant three days away and that outside Bo-Gee’s walls the country was being bombarded with ads and robocalls. True, lawn signs were much in evidence on lesser roads. Returning from Saturday’s trial, I followed the signs for U.S. 3 instead of the Everett Turnpike — at some points the two are one, but at other points they aren’t, but I hadn’t figured this out yet. This took me through residential areas where campaign placards sprouted on many lawns and at plenty of intersections. For president, Romney-Ryan signs probably edged out those for Obama-Biden, but at least three-quarters of the names belonged to candidates for local and state office.

At the trial, though, it was all about dogs. We watched each other’s runs, encouraged each other, commiserated when a goof cost a team points or led to an NQ, a non-qualifying run. We admired each other’s dogs, and we swapped training stories and training tips. At the end of Sunday’s last class, I knew plenty about our fellow competitors, but I had no idea whom anyone intended to vote for.

These trials are all run by volunteers. I’ve hung back from volunteering because Trav is fairly high-maintenance and my primary obligation is to him. But as it happened, Barb, the trial secretary — a drop-dead competent and computer-savvy woman who manages to organize volunteers and keep scrupulously accurate records while also competing with her black Lab — took sick on Sunday afternoon and was taken to the hospital. Everybody pitched in to pick up the slack. I did a shift as desk steward: adding run times to each team’s score sheet and making sure the scores were added up correctly. Not only did the show go on, but someone remembered to buy Barb a get-well card that everybody could sign. (Barb sent an email around the next day to let us all know that she was out of the hospital and feeling fine.)

It was very like our weekend at Camp N Pack a month ago. “We all had dogs in common, and a willingness to get along,” I wrote then. “And we got along fine. It’s startling, sobering, and all in all encouraging to realize how little the partisan hullabaloo has to surface in day-to-day life.”

This time I was less startled, but just as encouraged.

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My Lord, What a Morning!

Posted on November 7, 2012 by Susanna J. Sturgis

I’m stealing the title of my 2008 post-election blog. This morning is even better.

In 2008 I went to bed before the results were all in. Around 5:45 a.m. I woke up. From my election day blog:

5:45 a.m., November 5

Schrödinger’s Election

So this morning I was lying awake as the skylight above my head just began to think of turning gray, working up the nerve to boot up Morgana V and find out what happened after I conked out. If I didn’t know it, it hadn’t happened, right? Or at least it hadn’t happened yet.

When it was light enough to distinguish Travvy’s white face from his gray cap, I got up, turned on the computer, fed Trav, and went downstairs to brush my teeth and put my contact lens in. I came back up, sat down, loaded Outlook Express, downloaded e-mail, and went to the FEM-SF folder. The first new e-mail was from a list member in Québec. The subject line said “Yes, you can.” The next subject line said “Yes, we did.” It was from a list member in Vermont who is now a duly elected member of the Electoral College and looking forward to casting her vote for Obama-Biden on December 15.

The cat is alive! Posted another USian: It’s “one of those rare moments when we are better than we might have imagined ourselves to be.” And from a subscriber in Australia: “Congratulations!”

This year I stayed up, hanging out on Facebook with friends across the country and in Canada, and even a few in Australia. They’d report the latest news from whatever TV or web source they were watching, some of it about the presidential race, some about local races and ballot questions. Some were biting their nails at every apparent reverse; others consoled them; still others cracked jokes or reminisced about elections past. It reminded me of the stay-up-all-night election marathons of yesteryear, when the returns came in more slowly and the numbers appeared on displays that looked like old-fashioned cash registers.

Elizabeth Warren spoke in the garden behind the West Tisbury library last July.

When Elizabeth Warren was declared U.S. senator-elect from Massachusetts, I whooped so exuberantly that Trav roused himself from my bed and came over to see what was up.

One by one, virtually all the Republicans who made idiotic statements about rape were defeated.

Ohio, Wisconsin, and Florida flipped from pink (Romney leading) to light blue (Obama leading) and back again.

Same-sex marriage won first in Maine, then in Maryland. Minnesota defeated a proposed amendment that would have defined marriage as solely a union between a man and a woman.

Ohio and Wisconsin finally settled on dark blue. Virginia joined them. New Hampshire turned dark blue — and picked Democratic women for governor and two seats in Congress. Florida remains undecided.

It was thrilling, it was vindicating — it was a profound relief.

I was not, however, elected to the Martha’s Vineyard Commission (MVC). I’m about 30% disappointed and 70% relieved. As my neighbor said this morning: “In a way, you have the best of both worlds: you made a good showing, but you don’t have to go to those meetings.” He knows whereof he speaks: he works for the county housing authority and has to go to a lot of those meetings.

I finished eighth. Nine candidates were to be elected. Why wasn’t I one of them? Because the MVC’s enabling legislation decrees that there must be one elected commissioner from each town and there can be no more than two. I was the third vote-getter from my town, so the nod went to Josh Goldstein from Tisbury, who got 359 fewer votes, because Tisbury (aka Vineyard Haven) hadn’t reached its quota. As my neighbor also said: “Every election that rule bites someone in the butt.” This election it was me.

I’m glad I ran. I’m itching to be more involved in the island’s political life than I have been, but as of yet I’m not sure what I should be doing. Maybe an opportunity will cross my path, or maybe I’ll be able to make one. Watch this space. You’ll be the first to know.

Posted in Martha's Vineyard, public life | Tagged , , , | 9 Comments

My MVC Picks

Posted on November 5, 2012 by Susanna J. Sturgis

‘Tis the season for endorsing candidates, in case anyone hasn’t noticed. I’m not going to endorse anybody. I’m going to tell you who I’m voting for, and a few words of why.

