Meetings

Posted on February 20, 2012 by Susanna J. Sturgis

An islander who knows whereof he speaks recently noted that for some people the Vineyard off-season is one long meeting.

In the last eight months I’ve been to a bunch of meetings. Not all that many compared to what, say, my town government buddies go to, but more than I’d been to in the previous eight years. I’ve got one foot in the Meetings R Us world and one in the I’d Rather Go to the Dentist’s Than Sit Through a Meeting world. Out of the resulting dissonance this blog has come.

People who go to lots of meetings tend to believe that life revolves around meetings, meetings are real life, if you don’t go to meetings you are hopelessly out of it. This was also true in the women’s community from whence I moved to Martha’s Vineyard. I figure that anything the women’s community and Martha’s Vineyard, different as they are one from the other, have in common is probably true of human nature. One woman I knew in D.C. was such a meeting junkie that when she was in the bookstore where I worked, she’d always ask to use the phone, and the conversation would invariably be to follow up on the meeting she went to the night before or to urge someone to come to the meeting she was planning to attend that night. Now that we have cell phones, Twitter, and IM to do this, I’m sure the meeting junkies are in hog heaven 24/7.

I also know people who are convinced that if you aren’t on Facebook and don’t spend at least half your waking hours online, you are hopelessly out of it. What this suggests is that meetings, Facebook, and cyberspace are not the big issue. The big issue is that most of us are deep-down convinced that the life we’re living is realer than the lives other people are living, unless of course we see those other people at meetings or in cyberspace. Everyone, as I’m so fond of saying, is the hero of their own story.

So I’ve been to a bunch of meetings in the last eight months. Some of them were formal, like Martha’s Vineyard Commission meetings and West Tisbury board of selectmen’s meetings. A formal meeting is one at which familiarity with parliamentary procedure, like Robert’s Rules of Order, is a definite plus. Others were informal, like the meetings we roundabout opponents have had to brainstorm, share information, and strategize. At these meetings, parliamentary procedure is rarely invoked, but it helps if you use your eyes and ears more than you use your mouth.

“Strategize” — doesn’t that sound heavy? I’m starting to talk like a meeting junkie.

I caught myself a few times excusing myself from some activity by saying semi-apologetically “I’ve got a meeting.” This can be innocuous, a simple statement of fact, but sometimes it isn’t. Often a tone creeps in that isn’t apologetic at all: the subtext is something like Meetings are important, meetings are non-negotiable, if you want me to participate in your activity, you’ll have to accommodate my schedule.

The flip side of this, as any non-meeting junkie will point out, is that meeting junkies use meetings to avoid getting a life — exactly the same charge that non-cyber junkies level against people who spend too much time Twittering and Facebooking or yakking on their cell phones. “Too much” is of course a subjective thing. Most of the time, when most of us  say that we are doing something “too much” — going to meetings, hanging out online, or eating chocolate — we don’t really mean it. What we mean is “I know you think I go to too many meetings / spend too much time online / eat too much chocolate, and I’m pretending to concede the point in order to get you off my case.”

If you don’t believe me, try this: The next time a friend says to you “I know I spend too much time [fill in the blank],” respond with “Yes, you do — I’ve been meaning to mention that” or something along those lines. If you can back-pedal real fast and if you’re real lucky, you’ll still be friends tomorrow.

So how do you know if you should be going to Meetings Anonymous meetings? That’s tricky. If you miss a meeting, do you hyperventilate, sweat profusely, and/or drink too much? Do you panic when you lose whatever device you use to keep track of your schedule? Do you wake up the morning after a meeting with no recollection of what happened at the meeting? Try going cold turkey for a few days. See what happens.

MVC meeting makes like a hurricane

Posted in musing, public life | Tagged , , , | 4 Comments

Facebook MV

Posted on February 18, 2012 by Susanna J. Sturgis

Anything any Facebook junkie says about Facebook has to be taken with a few grains of salt, for the same reasons that no junkie can be trusted where junk is concerned. Everyone’s the hero of her own story, and most of the time that includes me.

