STFU

Posted on August 3, 2011 by Susanna J. Sturgis

Ennhhh

Ennhhh

Ennhhh

The bleeps come at intervals just long enough that after each one I think they’ve stopped for good. No such luck.

Ennhhh

Hekate the laptop sits on a lap desk laid across the arms of a small easy chair. I am working. I don’t want to get up. “Shut the fuck up!” I yell from behind the keyboard. Trav doesn’t like the bleeps, but he likes this even less. When humans go off the rails, the world’s foundations wobble. He looks at me, anxious.

Ennhhh

The object of my distraction

Shut the fuck up. The smoke detector battery needs replacing. The smoke detector is located in the hardest-to-reach corner of my high ceiling. Its cover has been hanging by an electrical cord since the last time I replaced the battery because I got exasperated standing on top of a rickety step ladder reaching above my head trying to align the cover with the screw heads that hold it in place.

I get up. I find a nine-volt battery in my top junk drawer. This is good.

Ennhhh

This corner of my ceiling is hard to reach because the floorspace underneath it is occupied by another small easy chair that hasn’t been sittable for many years but, covered with a blue sheet and several articles of clothing not quite dirty enough to wash, it serves as a place to pile frequently used reference books, papers, and folders, not to mention my telephone. I sit the phone on top of the scanner, which rests on a small table just to the right of the chair. I pull the chair away from the wall, very very carefully because there are wires and cables going every which way. A few of my computer peripherals are wireless. Most of them are not.

Ennhhh.

Dust lies like a light gray carpet upon the dark blue carpet. Most likely I have not vacuumed back here since the last time I changed the smoke detector battery. I summon the Miele from the closet and we go to work. Fifteen minutes later, the carpet is dark blue and there are no cobwebs on the computer cables, the Rinnai heater, or the windowsill. Since I’ve got the vacuum out, I proceed to vac the rest of the apartment. When you live with an Alaskan malamute, your house always needs vacuuming, even if you did it yesterday, and even if your dog is not currently blowing his coat. I did not vacuum yesterday. Fortunately my apartment is very small.

I bring the rickety step ladder in from the deck and set it up under the smoke detector. Battery between my teeth, I climb.

Ennhhh

Standing on the next-to-top step I manage to extract the old battery and insert the new. The smoke detector finally shuts the fuck up. I, on the other hand, have just begun to cuss in earnest as I reach above my head and try to make the screws in the ceiling align with the slots in the smoke detector. At last one screw complies and that is enough. The cover is no longer dangling from the ceiling.

Now the vac is back in the closet, the step ladder is out on the deck. The carpet behind the chair is dark blue again, and the bleeping smoke detector is no longer bleeping.

“Pretty good day so far . . .”

With a nod to Loudon Wainwright III

 

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August 1 broke the blog’s July 27 record for most views in a single day. Thank you!

Posted on August 2, 2011 by Susanna J. Sturgis | Leave a comment

My Martha’s Vineyard

Posted on August 1, 2011 by Susanna J. Sturgis

Which Martha’s Vineyard do you live on?

All the road maps and atlases agree that there’s just one Martha’s Vineyard, but none of us live on those maps. I’m talking about the map that lives in each of our heads. Call it our psychic map. No two psychic maps are exactly the same, though you’ll almost certainly find the Steamship Authority dock in Vineyard Haven on just about everyone’s map, be they day-tripper, summer visitor, recent arrival, longtime year-rounder, or island native.

For many summer people, the island winks into existence in late spring and winks out again around Columbus Day. For year-rounders there’s no winking in and out, but some parts of the Vineyard are much realer than others, and some don’t exist at all. Here is the Martha’s Vineyard I live on:

On my Martha’s Vineyard, State Road ends at my friend Cris’s road, across from what is now the Grey Barn and Farm. If Martha’s Vineyard were flat, Chilmark and Aquinnah would be over the edge, in “Here be dragons” territory. Yes, I can find my way to Beetlebung Corner, the Gay Head Cliffs, and Menemsha, but unless I’m en route to or from, they’re wavery to nonexistent on my psychic map.

My map starts to dissolve in the middle of the island about half a mile east of Barnes Road. Edgartown snaps into existence when I have to go there, then it slides back into the mist. Chappaquiddick might as well be in upstate New York. At the Edgartown post office, I rarely recognize anybody either in line or at the counter. That’s how I know I’ve crossed the border into another country. When I go to Reliable Market in Oak Bluffs or up-Island Cronig’s in West Tisbury, I recognize the cashiers and many of the customers. When I go to either the Stop & Shop in Edgartown or the one in Vineyard Haven, I can’t find anything and I don’t know anyone. Try going to a supermarket or a post office that you rarely visit. See if you don’t feel at least a little out of place, not quite at home.

