Hot Ts

Posted on July 19, 2012 by Susanna J. Sturgis

It’s been hot. How hot? Usually I do laundry when I run out of underwear. Yesterday I did laundry because I’d run out of tank tops and muscle Ts. There were only two regular Ts on the line, and no long pants. That hot.

From left:

  • Iditarod 2014: Mals Go the Distance. My brand-newest T-shirt — didn’t I say I was “Powerless over T-Shirts”? “Mals” is short for “Alaskan malamutes.” Once a mal moves into your life, sled-dog trivia magically takes up residence in your brain. You know by osmosis when the Iditarod is being run. You even start referring to it as the Irod and wondering why your mal-deprived friends don’t know what you’re talking about. Malamutes are freighting dogs, not racing dogs, so they aren’t often seen in the I(dita)rod. Team Quinault of Montana is training for the 2014 Iditarod. These Ts are fundraisers. Of course I bought one.
  • Buto, Egyptian Cobra Goddess of Protection. Another T from my D.C. days, distinctive for its unusual color. I am wearing it right this minute. I feel protected.
  • Sisterfire 1983. Sisterfire was an outdoor women’s music festival held during the 1980s in Takoma Park, Maryland, a D.C. suburb. (The gray shirt just above it whose front you can’t see is from Sisterfire 1985, shortly after which I left town for good.) Roadwork, the producer, was fondly and not-so-fondly referred to as Roadhog. A graphically adept communitarian created a parody of this shirt. “SISTERBLITZ” it said across the chest. I wish I had one.
  • Equinox Productions, an alternative women’s music production group in my D.C. days. Alternative to what? Roadhog, of course.
  • Reliable Market’s 60th anniversary T. Reliable is on Circuit Ave., Oak Bluffs. It’s where I do most of my grocery shopping. I don’t think we categorize each other by where we buy groceries, but it is something we take notice of. Reliable is small, ingeniously organized, and considerably cheaper than Cronig’s. I also see more people I know there.

Another still-life: “Clean Underwear with Tomato Seedlings.”

A couple of hours after I hung the wash out, a few drops fell out of the sky. I was proofreading out on the deck, but I wasn’t fooled. I didn’t come in and neither did my laundry. The rain stopped.

Later in the afternoon, the sky got dark, and the trees thrashed back and forth. I was fooled that time, but my clothes were all dry, folded, and put away. Once again, only a few drops fell out of the sky.

Overnight it did rain, not much, but some. And the heat broke. Whew.

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Theme Park Farming

Posted on July 16, 2012 by Susanna J. Sturgis

Long time ago, like about 1988, I had this idea: build a Martha’s Vineyard theme park in Falmouth. People could loll on virtual beaches, buy picture postcards and Black Dog T-shirts, and thrill to a hair-raising simulated moped ride on twisty island roadways, all without the expense and hassle of crossing Vineyard Sound. My modest proposal to this effect was published in both papers; the Vineyard Gazette even ran it as an op-ed with a cool carnival graphic.

At that point I was too newbie clueless to realize two things: (1) This would not make people in Falmouth happy at all, and (2) Martha’s Vineyard was a theme park already, or well on its way to becoming one.

I have lived in Martha’s Vineyard: The Theme Park long enough to know that though most visitors voluntarily fall for the illusion — for the $$$ they’re spending, it better meet all their expectations, so they convince themselves that it does — backstage at the theme park is most definitely Real Life. As anyone who’s ever been involved with theater or filmmaking knows, creating and sustaining an illusion is hard work. It also generates its own thrills, chills, and bouts of hysterical laughter, most of which go unnoticed by the visitors, who understandably think that the theme park is all about them. This gives rise to the perennial question: “What do you people do in the winter?”

We tend to finesse this question because (1) it takes too long to explain, and (2) the askers don’t really want to know. Most visitors, like most theatergoers, don’t want to know too much about what it costs to sustain the illusion that they revel in every year. Besides, it’s our Real Life, not theirs.

These guys were guests at the same party. No, it was not at the alpaca farm. Yes, there is a connection between the alpaca farm and theme park agriculture.