No two people have the same Facebook experience either. It depends a lot on what you put into it, and it also depends a lot on who you know. If your friends are witty, well-informed, and/or creative, you’ll have a good time and probably learn plenty of cool stuff. If your friends are self-absorbed and boring — well, get some new friends!

Rather than rhapsodize boringly about the wonders of Facebook, I’m just going to list four specific things I really like about it. Four specifically Martha’s Vineyard things: this is a Vineyard blog after all.

Vineyard Music-Scene

One of the biggest surprises after I finally signed up with Facebook just over a year ago was that I found myself going to more local events, readings, concerts, artisans’ fairs, and the like. Vineyard Music-Scene is one of the reasons. It’s a bulletin board for all things musical on Martha’s Vineyard. Musicians and bands announce upcoming gigs and soon-to-be-released albums. Looking for a session player or a percussionist to sit in? Need a string trio to perform at a wedding, or a pianist at a gallery opening? Post it here.  Vineyard Music-Scene has close to 5,000 friends on and off the island. It’s exhilarating to see just how much music is being made on Martha’s Vineyard these days, and to hear how good it is.

Martha’s Vineyard where are you

It’s not true that everybody knows everybody on Martha’s Vineyard, though if you’ve been around a while you’ll recognize at least the names of many others who’ve been around a comparable while. I knew Martina Mastromonaco was an EMT and the Chilmark beach superintendent. I had no idea that she’s a fabulous photographer. She posts photographs; we try to identify the location. Some are easy, some aren’t, and sometimes you just admire the image and don’t worry about where it was taken.

Martina has an eclectic eye: she loves seascapes and moonscapes, and old farmhouses, and the way rope twists around a post, or a moody sky ripples in window glass, or license plate holders pile up at a service station. I’m forever catching new facets of familiar places, and being reminded of places I rarely go, like Lucy Vincent Beach.

What makes Martha’s Vineyard where are you even cooler is that often an image will set off recollections about the place or people it depicts; many of the page’s regular contributors have been around forever and know a lot. They post photos too.

MV Stuff 4 Sale

One of the most popular features of the Martha’s Vineyard Times is the Bargain Box, where the classifieds are free as long as what you’re selling costs $100 or less and you don’t need more than 20 words to describe it. MV Stuff 4 Sale is even better: there’s no limit on either cost or words, you can post pictures, and people can ask questions about whatever you’re selling. It’s like a virtual yard sale. Clothing, shoes, furniture, computers and small electronics, cars, musical instruments . . .

Musician and massage therapist Kim Hilliard started the group just a few weeks ago. It’s already got 500 members, and if one of them knows someone who might be interested in what you’re selling, they’ll pass the word along. If you’re looking for something, you can post that too.

My workspace, always messy, had been getting messier. My desk was clearly part of the problem: it consists of a big piece of varnished particle board on top of two two-drawer file cabinets; my scanner sat on a small end table off to the left, and my keyboard and mouse on the table that I also use to knead bread on. Bulky, messy, u-g-l-y — to the point where I was thinking about getting a computer desk from Staples. Where spending money is concerned I can procrastinate forever, and since the project would clearly involve overhauling that end of my studio apartment I was fully prepared to procrastinate even longer.

So a week ago Thursday the photo of a solid, two-piece computer desk was posted to MV Stuff 4 Sale. It was love at first sight, but it took me two days to admit it, mainly because buying it would mean I had to get serious about making my workspace workable. I came to my senses. We moved it in yesterday (read on for this part of the story). I’m thrilled.

MV Workers / MV Jobs

This group spun off from MV Stuff 4 Sale because quite a few Vineyarders were posting job or help wanted notices there. I no longer drive a pickup, and my Forester couldn’t accommodate even one piece of my new desk, so I posted a “trucker wanted” notice. Katrina Nevin, who started the group, passed the word along to a friend of hers. We made a deal, and yesterday we moved the desk.

See? Facebook isn’t just a time sink. It’s practical. It’s like a grapevine on steroids — with pictures.

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

Doomsdog Update

Posted on February 15, 2012 by Susanna J. Sturgis

I went to the West Tisbury selectmen’s meeting this afternoon. After several items of new business — from road repair to a benefit bike race — up came the old business, which is to say the dog business. The dogs’ owners, Taggart Young and Anna Bolotovsky, were there, along with their lawyer — the only fellow in the room wearing a clean white shirt, as opposed to the fleece, wool, and/or flannel that the rest of us were decked out in.