That rose-colored squiggle on my map is (don’t laugh) State Road. All but 2 of my 26 years on the Vineyard have been lived within a mile of State Road, about half in Vineyard Haven and half in West Tisbury. Many longtimers and island natives identify strongly with one town. I’m sort of a bi-townie with a third affinity for Oak Bluffs, where I’ve had a lot of friends over the years and spent a lot of time.  I feel most at home when I’m within hailing distance of State Road.

Over the years my psychic map has evolved. Getting back into horses at the end of 1998 overhauled my map in a big way, bringing new places and people into focus while familiar ones receded into the background. Horses, I learned, leave little time or energy for other serious commitments, which is why there’s very little overlap between, say, horse people and theater people: horse people and theater people live on different Martha’s Vineyards. When I sold my horse in 2010, the horse places dimmed on my map, but they retain a vestigial presence that they didn’t have before.

People often talk about Martha’s Vineyard as if it’s one big community. It isn’t. Martha’s Vineyard is made up of many overlapping communities that exist in one geographical space. Our psychic maps are so different. A place familiar to me may barely exist for you. A venue that you find welcoming may turn a cold shoulder to me. The Island’s real fault lines don’t lie between the six towns but between the maps we have in our heads.

So, if you live in the U.S. — which United States do you live in? (Feel free to substitute the country, state, province, or other geopolitical unit of your choice!)

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Spirituals at East Chop Light

Posted on July 30, 2011 by Susanna J. Sturgis

Jim Thomas and the Spirituals Choir

I’d managed to miss all chances to hear the Martha’s Vineyard Spirituals Choir, despite best intentions and the fact that several friends sing in it, but this week I made up for lost time by hearing them twice, first at the Vineyard Haven library on Wednesday and then last night at the East Chop Light. Sky and sea were dramatically overcast, the forecast rain didn’t arrive, and I got to climb the lighthouse stairs for the first time in almost 20 years.

Director Jim Thomas founded the U.S. Slave Song Project in 2005 to educate the public about the slave songs, also known as Negro spirituals. These are true American folk songs: they were not composed but instead arose without attribution from the people who sang them. They were a means of communication, and, notes Jim, they were always sung in code.

A lamp in the window signified that a station on the Underground Railroad was safe to approach; hence “Keep Your Lamps Trimmed and Burning.” “Wade in the Water” was good advice to fugitive slaves determined to elude pursuing dogs who lose the scent in water. Other references to water, including the River Jordan, often signified the Atlantic Ocean, crossed by captives in the Middle Passage, and the home on the other side was Africa. If white Christians thought the slaves were singing about going to heaven, or that “that old-time religion” was Christianity, no one was going to set them straight.

Last night’s performance kicked off Della Hardman Weekend, an evolving annual celebration of the life and work of the late artist and community inspiration. Andrea Taylor (left), Della’s daughter, talked about her mother’s life and the rest of the weekend’s events. The sign she’s holding says SAVOR THE MOMENT, a Della axiom and part of her legacy.

A lighthouse keeper's view of the choir

The lighthouse was open for visitors, so of course I had to climb the stairs, then the ladder, and then duck through the very low (three feet high? less?) door to the outside. In the early 1990s a friend was the keeper. She’d open the lighthouse almost every Sunday evening, and often two or three musicians — often including the late bluesman Maynard Silva and harmonica virtuoso Eddy Larkosh — would drop in to jam. The acoustics were, in a word, awesome.

Christina dances

Christina Montoya sings in the choir and is also a fabulous dancer. Her dance and recital of Maya Angelou’s poem “Still I Rise” was a knockout.

As I type, the M.V. Spirituals Choir is en route to Nantucket, where they’ll be performing at the Unitarian church this afternoon. For $25 you could go along on the ferry. I was tempted; boy, was I tempted.

Vineyard Haven harbor from East Chop Light

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According to my WordPress dashboard, one of the “top searches” that’s bringing people to this site is “man passed out under tree.” Huh? I’m afraid the searchers are going to be disappointed.

Posted on July 30, 2011 by Susanna J. Sturgis | 5 Comments

Malware

Posted on July 29, 2011 by Susanna J. Sturgis

I spent half of yesterday morning dealing with a malware infestation on my laptop, the mighty Hekate O’Dell. You may think this has nothing to do with living on Martha’s Vineyard, but Hekate and I live on Martha’s Vineyard and everything is related, right?