So yesterday afternoon at a wonderful party a friend and I got onto the subject of theme parkery. An ever-increasing number of year-round residents seem to have fallen for the theme park illusion, we noted, especially when it comes to agriculture. They rhapsodize about island-grown this, that, and the other thing without taking note of some key numbers:

  • the cost of land
  • the labor-intensiveness of small-scale farming
  • the paltry wages earned by farm laborers
  • the often prohibitively high cost of the resulting produce

My dinghy garden is not a commercial endeavor. Woman does not live by tomatoes alone . . .

As a commercial endeavor “island-grown” isn’t sustainable without a variety of subsidies, including agricultural development restrictions; people willing and able to work for wages too low to pay island rents, never mind buy a house; people willing and able to pay more, often a lot more, for local produce and meat. Last month the island’s community-supported agriculture (CSA) program was saved when three wealthy summer residents funded the purchase of Thimble Farm by the Island-Grown Initiative, which had been trying unsuccessfully to raise the $2.5 million asking price for the 37-acre farm. (For details, see “Big Donors to Fund Island Grown Initiative.”)

. . . or basil either.

So my friend and I were brainstorming ways to make island agriculture sustainable, and (under the influence of beer, chocolate cupcakes, fresh pineapple, and other wondrous goodies) we came up with a Brilliant Idea. Here it is, uncopyrighted and ready to be implemented by — who? You?

  • First, the Wampanoag Tribe gets to build the casino they want in Aquinnah.
  • The VTA (Vineyard Transit Authority) runs regular shuttle service to Aquinnah from the ferry docks and the airport.
  • Aquinnah licenses a lending institution or two to set up shop outside the casino so gamblers who blow their entire wads don’t have to stop playing.
  • Gamblers who win big get complimentary limo service to the airport or the ferry dock, their choice.
  • Those who lose big and can’t cover their losses are urged to indenture themselves to the Island-Grown Initiative or comparable local agricultural endeavor for as long as it takes to pay off their debt at minimum wage.

Is there another way to make “island-grown” sustainable? I dunno. Stake us to a six-pack and let’s see what we come up with.

 

 

Posted in Martha's Vineyard, musing, tourism | Tagged , , , , | 6 Comments

Elizabeth at the Library

Posted on July 14, 2012 by Susanna J. Sturgis

Saturday mornings in summer, downtown West Tisbury is as jammed as down-island with people and cars. The Farmers Market draws a mob scene to the Grange Hall every Saturday and Wednesday. This morning the mob scene was augmented by those of us who’d heard that U.S. Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren was going to be talking to supporters in the garden behind the West Tisbury library at 10:30, then adjourning to the Farmers Market just up the road for some hand-shaking.

I came flying back from Vineyard Haven, where I’d had a 9 a.m. meeting with a prospective client. Wasn’t packing my camera, so of course I had to detour by my house to pick it up. This entailed giving Travvy his second peanut butter bone of the morning and assuring him that I’d be back soon. He knows I’m lying, but if he’s got the peanut butter he doesn’t care.

The candidate arrives.

I was late, but so was the candidate. She’d come from a prior engagement, at which each speaker was allotted five minutes and none of them had stuck to the limit. “Democrats sure love to talk,” she said.

Those of us in waiting had a good time talking to each other. Surveying the assembly, one friend noted: “You can tell which of us live here because none of us have tans.” To which I added: “If we do, it stops at our T-shirt sleeves.”

Cameras were much in evidence as Elizabeth spoke.

In her opening remarks, Elizabeth noted how many things we used to take for granted were now considered radical: birth control, the right to vote, etc. She’d recently been asked by an interviewer if she believed in science, and the interviewer seemed surprised when she responded with an unequivocal YES.

She then spoke briefly about how the campaign was going. Asked what response it was getting among young people, she praised the enthusiasm of her young campaign workers and noted that polls report her doing especially well among younger voters and older ones. We’re working on reaching the middle, she said.

Fundraising is up — according to the campaign website, $8.6 million was raised in the second quarter of 2012 — and she was especially pleased that 81 percent of the donations were $50 or less and more than half were $25 or less. Many people are making monthly credit card contributions of $10, $15, or $25. (That would be me.)