I’m not going to tell you who I’m supporting for president, or for U.S. senator. You already know that. I’m not going to tell you who gets my vote for U.S. congressman, state senator, or state rep, partly because I don’t know and partly because you don’t care. I’m not sure I do either.

This is about the race for the Martha’s Vineyard Commission, in which I have a particular interest: I’m running for public office for the first time in my life.

First off, a word about how the MVC election works. There are nine seats to be filled. Your ballot will therefore say “Vote for not more than NINE.” What the ballot doesn’t say is that there must be at least one elected commissioner from each of the island’s six towns, and that there can be no more than two. This is important: it means that if you vote for three candidates from the same town, you are throwing your vote away. This year there are three candidates running from each of four towns: Tisbury (Vineyard Haven), Oak Bluffs, Edgartown, and West Tisbury. At least one person from each of those towns is going to lose. Only one person is running from Aquinnah and one from Chilmark. They are both going to win.

The top vote-getter in each town gets elected. Then all the other candidates are arranged in order, from highest vote total to lowest, and we move down the list: you’re in, you’re in, you’re in. But — big but — the third-place finisher from any town doesn’t get in no matter how many votes he or she has. The election officials will skip that name and move to the next.

When you have three people running for no more than two seats, “bullet voting” is a strategy worth considering. This means you vote only for the person you most want to win.

I’m voting for myself (West Tisbury) and for Madeline Fisher (Edgartown). Both towns have an competent incumbent with high name recognition: Linda Sibley in West Tisbury and Christina Brown in Edgartown. They are almost certainly going to be the top vote-getters from their respective towns whether you or I vote for them or not. To bullet-vote or not to bullet-vote? It’s up to you. I haven’t made up my mind yet.

I’m voting for Camille Rose. As the only candidate from Aquinnah (and currently the selectmen’s appointee from that town), she’s a sure thing, but she’s also knowledgeable, commonsensical, and willing to speak her mind.

The only candidate running from Chilmark is Doug Sederholm. His apparent contempt for the public at the roundabout hearings made an impression: no way am I voting for him. I’m writing in the name of Chilmark’s Lenny Jason instead. Lenny is currently the county’s appointee to the commission. Writing him in isn’t likely to change anything, but I’m doing it anyway.

I’m voting for Clarence A. Barnes III — who is much better known as Trip — and David Willoughby from Tisbury. Both are immersed in the island’s working world, Barnes as the proprietor of Barnes Trucking and Willoughby as a general contractor. Barnes has been fighting the roundabout from the beginning. He’s skeptical about the MVC’s importance and wants to see if it can be improved. Willoughby’s ideas about the MVC’s role are similar to mine, and he thinks that attention should be paid to the overwhelming majority of Vineyarders who oppose the roundabout. So do I.

I’m not voting for anyone from Oak Bluffs. The current commissioners from that town, Breckenridge and Hancock, haven’t been representing Oak Bluffs: they’ve been representing the Oak Bluffs board of selectmen. (In the case of Hancock, this is understandable, since he’s currently the selectmen’s appointee.) Watching them in action, I came to the conclusion that they first decided to back their board of selectmen, then they proceeded to hear and evaluate all information through that filter.

More than any other single body, the Oak Bluffs selectmen are responsible for saddling the island with the roundabout mess. And they’ve bent over backwards to avoid letting the town have a real say in the matter. Oak Bluffs was the only town whose citizens didn’t get to vote in last spring’s non-binding referendum. Judging from his statement in the Vineyard Gazette‘s election story, newcomer Joe Jims is already dancing to the selectmen’s tune. At least one of these guys is going to get elected, but they’ll get no help from me.

What I’ve learned from training Travvy: Click and treat the behaviors I want to encourage. Don’t reward the behaviors I want to go away.

Behavior modification 101: Behavior that’s reinforced tends to continue. I don’t want to reinforce the anti-democratic, arrogant behavior of the Oak Bluffs board of selectmen. The MVC has encouraged and colluded in that behavior, whether by design, inertia, ignorance, or some combination I don’t know. But we the people need to stop reinforcing it. Now.

The Vineyard Gazette‘s profile of all the candidates does a good job of conveying what each candidate is about. Check it out — and vote, please!

Posted in Martha's Vineyard, public life | Tagged , , , , , , | 3 Comments

October License Plate Report

Posted on November 1, 2012 by Susanna J. Sturgis

Would you believe, a third zippo month in a row? I think this is a record.

Around mid-month I came home to a call on my answering machine: a friend had spotted New Mexico in Edgartown! She gave the location, street and nearest cross street. I knew exactly where it was — but more than two hours had passed, and I had work to do. Should I drive nine miles (give/take) to Edgartown on the off chance that New Mexico was still there?

O me of little faith: I stayed home. New Mexico remains blank white on my license plate map.

For a brief moment, I considered getting a cell phone, so that in future such intelligence could be followed up on immediately. Would I be the first person in the history of cell-crazed humanity to get a cell phone to enhance her license-plate-spotting capabilities? Possibly, and the prospect was tempting, but I decided against it.

You know, don’t you, that if North Dakota had been spotted on the streets of Edgartown, or even somewhere near the Gay Head light, I would have been there, even if four hours had passed since the sighting?

This friend wasn’t the only one to take note of my license plate lunacy. This was posted to my Facebook timeline by another friend, Kim Hilliard, maven moderator of the MV Stuff 4 Sale group on Facebook:

Be still, my beating heart! All 50 state plates, together, on one wall! A vision of solidarity and harmony and all that good stuff.

The year is waning. Prime plate-spotting season has definitely passed. But hope springs eternal, till the clock hits midnight on December 31 and a new year begins.

Posted in license plates | Tagged , | 2 Comments