First the ordinarily staid Hekate went batshit. A convincing window opened on the screen. It was titled Win 7 Antispyware 2012, it claimed to be scanning my computer for viruses, and it listed seven uglies that it had already found. Down in the lower left corner it said: “Activate your copy right now and get full real-time protection with Win 7 Antispyware 2012!” Other pop-up windows warned me that my security had been compromised, my identity was at risk, and my computer was the victim of a “stealth intrusion.” While my right brain was freaking out because something seemed to be devouring the innards of my computer, my left brain was going, “Nah, wait a sec here. Legit programs don’t show up uninvited, and besides it’s not 2012 yet.”

The editorial mind then noticed the top line of the window: Win 7 Antispyware 2012 – Unregistred Version. “Unregistred”? This had to be bogus.

No computer problem exists that someone hasn’t solved already, so I tried to go online to discover what this was about. Firefox wasn’t loading right, and IExplorer claimed to be blocking access to Google for my own protection. Right. This rogue looks out for #1, and its #1 is not me. Like the legendary HAL 9000, the rogue is intensely self-protective and fiendishly clever at making sure that you cannot get rid of it.

I, however, am more clever than this rogue. I posted an e-mail query to Copyediting-L. CE-L is for people in the word trades, most people in the word trades use computers, and the result is that CE-L has been my major source of computer info and do-it-yourself tech support for about 14 years now. Almost immediately I received a link to the relevant page at Bleepingcomputer.com and reassurance that yes indeed, I could get rid of the nasty.

The nasty, I learned, doesn’t want you to download anything that might kill it, but lucky for me, I’ve been a two-computer household since Hekate joined Morgana V, my old desktop, a year ago. I read the instructions very carefully, printed them out, and downloaded and saved to CD a file that would fix Hekate’s registry and enable me to get on with ridding Hekate of the infestation which (like a flock of geese on a sandbar) leaves a lot of unwanted crap behind. Once loaded into Hekate’s CD drive, it did exactly that. I followed the rest of the instructions. Outta here, rogue. Drop dead, have a miserable life, don’t come back.

OK, here comes the preachy part of the parable. (Didn’t realize it was a parable, did you? Me either.) Note that in the saga just told, no money changed hands. My editor colleague relayed the Bleepingcomputer.com link in less time than it would have taken me to get through to a computer tech by phone or e-mail. Bleepingcomputer’s instructions were detailed, easy to follow, well illustrated, and accurate. (I’m an editor, people: I know that a lot of time goes into producing instructions that good.) The programs I needed to clean up the mess, FixNCR.reg and RKill, were both free for the downloading. So was Malwarebytes’ Anti-Malware, which I had on Morgana V and should have had on Hekate. Malwarebytes comes in both freeware and “pro” (paid) versions. The pro version is not expensive, and I plan to spring for it out of gratitude.

Last week I almost throttled a woman who was insisting that “You get what you pay for.” Yesterday I didn’t pay anything and now my computer works. Maybe there’s more to it than that.

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Yesterday, July 27, was this blog’s busiest day yet, handily surpassing the tally for opening day, July 8. Thanks to all you subscribers, commenters, and readers for your support!!

Posted on July 28, 2011 by Susanna J. Sturgis | 3 Comments

Small Lives, Real Lives

Posted on July 27, 2011 by Susanna J. Sturgis

I had a major epiphany the other morning while reading Jan Pogue’s blog. Jan is the publisher behind Vineyard Stories, an independent press that publishes books about Martha’s Vineyard.

The epiphany-inducing blog (which you can read in its entirety here) began like this:

Yesterday, I had conversations (in no particular order, and all by 1 pm) about mosquitoes, goats, zucchini, gravel, lemonade, an artist’s new works, harpooned swordfish, carpet, tonsils, buying big rocks, selling books, organic farmers, the right bone for a dog, fishing, bell ringers, and shipping costs to Nebraska.

My marigolds don't talk to me; I eavesdrop.

Now, if I had that many conversations in the course of a week, I’d suspect that my butterfly mind had kicked into dangerously high gear and probably needed a heavy-duty tranquillizer, but still those all sounded like sensible things to have conversations about, so I was taken aback by the next paragraph, which consisted of a single sentence:

What a small life I am living.

My life is not small. Why did Jan think hers was? This was what followed:

Last week when friends from Connecticut and Atlanta took me to dinner and we were having a fine conversation about some inane thing, one of them suddenly stopped and said, “I can go months without talking about things like this.”

You must be leading a piss-poor life, I thought, and that’s when I had my epiphany. It had to do with big lives and small lives, with the difference between year-round Vineyarders and summer people, and with a hybrid category that’s been gaining influence in the last dozen years or so, what I call the “year-round summer people.” The year-round summer people live here year-round, but they seem to think that real life takes place somewhere else. Big lives, small lives, thought I. Maybe the big-life people don’t recognize Vineyard lives as real lives. Maybe our lives are so small they don’t even see us.