Husband Bruce was there too. They celebrated their 32nd wedding anniversary on July 12.

And across the commonwealth the field organization is expanding, so that in every city and town it’s neighbors talking to neighbors. People in Pittsfield, she said, aren’t interested in exactly the same things as people on Martha’s Vineyard. Amen to that. The campaign can formulate general talking points, but they play out differently in different communities.

It’s important to work right up to the election, she said — and it’s just as important to keep working after the election. The people we elect need to keep hearing from us. Amen to that too.

Near the end of the Q&A, a fellow launched into a non-question, which he cleverly tied back to Warren’s earlier affirmation that she believed in science. 2,000 engineers and scientists didn’t think the 9/11 report’s explanation for the fall of the Twin Towers was possible; what did she think? The crowd, including me, got a little testy at that but the candidate finessed it so neatly: This was what was great about democracy, she said. We can put our theories and explanations out there for all to consider, and if they gain enough adherents, yesterday’s crackpot theory may become tomorrow’s “everybody knows that.”

I want to remember this. Lately I’ve been way too tempted to argue with online trolls, even though what they’re spouting is neither interesting nor original and there’s zero chance that anything I say could have any impact on their thinking. Do I really trust the marketplace of ideas to take care of it? Not entirely — not as long as so many of the trolls are sucking their ideas out of a mega-funded right-wing yak machine — but it’s for sure that whatever I say isn’t going to make a difference. No more troll-related detours!

As Elizabeth was leaving to head over to the Farmers Market, I told her I’d been moved by what she said at her July 1 talk, about running for office being an act of optimism. I said I agreed; that I was running for Martha’s Vineyard Commission to fight off my pessimism. “Good for you,” she said, and hugged me.

Out in the parking lot, I met Leon Brathwaite. I’d heard about him, and he’d heard about me; he’d been thinking of running for the MVC (he’s also a West Tisbury resident) but is running for Dukes County Commission instead. We hugged each other.

Running for office, even a way-down-the-totem-pole office, makes me feel part of something bigger, something pretty cool.

Listening at the library

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Powerless over T-Shirts

Posted on July 12, 2012 by Susanna J. Sturgis

I admitted I was powerless over T-shirts a long time ago but that hasn’t stopped the inexorable growth of my collection. I don’t know how many T-shirts I have. My T-shirts don’t want to be counted. Maybe they’re afraid that if I know how many I have, I will throw some of them out. I could no more do this than I could torch all my paper files or wipe my hard drive with no backup.

My T-shirts are my history, at least my history since the mid-1970s. My earliest one is from the University of Sussex, where I did a year of graduate work in 1974–75. I’ve at least four from 1976: one from the ’76 Festival of American Folklife and three from the campaign to ratify the Massachusetts Equal Rights Amendment, for which I was an active volunteer. “Vote Yes on Question #1” they say.

Nearly all my T-shirts are wearable. Even the oldest ones. When you have too many T-shirts, you don’t wear any of them out. When they don’t wear out and you keep buying more, their number tends to increase.

When I bring out my summerwear and put winterwear away, I go through my T-shirts and pick out the two or three dozen that’ll be in that summer’s rotation. Here are some of those that made the cut this year.

From left:

  • WUMB-FM 20th anniversary shirt.
  • (Top) Smedley’s Book Shop muscle shirt. I have several shirts from now-defunct bookstores. Smedley’s was in Ithaca, New York. I don’t have nearly enough muscle shirts, so they get worn every year. All of them come from the 1980s, and nearly all of them are lavender. In my bookselling days, lavender outsold other colors by at least two to one. Can’t imagine why . . .
  • (Bottom) If It Ain’t Baroque, Don’t Ride It. This is a horsey in-joke: Morgans, Andalusians, and Friesians are among the “baroque” breeds. Conventional wisdom says you need a Warmblood to do dressage. This T-shirt was created by a Morgan owner who believes otherwise. I liked it so much I got two of them: same slogan, different graphic.
  • Not a T-shirt exactly but close enough: a long T that I wear around the apartment in warm weather, and sleep in on those rare occasions when I need a nightgown. It came from a women’s craft shop in Chicago, ca. 1991. I’ve never regretted splurging on two. The other one is black.
  • Wintertide Coffeehouse 1992. The graphic is by Washington Ledesma. It says “Espresso Yourself.” My Wintertide 1991 shirt is almost identical. I plucked it from the Five Corners flood in the wake of the No-Name Nor’easter in late October of that year and Tony Lombardi, Wintertide manager, said I could keep it.
  • Gaylactic Network, a network of gay and lesbian science fiction fans. From sometime in the 1990s, a decade in which I went to lots of cons.