The lawyer did his best, but the selectmen weren’t buying it. Sally Apy, an island dog lover and fearless activist, has been talking with Big East Akita Rescue (BEAR). BEAR is ready and willing to take these two dogs on and find good homes for them. Sally had already written a letter to the selectmen; she rose and spoke at the meeting.

In a firm and eloquent statement, selectman Cindy Mitchell said she wasn’t willing to sign off on any settlement that left the dogs in the hands of their current owners — and that included a formal transfer of ownership to Anna’s mother and/or sister. She was willing to consider a proposal that included a transfer to a third party, such as BEAR.

So the lawyer and the current owners have a week to come up with a detailed proposal that the selectmen will agree to. Stay tuned.

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Doomsdog

Posted on February 14, 2012 by Susanna J. Sturgis

Rhodry helps hay the horses at Crow Hollow Farm

We take dogs seriously on Martha’s Vineyard, it’s often said, and this is true. Many, many people have at least one dog. Dogs go to work, not only on construction sites but also in some shops and offices. Dogs are welcome at my bank. Rhodry would endear himself to everybody in sight by standing two-legged at the counter until the teller gave him a cookie. These days I’m more apt to use the drive-up window; when Travvy is with me, as he usually is, a biscuit arrives in the canister or drawer along with my cash or deposit slip.

My dog's best friend

My gas station usually has biscuits on hand, but that’s not too surprising because the family that runs the gas station includes Joannie Jenkinson, the West Tisbury animal control officer (ACO). Travvy can hear the UPS truck at least half a mile away, and he goes nuts when the big brown truck pulls into the driveway. The UPS guy’s cookies look like everybody else’s cookies, but as far as Travvy’s concerned, they’re magic.

Right now, however, the dark side of dog ownership is playing out in a high-profile case in my town. When dogs get into trouble on Martha’s Vineyard, livestock is almost always involved. Quite a few people keep chickens and other fowl, and “free range” is all the rage; the range is likely to be not a farm but a house lot of three acres or less. Neighbors, in other words, are not far away, and some of those neighbors have dogs.

Farmers and other keepers of livestock are entitled to shoot any dog menacing their animals, but usually they don’t exercise this right. When they don’t, the town steps in. Sometimes a first offense prompts the owners to get their dogs under control. When it doesn’t, the town steps in further.

The case under way at the moment involves two young Akitas, not yet a year old. They belong to a youngish couple, boyfriend and girlfriend; each one owns one of the dogs. The dogs got loose last fall and went after a neighbor’s chickens and geese. At the hearing that followed that incident, the town ordered the couple to pay a fine, make restitution for the fowl, and build a pen that met the specs of the ACO. This they did.

But the dogs got loose again.

And again.

And again.

And again. In the most recent incident they killed two more geese and 14 chickens. This time the ACO caught one of the dogs, who has been in the pound ever since. The owners were supposed to let the ACO know when the other dog came home, but instead the male half of the couple took her off-island.

Now I’m more than ready to give the couple a bye for the first incident. It wasn’t till Travvy went AWOL on me a couple of times when he was about a year old that I realized that he couldn’t run off-leash the way Rhodry had. He has a stronger prey drive than Rhodry, and the island is more crowded than it was 15 years ago. Lucky for us, he did no damage on his escapades.

But these two dogs have gotten loose five times, even though the owners knew after the first incident what was at stake: they were told that if it happened again, the dogs would be euthanized. At least once their excuse was that they weren’t home when it happened: they’d left the dogs in the care of a roommate. Sorry, but if my dog were one spree away from a death sentence, either I’d put him in a kennel or I wouldn’t go away.

So the town ordered the couple to take the dogs off-island — where one of them already was — and things were heading in that direction when the male half of the couple showed up at the pound and told the staff that the town had released the dog to him. This was a crock: a staffer made a phone call and learned as much.

At this point the board of selectmen ran out of patience and, last Wednesday, ordered the dogs euthanized. Since one of the dogs is off-island, the order in effect only applies to the one in the pound. The owners have 10 days to appeal the decision.