I moved here from Washington, D.C. The D.C. I lived in is not the one you see on the news. The federal government had no more impact on my daily life than it does on the lives of USians in, say, Florida, Nebraska, California, or Massachusetts — with one exception: lots of my friends were employed or had been employed by a federal agency or two or three, as clericals and administrative staff. The news reported by the Washington Post, the Washington Star (which died in 1981), and the Washington Times (founded in 1982 and widely referred to as “the Moonie newspaper”) had very little to do with the D.C. I lived in.

When I moved to Martha’s Vineyard, it had been several years since I’d been a daily newspaper reader. The neighborhoods where I lived and worked, the lesbian community, the women in print movement, women’s music, street hassles, the Metro, the sex wars that were blowing grassroots feminism apart: these were real life, big life, whether they ever appeared in the Washington Post or not (they didn’t).

Travvy has strong opinions. I pay attention to him too.

I knew very little about Martha’s Vineyard when I got here, and much of what I thought I knew turned out to be not all that important, but I did know one thing: that Martha’s Vineyard was real life, big life, and that if I wanted to be part of it, I had better pay close attention to what the place had to say for itself.

In the years since, the small place where I live has taught me an astonishing amount about the wider world. Big-life generalizations, however, haven’t taught me much about Martha’s Vineyard. Poets and playwrights, fiction writers and essayists, seem to understand this, that by writing perceptively about the particular, one is writing about the whole world. Journalists, I think, tend not to get it.

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SOOP MV

Posted on July 25, 2011 by Susanna J. Sturgis

Some of the audience, many of whom also performed

Martha’s Vineyard has a long history of Vineyarders entertaining each other in living rooms, backyards, church basements, barns — almost any space will do. Last night I went to SOOP MV. I’m pleased to report that we’re still doing it, and damn are we good.

SOOP stands for Stories of Our People. Jonah Lipsky discovered it in Boston and imported it to MV. This was only the second SOOP MV, but already it seems to have put down strong roots. The idea is that you bring something to perform (poem, story, song, whatever), though coming just to listen is fine, and a vegetable for the soup pot. After the performances, you hang out and eat the soup.

When I arrived, vegetable chopping was well under way and two pots were already bubbling on the stove. The place was a cozy summer apartment on the second floor of a small barn. The performances took place outside. The heat of the last few days had broken, the evening air was perfect, and if being directly under the flyway into the county airport caused frequent audio interruptions, these were gracefully accommodated.

Kanta and the magic red cooler

Kanta Lipsky bravely broke the ice with a tale of a red tow truck summoned to right an overturned ice cream wagon. In the story the bystanders got to eat the ice cream, and wonder of wonders, so did we. See that red cooler at Kanta’s side? It was full of ice cream sandwiches, neatly halved, which she passed out at the end of the story. Talk about hard acts to follow!

The next act followed undaunted, however, as did the one after that and all the ones following.

Jonah, waiting for enlightenment

The audience reoriented itself 90 degrees clockwise so that Jonah Lipsky and Casey Hayward could include some trees in the set for their short play, in which a man meditating under a tree at night is interrupted by a woman with a flashlight who thinks she is looking for the beach. The actors co-wrote the play, one writing four lines then the other writing four lines.

Ben Williams

Dan Waters sang about a black umbrella, and performance poet Ben Williams displayed his impressive range with one poem about difficult family legacies and another created for the kids he works with at Sense of Wonder day camp. Stories followed songs, poems followed plays. All were good, some were considerably more, and no one hogged the time. Everyone seemed to know the performer’s axiom “Leave them wanting more,” and in every case we would happily have listened to another song, another poem. The transitions between performances were so smooth they seemed to have been scripted.

The Hogstompers played John Hartford's "Long Hot Summer Day"

Dusk was falling when the performances ended and we moved upstairs for hearty soup and excellent bread. When the evening started, I hardly knew anybody, but once someone has shared their work with you, it’s easy to get a conversation going with a complete stranger. As one woman noted, many creative people love to talk about how they do what they do. No surprise then that pretty much everybody was talking as if they were old friends, whether they were or not.

Keep your eye out for the next SOOP! SOOP MV is on Facebook, and the word is spreading in other ways as well.

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

The town tennis courts are locked. The brand-new basketball court right next to it isn’t. This morning people were playing tennis on the basketball court.

Posted on July 24, 2011 by Susanna J. Sturgis | 4 Comments