  • Red one at far left: Ladies’ Sewing Circle and Terrorist Society. A feminist classic.
  • See what I mean about the lavender muscle shirts? This dragon design, IIRC from Snake + Snake out in Virginia, was popular at Lammas Bookstore when I worked there in the early 1980s.
  • WisCon 14. My very first WisCon, in 1991. Hal Davis bought me the shirt. I think that makes him an enabler, don’t you?
  • Another feminist classic: “If I can’t dance, I don’t want to be part of your revolution.” Got that right, Emma Goldman.
  • The Black Hog. Sounds like . . . ? You got it. Around 1991, before the Black Dog Tavern turned into an empire but its signature T-shirt was well on the way to becoming a terrible cliché, Peter Hall created a T with the black dog logo upside down. The BD promptly sued for trademark infringement. Hall took the upside-down dog shirts off the market. One of the great regrets of my life is that I didn’t move fast enough to get one. Shortly thereafter, Hall’s Basement Designs released two more shirts: the Black Hog and the Dead Dog. This is the Hog. The Dog is a canine skeleton. I’ve got one of those too. The BD sued Hall over them as well, but IIRC the judge said they were parodies and there’s no law against that. One of the especially delicious results of the brouhaha was that it came to light that the Douglases, owners of the Black Dog, had only paid $25 to the woman who designed the logo that was on its way to making them millions. These were not poor struggling entrepreneurs: They were among the heirs to the Quaker Oats fortune. As I recall it, they were embarrassed into giving the designer more money. (Original version had “That’s Douglas as in the late McDonnell-Douglas Aircraft.” My error.)

Yes, I do have clean underwear; I just don’t hang it on the line. I am too lazy and I don’t have enough clothespins. I use a drying rack instead. Here is my new still-life: “Clean Underwear with Marigolds.”

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Dull Day

Posted on July 11, 2012 by Susanna J. Sturgis

Warning: This post contains no photos. Nothing much happens in it either. And on top of that, it’s two days late.

O brave ones, read on . . .

Monday morning I awoke, as usual, a bit before six. Also as usual, I lay in bed a few minutes and watched the sun play in the skylight. The power flickered enough to reset the digital clock whose backup battery died a long time ago. No sooner had I gotten up and fed Travvy his breakfast than the power went out again.

It didn’t come back for more than six hours, at which time I was in Edgartown. (Second time in four days, third time in eight. This is getting scary.)

Turns out a car hit a utility pole on Old County Road, near Whippoorwill Farm. This explains the sirens I heard shortly after the power went out for good. The pole had to be replaced. That took a while.

I lied. Here is a photo of Travvy wooing at a rake. It wasn’t on this particular walk, but it wasn’t long ago either.

I didn’t learn this till mid-afternoon. By 6:30 it was pretty clear the power wasn’t coming back soon so Travvy and I left for our morning walk an hour earlier than usual. That, for the record, is the amount of time I spend most mornings catching up on e-mail, Facebook, and Scrabble games. Travvy wishes the power would go out every morning.

The power was still out when we got back. No tea for breakfast, and no oatmeal. When my stomach started growling, I cut a slice of bread off the loaf in progress and garnished it with super-sharp cheddar. Not bad.

My current rush job is on paper, so I took it — proofs, style sheet, Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary (11th ed.), The Chicago Manual of Style (16th ed.), and a sheaf of sharp red pencils — out on the deck where the light was better. I still like working on hardcopy, but I have to admit that with my funky vision the infinite magnification possibilities of electronic editing are attractive.