What do I think of all this? I don’t know any of the people involved. Akitas, however, are considered a northern breed and have quite a few things in common with Alaskan malamutes: they are big, powerful, smart, independent, and not for everybody. There but for fortune go I, I think — but on the other hand, if I could learn to manage my Alaskan malamute, these people could learn to manage their Akitas, and so far they haven’t taken any steps in that direction.

I don’t think they’re right for these dogs. If these humans were capable of rising to the occasion, they would have done so before now. Instead — well, neither one of these two dogs is neutered, and the male half of the couple has expressed interest in breeding them. Hello? He can’t manage two ten-month-olds and he wants to raise a litter?

Just about everybody realizes that the dogs were doing what comes naturally; it’s the people who have screwed up. Apart from fines and restitution orders, however, there’s no way to punish the people — or to make them wise up. The exasperating thing here, and in a comparable case that happened down-island a few years ago, involving Siberian huskies, is that the owners keep promising to do better and then fail to keep those promises. So the town officials who are bending over backwards to give them every chance end up looking like patsies — and feeling like crap because the only option they have left is to euthanize the dogs.

In an attempt to avert the worst, some island dog lovers have been contacting Akita rescue groups and exploring other options. The selectmen will be dealing with the case yet again at their meeting tomorrow afternoon. I guess I’m going to be there.

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Midweek Brass

Posted on February 9, 2012 by Susanna J. Sturgis

Summer people are chronically curious about what we year-rounders do in winter when — as I’ve been told more than once — “there’s no one around.”

“We manage,” I like to say, trying to give the impression that it’s tough but we’re hardy and, well, someone‘s got to do it.

Truth to tell, serendipity thrives in the Martha’s Vineyard winter. When a new week begins, you have no idea what you will have done when the week comes to an end. Here’s what I mean.

Mark Wright

Tuesday, Cynthia Riggs — author of the Martha’s Vineyard Mystery Series, host of the annual Groundhog Day party (a high point of last week), and possessor of one of the most fascinating work histories I’ve ever encountered — sent round an e-mail. Her pianist friend Mark Wright was in town, so come on over Wednesday night for “another Cleaveland House spectacular!” Cleaveland House has been in Cynthia’s family for more than 250 years. An altogether wonderful place for parties, it’s also a B&B where poets and writers are especially welcome.

Brass rehearsal

Featured would be Mark, who’s been a regular at Preservation Hall in New Orleans, and Ed Rodgers, a trumpeter retired from the U.S. Navy Band.  And an array of desserts!

As it turns out, members of Vineyard Classic Brass wanted to attend, but they usually rehearse on Wednesday nights. Rehearse at my house! said Cynthia, and so they did — in the cozy front room where my writers’ group (from which I’m currently on blogging leave) usually meets. You’d think that much brass would blow the windows out of a small room, but it didn’t. They sounded great.

Mark Wright on keyboard; Ed Rodgers on trumpet

Mark and Ed played in the dining room, where the table was spread with an array of desserts. My idea of “almost heaven” is a three-course meal, all of whose courses consist of desserts. I considered making it a four-course meal but had a second beer instead.

If there’s anything better to do in the winter than listen to good music while chatting with neighbors and sampling desserts you rarely serve yourself, I can’t think of it at the moment. It’s not a bad way to pass a summer’s evening either.

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Referenda

Posted on February 8, 2012 by Susanna J. Sturgis

Ever since the roundabout resurfaced last spring, we’ve all been itching to put the issue to an island-wide vote. Surely if we, the people got to speak, we could kill this thing?

But for better or worse, there’s no such thing as an island-wide vote. Martha’s Vineyard is one island, yes, but it comprises six towns, each of which holds its own town meetings and its own elections. If you want the whole island to vote on an issue, you have to get it on the ballot and/or the town meeting warrant in each of those six towns.

Well, thanks to the persistence of several people, it’s happening. A referendum on the roundabout is going to be on the ballot this spring in Aquinnah, Chilmark, Edgartown, Oak Bluffs, Tisbury, and West Tisbury.