At 11:30 I packed up, gave Trav a peanut butter bone out on the deck, and set off for my lunch date in Edgartown. Date was with client-friend whose new book (which I helped edit) will be out very soon. At that point I will spill the beans. For now, suffice it to say that it’s a wonderful book and if you have any interest in Martha’s Vineyard whatsoever you absolutely must have it.

Having strayed so far from bucolic West Tisbury (“bucolic” means there’s nowhere to buy anything useful), I figured I’d hit Oak Bluffs — groceries at Reliable, beer at Our Market — on the way home. I headed out of Edgartown on the Beach Road. Wow. Whole other world: cars forming a miles-long necklace by the side of the road. I actually spotted several specimens of Homo vacationens walking along the road wearing floppy hats and carrying coolers, umbrellas, and seating devices, headed for State Beach. Going to the beach! What a concept.

I bought my groceries and my beer and headed home via Vineyard Haven, stopping at my vet’s en route to pick up a bag of Hill’s Prescription Diet T/D. “T/D” stands for “Tooth Diet.” Travvy gets ordinary Blue Seal dog food with a handful of T/D at each meal. Rhodry got it too and I’m convinced it’s the reason that he never had dental problems. It sure isn’t because I brushed his teeth regularly. I brushed his teeth once but we both thought it was stupid so I stopped. I’ve never tried to brush Travvy’s teeth.

I made it through all three down-island towns in three hours, and that includes lunch. My neighbor got home the same time as I did: she’d taken her laptop to the West Tiz library so she could get her work done. In our absence the electricity had returned. Life is good.

 

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This Hope Thing

Posted on July 6, 2012 by Susanna J. Sturgis

Sorry for the prolonged silence. The jerk who schedules my jobs booked me for two “crashes” — that’s publishing lingo for super-rushes — both of which had to be done yesterday. The hardcopy proofread made it to the UPS Store hours ahead of the 3 p.m. deadline, but when she got home, the scatterbrain who took it there it realized that she’d enclosed her style sheets and purchase order with the proofs and so had to make another round-trip to Vineyard Haven in order to retrieve them.

I did take time out from my dueling crashes to go to Elizabeth Warren’s talk/fundraiser last Sunday, but I haven’t dared take time out to write about it because writing expands to take up all the time available to it and I didn’t have any time, not if I was going to meet these deadlines.

Jeremy Berlin

It being the first of July, as I headed toward Edgartown on the West Tisbury Road I was trying to remember whatever I’d ever known about parking in Edgartown. This is not much because I don’t go to Edgartown often, especially not in summer. Edgartown is a motor-vehicular time sink. School Street was my first, second, and third thought, from the not-so-bygone days when my dentist practiced at the out-of-town end of it. Bingo. Malvina Forester rolled to a halt a scant two blocks from where I was going.

While the “host committee” — those who contributed $250 and up — got to meet and greet the candidate at a reception downstairs, pianist Jeremy Berlin entertained the crowd gathering in the Old Whaling Church.

Attendees buy tickets and/or pick up their name tags out in front of the Old Whaling Church.

I wandered around saying hi to people I knew, avoiding people I didn’t want to make eye contact with, and watching people come in. My unscientific entrance poll noted a healthy percentage of year-rounders, significantly more women than men, and very few people under 40.

The last electoral-political event I attended was, I think, a fundraising reception for Gerry Studds at the Field Gallery. Betty Ann Bryant presided (of course), and I presented the congressman with an ILGA tank top, which he accepted with great good humor. ILGA, the Island Lesbian & Gay Association, flourished in the early and mid 1990s, and Betty Ann died in November 1994, so that was probably 1992.

The candidate makes her entrance.

So why did I decide to go to this thing, and why was I so wary? “Won’t get fooled again” runs through my head a lot, along with the suspicion that in this age of high-stakes campaigning it’s very hard not to get hornswoggled by charisma and a well-crafted script. Nevertheless, I like to see and hear people in person, unedited by either the media or their own staff. And I’m also a believer in story — the stories people tell about themselves and where they came from.

I don’t believe every word of any story, including my own, but most stories convey what the teller thinks is important.

I like Elizabeth Warren’s story a lot. She grew up in Oklahoma. Her father sold fencing and carpeting, until he was sidelined by a heart attack when she was 12. When he returned to work, it was as a maintenance man, for less pay. Her mother went to work at Sears to help pay the mortgage.

Elizabeth Warren has three older brothers. One is career military, one works construction, and the third — well, I had the impression that he’d tried various ventures over the years and maybe not been 100% successful at any of them. Elizabeth herself married at 19. She taught elementary school. When her first child was two years old, she started law school.

Hers is an amazing story, but it’s also a recognizable one. A woman with that story has to know in her gut how working people live and the pressures we’re under — and everything about her public career says, Yes, she knows. She’s on our side because she’s one of us, not because she sees some political advantage in it.

And she doesn’t believe that she got to where she is now entirely on her own. “I’m grateful for every opportunity I’ve been given,” she said, and then she said that she was scared that the opportunities she was given are “embedded in time” — history, in other words.

She evoked the Depression, a time when many believed that democracy wouldn’t survive in the U.S., and the determination over the next 50 years to invest in education, research, infrastructure, “creating the conditions needed for businesses to flourish.” No, it wasn’t utopia: we had anti-communist hysteria, and war, and people of color, women, lesbian and gay people, and others were second-,  third-, and fourth-class citizens. But we were headed in the right direction.

Some figures that I scribbled in my notebook: China currently spends 9% of its gross domestic product (GDP) on infrastructure. Europe spends 5%. And the U.S., allegedly the richest country in the world, spends 2.5%.

Another figure: A frugal college student today, one who goes to a state university, lives at home, buys used textbooks, etc., etc., will spend 350% more for her education than her parents did 30 years ago.

And another: After the campaign for the presidency, the campaign for the U.S. Senate seat from Massachusetts is the most expensive one being waged in the country. Big Money thinks this is one they can’t afford to lose.

But you know what? The thing she said that I really can’t get out of my head is this: “Being here is an act of optimism.”

Because I’ve been thinking the same thing about my little race for the Martha’s Vineyard Commission, on which maybe I’ll spend a couple hundred bucks. Running for office, any office, is an act of optimism. It says, Things can change for the better, and I can help make it happen.

From some angles the situation really does look hopeless — but if we’re managing to get out of bed in the morning and put one foot in front of the other, then we aren’t really without hope.

When I walked out of the Old Whaling Church into the bright sunlight of a Sunday afternoon, my sides were hurting. It’s not all that comfortable, this hope thing.

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

June License Plate Report

Posted on July 1, 2012 by Susanna J. Sturgis

A quality haul, if not a huge one: Idaho, Georgia, and Missouri.

The map now has a belt across its midsection, and the East Coast is finally complete. Why does it seem I spot Tennessee every time I turn around? It’s not always the same car either. Is this a trend?

On my wish list for July: Alabama, Montana, Iowa, and New Mexico.

Massachusetts wants you to renew your driver’s license every five years. 2012 was my year. In 2007, I was exempted from taking the eye test because I had a note from my optometrist. I had a note from my optometrist because the vision in my right eye was about 20/400, thanks to the two retina reattachment surgeries I had in 2004 and the cataract that resulted therefrom.

At that point I stopped cussing all the “half-blind drivers” on the road because I was a half-blind driver and my driving record was stellar. (Ask my insurance company.) Now I just cuss the blind drivers on the road.

The cataract was removed in 2008 so I can now see pretty well out of that eye. Still, my vision is pretty funky — my eyes don’t work together all that well — so license renewal, with the required eye test, always inspires a little anxiety.

Not this year. This year I discovered that I was eligible to renew online. Which, of course, I did. So I’m good to go till June 8, 2017.

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Invasive Species

Posted on June 30, 2012 by Susanna J. Sturgis

If the ecological police fined businesses for wasting paper, they’d surely cite the Vineyard Gazette every week in summer when its Tuesday edition comes out.