True, the referenda are non-binding. If the nays have it, as I do expect we will, that won’t stop the roundabout. Legal action can’t stop the roundabout. It looks as though even the Martha’s Vineyard Commission couldn’t have stopped the roundabout once the Oak Bluffs board of selectmen made its deal with the devil Commonwealth of Massachusetts.

But I still cherish the illusion that “we, the people” count for something. And now we’ve got a chance to say it loud: We don’t want your roundabout!

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Occupy MV Needs (The) Help

Posted on February 5, 2012 by Susanna J. Sturgis

A rush proofreading job had to be in New York on Monday. The job was on paper, meaning (duh!) that it couldn’t be sent electronically. UPS, my usual overnight carrier, doesn’t ship on or off the island on weekends (and I wasn’t done in time to make the 3 p.m. cutoff on Friday), but USPS’s Express Mail does go out on Saturdays. The latest deadline for Express Mail is 1 p.m., when the window closes at the Vineyard Haven post office.

Which is where I was at about 12:40 yesterday afternoon, sliding the proof pages into a Tyvek envelope and filling out the shipping form.

The Vineyard Haven p.o. can be pretty hairy on a Saturday morning, with the line snaking from the counter around the center island and down the hall toward the mailboxes. This snaking is mirrored out in the parking lot, which the post office shares with Cumby’s, Cumberland Farms, the convenience store that doubles as a stage for the Vineyard’s best after-hours weirdness. People despair of finding a parking place (thanks in part to all the motorists who stash their vehicles here while doing their errands elsewhere in town), so they stop any old where and leave their engines running while they run inside.

Five Corners lies under the red dot. The green dot marks the blinker intersection, where we don't want no stinkin' roundabout.

On top of all that, the Vineyard Haven post office is located at beautiful Five Corners, the island’s most notorious intersection — the place where a roundabout might not be a bad idea. The Steamship dock is just a few dozen yards away, and all traffic bound to or from the ferries has to pass through Five Corners. To exit the p.o. parking lot, so do most postal and Cumby’s patrons, especially if they’re bound for Oak Bluffs. The island-savvy driver will turn right instead of left and escape the back way, up Skiff Ave. to the Edgartown Road. Mileage-wise, it’s almost three times farther if you go that way to OB, but when the traffic’s bad in summer it can take less time and cause you a lot less hassle.

At 12:40 on an early February afternoon, neither the parking lot nor the post office was crowded. “Are they gonna occupy the post office?” wondered the guy just ahead of me in line. I looked out the door: eight or ten people, bundled up in fleece or down, were standing at Five Corners holding signs. A clerk asked if they were on government property. We said no.

Five Corners is the island’s default demonstration site. On paper this makes some sense: it’s nothing if not centrally located, and the Martha’s Vineyard Times office is just a stone’s throw up the Beach Road. In practice it’s lousy. Acoustics are terrible, thanks to the traffic: speakers and even multi-voice chanting is only audible a few feet away, which means that music is pretty much out. Music is close to crucial for raising energy at demonstration, so it’s no surprise that Five Corners demos tend to be, well, boring. The only exception I can remember is the one got up in the early 1990s in defense of Diarrhea Roses, the Vineyard’s own ingenious grunge band. The signs! the costumes! the chants! That one was a hoot.

This one wasn’t. It was organized by OWS MV, aka Occupy Wall Street Martha’s Vineyard. Among the signs was an island perennial: WAR IS NOT THE ANSWER. Another, homemade, said OCCUPY PEACE. Whazzat mean? I thought about opening the window and yelling “Occupy the Chamber of Commerce!” as I drove through the intersection, but I was too lazy and I figured either they wouldn’t hear it or they wouldn’t get it if they did.

OWS MV's Facebook page this morning. Arrow points to inquiry about yesterday's demo.

Back in November, in “99%,” I set down some of my reservations about the Occupy Wall Street movement — less about OWS itself than about its privileged, middle-aged cheerleaders. These haven’t changed, and they apply in spades to OWS MV. Its Facebook page consists of one link after another to protests in Washington, New York, Oakland — virtually nothing to link OWS to MV, where income inequality isn’t exactly a foreign concept, not to mention all those houses that are unoccupied eight or ten months of the year.