This past Tuesday’s paper, however, was worth a look. Being ecologically aware (not to mention too cheap and lazy to go to the store and buy a copy), I read it online. In “Island Conservation Leaders Look to Future”  (this link may not work if you don’t have an online subscription), senior editor Julia Wells wrote this about Adam Moore, executive director of the Sheriff’s Meadow Foundation:

For Mr. Moore that [SMF’s agenda] includes a quiet shift toward increased public access to Sheriff’s Meadow properties, an ambitious project to remove invasive species and a concerted effort to raise visibility and awareness around the properties. “We want people to know that Sheriff’s Meadow is their land trust, and for a kid growing up here that Cedar Tree Neck is their property,” he said.

WTF?? How could Mr. Moore say this with a straight face? How could reporter Wells not follow up with a question about that contested parcel of land on Blue Barque Road, Chilmark?

Well, it’s summer. The Gazette has long been the summer people’s paper. The summer people are here, and the overwhelming majority of them don’t know diddly about the case or about anything else that happens when they’re not around. (It just dawned on me that my STOP THE ROUNDABOUT bumper sticker means, among other things, “I live here.”) And the Gazette‘s coverage of the story, while not as outrageously biased as that of the Martha’s Vineyard Times, still sounds as though it were written by SMF staffers.

So in the interest of truth, justice, and what we wish were the American way of life, I submitted this comment to the online Gazette:

Did Adam Moore really say that “We want people to know that Sheriff’s Meadow is their land trust, and for a kid growing up here that Cedar Tree Neck is their property”?

The Sheriff’s Meadow Foundation is currently waging an expensive legal battle to prevent an island couple, Ben Ramsey and Nisa Counter, from building a home on their own property. They’ve resisted mediation all along, probably because when you’ve got big bucks but few facts on your side, suing makes more sense than working it out.

If I’d been interviewing Mr. Moore, I would have asked how he reconciled his statement with SMF’s actions. I’m surprised Ms. Wells didn’t ask him herself.

The Gazette “moderates” comments submitted to its website. My experience is that if they pass muster, they usually appear within an hour or two. This one hasn’t appeared yet, and it’s been three days. For days the story’s only approved comment started “Good article, Julia” and was written by a self-identified new arrival. This morning, though, what to my wondering eyes should appear but this:

In the article it says Mr. Moore has an “ambitious project to remove invasive species” from these properties. From what I’ve read over the last year I take that to mean the “invasive species” are the people who own and have owned the property for way more years that he has even been around. Let me know if I’m wrong [about] this.

It was signed “Dawn Wilson, NC.”

My own thought was that the Sheriff’s Meadow Foundation itself might be an invasive species. In yesterday’s “Sheriff’s Meadow Gets a Makeover,” Gazette writer Katie Ruppel notes that SMF plans to “control and hopefully eliminate several invasive species that have displaced or destroyed native species” on the property for which SMF was named. SMF does seem to have displaced, or perhaps “misplaced” would be a better word, the ideals on which it was founded.

“As for the plants,” the story warns, “the nature of invasive species is so resilient and competitive that they have no chance without intervention.”

Got that right. It’s long past time for SMF volunteers, donors, and board members to intervene, before SMF displaces anyone else, or destroys their dream of making a home here.

 

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Young Sea Gull

Posted on June 28, 2012 by Susanna J. Sturgis

A recent Tompost on TheTomPostPile (a must for anyone who wants to see and hear more about Martha’s Vineyard), “We Meet Death on the Beach,” reminded me of a poem I wrote in October 1985, just a few months after I moved here. Here it is.

Young Sea Gull

Two dogs joined me on the walk back,
one stocky, black, mostly Lab,
the other smaller, part Shepherd,
with mutton-chop whiskers.

The Lab found me first, barked his companion off
to a respectful distance.
Whiskers tore after sanderlings,
the flock flittered over the waves,
lit down again, safe, up the beach.
He went after a lone sea gull floating
on a broken wave. I waited for gull rise,
Whiskers’ disappointment.

Whiskers had the gull’s wing between his teeth.
NO! I screamed. The dog backed off.
The sea gull, flea-bit brown, rested on the sand,
looked around, no expression in those eyes.
Now’s your chance, I pleaded. A sweep of wave
floated the gull off the sand
into the maw of the next wave. I cursed,
watched the dogs, hoped the tide would do
what wings could not.