Last week the most exciting news to blip my radar was the huge backlash against the Susan G. Komen Foundation’s decision to “de-fund” Planned Parenthood. I posted this on my Facebook page:

Exhilarated by the backlash against the Komen foundation. Note to OWS people: The problem is bigger than your 1%. Women are still fighting for the right to occupy our own bodies.

Rather than post something similar on the OWS MV page, I decided to wait and see if anyone else mentioned it. So far, no one has.

I just finished reading Kathryn Stockett’s The Help. Yeah, I know: a movie’s already been made of it, and I just got around to reading the book. The Help is about the coming of the civil rights movement to Jackson, Mississippi, in the early to mid-1960s, but none of the novel’s many major and minor characters occupies a lunch counter, sits at the front of a bus, or goes to Washington to march with Dr. King in August 1963. (Some of them do watch the march on TV, however.) Most of the novel takes place in private homes, especially in the kitchens. Through the interactions of a varied cast of characters, black and white, mostly women but with a few men in supporting roles, Stockett does an amazing job of showing how change happens at the personal, interpersonal, and community level.

So far, OWS MV has been unable or unwilling to focus on Martha’s Vineyard, even though there’s plenty going on here that could use a little occupying. Maybe they could use a little help from The Help.

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

Round About Now . . .

Posted on February 3, 2012 by Susanna J. Sturgis

No, the bulldozers haven’t arrived at the blinker intersection, but the roundabout hasn’t gone away either.

In early December, Edgartown and West Tisbury filed a suit in superior court to appeal the decision of the Martha’s Vineyard Commission (MVC) to approve the roundabout. Lawsuits suck, but this is the only way to appeal an MVC decision.

By the end of January the suit had been dropped. Why? Because MVC approval wasn’t required for the project to go forward, so even a successful suit couldn’t stop it. The state can do whatever it wants.

Think about that, people. The MVC is, more or less, in the business of reviewing and approving permits. The roundabout project required no permits. The public hearings were a sham. So were the lackluster meetings that culminated in cliffhanger votes. Our fate, it seems, was sealed in 2010 when the Oak Bluffs board of selectmen signed a contract with the Massachusetts Department of Transportation (MassDOT), giving MassDOT both managerial control of and fiscal responsibility for the roundabout project.

I’d call it a Faustian bargain, but Faust was bargaining with his own soul. The Oak Bluffs board of selectmen was bargaining with something that didn’t belong to it, and with precious little popular support, either in its hometown or around the island. Picture a hero of melodrama, strapped to a log and headed toward a buzzsaw. How are we going to get out of this mess?

In melodrama, the hero is saved in the very nick of time. In real life, rescuers are in short supply. This thing can only be stopped at the state level, but our elected reps don’t want to get involved. State senator Dan Wolf and state representative Tim Madden smile attentively then don’t lift a finger. Rep. Madden’s legislative liaison for Martha’s Vineyard is the niece of the Greg Coogan, gung-ho roundabouter on the Oak Bluffs board of selectmen. Could this have anything to do with Madden’s unwillingness to stick his neck out? Oh, good heavens, Susanna, how could you think such a thing? You’re so cynical!

Yeah, we can vote the bums out, but we don’t get a chance at the commissioners till next November, and by then the intersection will probably be torn up. This thing is so unnecessary, and so unpopular, and so goddamn expensive — why can’t we stop it?

A post by a Facebook friend reminded me that MassDOT is tightening its budgetary belt by threatening cuts to commuter rail service and the MBTA; it also wants to close several Registry of Motor Vehicles offices across the state. Aha, thought I, I know how you could save $1.4 million!

MassDOT, however, hasn’t shown any interest in Vineyard popular opinion. Wolf and Madden won’t help. How to get their attention? It was a long longshot, but last weekend I e-mailed one of the Boston Globe reporters who’s been writing about MassDOT.

I’m e-mailing you because you’ve written about MassDOT’s current budget crunch and down here on Martha’s Vineyard we’ve got an related story that may be of interest: an opportunity for MassDOT to save $1.4 million and make a lot of friends on Martha’s Vineyard. . . .

The short version is that MassDOT wants to replace a four-way stop at a key island intersection with a roundabout. The need for a roundabout has not been proven, its environmental impact has not been addressed, and alternatives have not been adequately explored. About three-quarters of the island population is against it, as measured by informal polls and petitions.

I proceeded to lay out The Basics. I’ve been immersed in this thing long enough that they flow fluently from my fingers.

Wonder of wonders, I got a reply within a few hours: the reporter was interested, but he had to consult with his editors.

Wonder of more wonders, on Monday I got the word that his editors were interested. I e-mailed him a list of key players and their contact info: Coogan of the OB BoS, Mark London of the MVC, Tom Currier at MassDOT, Richard Knabel of the West Tisbury board of selectmen, and so on. Will a story appear in the Globe? If it does, will MassDOT, our elected representatives, and/or the governor take notice? Who knows? Our hero is still headed for the buzzsaw.

Meanwhile, Martha’s Vineyard Patch is working on a story about the roundabout opposition — something neither of our two newspapers have shown much interest in. And opponents are working to get a nonbinding roundabout referendum on the spring election ballots in the various island towns. At last report, it’s on in West Tisbury, Edgartown, and Oak Bluffs and pending approval in Vineyard Haven and Chilmark. Will MassDOT et al. take notice of the results, if — as widely expected — they show widespread opposition to the roundabout? We don’t know that either — but it could be an interesting couple of months.

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January License Plate Report

Posted on January 31, 2012 by Susanna J. Sturgis

I spot license plates. I spot license plates on Martha’s Vineyard. The license plates have to be (a) current, (b) mounted on moving vehicles, and (c) either on Vineyard roads or on the ferry going to or from the Vineyard.

Here’s what the map looks like at the end of January.

In order, the January tally: Massachusetts (big surprise), Connecticut, Maine, Colorado, Florida, New Jersey, Virginia, California, Rhode Island, New York, Vermont, D.C., Maryland, New Hampshire, Washington, Kentucky, Michigan, Minnesota.

18 is slightly below normal for January, but Minnesota, Michigan, and especially Kentucky are good catches for this time of year.

The usual pattern is holding true: New England and the Northeast fill in first, closely followed by the West Coast. Colorado is always an early bird, possibly because Colorado and Martha’s Vineyard both see plenty of seasonal migrants: last summer’s beach bum is this winter’s ski instructor.

Prediction for the coming month: The rest of the Northeast will fill in (Pennsylvania and Ohio), and the Carolinas will show up. So will Oregon. And Texas.

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Death of an Indy Bookstore

Posted on January 28, 2012 by Susanna J. Sturgis

Earlier this week I learned that Edgartown Books was closing for good at the end of February. I’m sorry, yes, not least because Edgartown Books took enough interest in my novel, The Mud of the Place, to keep it in stock, but it’s sort of like mourning the death of the last survivor of World War I: one makes note of the passing, but life goes on pretty much unchanged. The war is long since over.

Celebrating Lammas’s anniversary, probably 1982 or 1984. From left: owner-manager Mary Farmer, yours truly, and Tina Lunson, printer.

Bookstores were once the center of my life. From 1981 to 1985, I was the book and periodical buyer, and in effect the assistant manager, at Lammas Women’s Shop, the femininist bookstore in Washington, D.C. Lammas was part of a vibrant and far-flung network of feminist publishers, newspapers, magazines, printers, record distributors and record labels. That network in turn was connected to all sorts of independent bookstores and creative outlets, progressive, gay, African American — our common denominator was that none of us were being well served, or in many cases served at all, by mainstream publishing and bookselling.

Historic Unicorn Tales T-shirt, the only brown T in my ridiculously large collection

When I moved to Martha’s Vineyard, Lammas was hands-down the best job I’d ever had. (My other best job was still in the future.) No surprise that I put in applications at both the island’s bookstores, one of which was Edgartown Books’ predecessor. At that point it was (I think) still called Unicorn Tales but would within a few years become Bickerton & Ripley — which was of course widely known as Bicker & Rip. Unicorn Tales never responded to my application. The other store did offer me a job. It paid $4/hour, which would go up to $4.25 after a training period. Lammas had been paying me what the owner was paying herself: $5.50/hour and my HMO membership. No, said the much richer bookstore when I tried to negotiate: a part-time position was out of the question.