The wings beat, the bird lifted up,
the move caught the dog’s eye, he lunged —
NO! I shrieked, and one more time he came away.
I could do nothing, nothing but lead the dogs
away, look back every few steps.
Whiskers made a beeline back, I ran after,
a few steps, stopped. Nothing I could do.
I walked. The Lab trotted alongside.

Whiskers joined us, nothing on him telling
of a kill. They found their people up the beach,
left me following my shadow, long hair bouncing
to the rhythm of my broad-hipped walk,
one hand open, one hand wrapped around
a bit of sea-shaped shell. Hauling lines
a trawler moved west. Sunbathers, a fisherman,
two bird-watchers packed to go home.

The wind had come around southwest,
easy sailing home for me. I wondered
what to have for supper, would tomorrow be
a good day to go to town,
and when, if ever, the South Beach gulls
might notice one

was missing.

 

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Elizabeth in Edgartown

Posted on June 26, 2012 by Susanna J. Sturgis

Here’s the “just the facts, ma’am” version. My slanted, skewed, and otherwise non-objective commentary follows.

This Sunday, July 1, Elizabeth Warren, candidate for the U.S. Senate from our state, will be at the Old Whaling Church in Edgartown to present her ideas and participate in a Q&A with attendees. Doors open at 1 p.m. The event runs from 1:30 to 3 p.m.

As political fundraisers go, this one is pretty affordable: a donation of $25, $50 or $100 will get you in the door. If you’ve got deep pockets and/or high spirits, more is of course welcome.

You can RSVP to campaign staffer Sarah Badawi during business hours at 617-591-2802 or sign up online. (I just did the latter. It’s easy.)

* * *

Here begins my slanted, skewed, and otherwise non-objective commentary.

Last November, in “Nonpartisan,” I blogged about my decision to contribute $25 a month to Elizabeth Warren’s campaign. I’m still doing it, though I’m going to skip two months in order to buy a $50 supporter’s ticket to the July 1 gig in Edgartown. Malvina Forester is now sporting an Elizabeth Warren bumper sticker. The late Tesah Toyota (1998–2003) wore a Studds sticker with pride. When Gerry Studds retired as U.S. representative from the Massachusetts 10th Congressional District, I made him my benchmark: My bumper would promote no candidate if I couldn’t support them as wholeheartedly as I supported Gerry.

Elizabeth Warren is the first to pass the Studds test.

Warren is a Democrat (big surprise), as was Studds. I usually vote Democratic, but I’m resolutely “unenrolled” when it comes to party affiliation. That’s not going to change any time soon. Why not?

Well, take a look at the names on the invitation above. I chortled when I read it. In the middle of the fourth line is Richard Knabel, the selectman from my town who’s put serious effort into trying to make sure the island gets heard on the roundabout issue. On the next line is Chris Murphy, the current Martha’s Vineyard Commission chair, who has probably done more than any other individual to make sure we don’t get heard. Both are rallying behind a Democratic candidate who promises to help make our voices — the voices of ordinary working people, and others of modest means — heard in Washington.

Over the last year, I’ve  been acutely aware that there’s a Democrat in the governor’s office, and that MassDOT (the state Department of Transportation) is run by Democratic appointees. Our state senator and state representative, both Democrats, are gung ho to overturn the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision but they’re mealy-mouthed equivocators when it comes to the anti-democratic process that’s trying to stuff this roundabout down our throats.

As above, so below, people. On the global level, it may be dictators and financiers who are squelching democracy, but here on the ground we of more modest means are doing a pretty good job of squelching each other. Some people get it, and if you get it and speak out against the squelchers, go ahead and vote for Scott Brown and Mitt Romney: I don’t care. Some people don’t get it at all. They’re for democracy in Egypt and China and on Wall Street, but it makes them nervous when it’s up close and personal. Many of them are active Democrats. A couple of weeks ago I attended an organizing meeting for the local Warren campaign. For all the island connection, it might as well have been held in Newton or Amherst.

The struggle for democracy where I live is mostly nonpartisan. And that’s why, despite the Warren sticker on my bumper and the button on my jacket, I remain unenrolled.

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