I couldn’t afford to live on Martha’s Vineyard and eventually buy a car for $4/hour, so this marked both the end of my bookselling career and my introduction to island economics: there are plenty of full-time jobs that one can only afford to hold if one has a trust fund, rent-free accommodations, and/or a spouse who makes enough to pay the rent and keep the car running.

Nevertheless, I continued to carry the torch for independent bookstores. I knew from firsthand experience that books could change and even save lives; wasn’t it the booksellers who connected readers with books they sometimes didn’t know they were looking for? Bookstores organized readings and other book-related events. Bookstores introduced local writers to a wider audience. Bookstores were indispensable.

From at least the early 1980s on, indy bookstores were being seriously threatened by the rise of the big discount chains, Borders, Barnes & Noble, Crown, and others — and by the penchant of big commercial publishers to offer deep unpublicized discounts and other perks to the chains. At first it seemed that the general-interest indies were being hardest hit, the stores whose stock overlapped that of the chains but that couldn’t offer mega-discounts on best-sellers. But the tidal wave soon caught up with the specialty bookstores that served marginalized readers, not least because these stores (like Lammas and just about every feminist store I knew of) were seriously undercapitalized. When I set about promoting my novel, in 2008, fully 90 percent of the stores I’d known in my bookselling days were gone. Including Lammas.

One lasting lesson from my bookselling days was that for most people most of the time, convenience trumps commitment. Lammas was located across town from D.C.’s main shopping districts and workplaces: for many women, it meant a special trip, and rather than take the subway they’d pick up the book they were looking for at the nearest discount store or the gay bookstore near Dupont Circle. They’d come to Lammas for the books and the personalized service they couldn’t find anywhere else.

Thus I gradually fell out of the bookstore browsing habit. Through the mid-1990s, I was doing a lot of reviewing, so plenty of good books arrived unbidden in my p.o. box. Bicker & Rip was in Edgartown, which has been off my beaten path for almost all the years I’ve lived on Martha’s Vineyard, i.e., I’d have to make a special trip and then find a place to park. The more convenient store never had anything I was looking for: its fantasy/science fiction section looked like it had been bought by monkeys, and the women’s sections were jammed with the pop psych stuff beloved of New York publishers. Books from independent publishers and university presses were nowhere to be found — and in the fields I was most interested in, this was where the action was. When I went into the store at all, it was usually to buy notecards or wrapping paper.

Odd, perhaps, for a lifelong reader, I fell out of the reading habit while working on Mud and never got back into it. Why? I read for a living. The people I hung out with rarely talked about books; I don’t have a TV or follow the mainstream media so I didn’t know what “everybody” was talking about. Island bookstores had long since fallen off my psychic map. The serious and unsurprising side effect is that I forgot why I’d ever believed that writing was important. What the hell was I doing on the planet anyway?

Strange but true, it was getting on Facebook exactly a year ago that started to turn things around. Facebook is like an ongoing salon, its conversations made up of words and pictures. Pretty soon I was once again part of a world where words mattered. After a few months I started this blog: Yeah! I’m a word person again!

Then, in December, I got my first e-reader. Yes, it is screamingly ironic that my beloved Nooky was produced by Barnes & Noble, one of the mega-chains that helped kill independent bookselling. I’ve bought more books from Barnes & Noble in the last six weeks than I had in my whole previous life: for decades I wouldn’t be caught dead in any of those chain bookstores.

But now, for the first time in many years, I’m reading three books at once. And now that the world of e-books and e-publication has become part of my psychic map, I’m back to the long-haul writing. I know there are readers out there, and I believe that my words can reach them.

A very belated addendum, November 17, 2014: Edgartown Books reopened a few months after it “closed for good.” It’s still open today. Bunch of Grapes in Vineyard Haven moved across the street to what was most recently Bowl & Board. That was a couple of years ago. I still haven’t been in the new store. I hear that they’ve been a little more friendly to island authors since Mud came out, but island bookstores just aren’t on my psychic map.

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