Commentary
When I heard the sad news that famed British broadcaster Sir David Frost had died, I went to my bookshelf and pulled down a yellowed $1.45 Vintage paperback, The Immense Journey, by the great American anthropologist and author Dr. Loren Eiseley.
On a dog day this summer, I paid a visit to Oak Bluffs. With midsummer traffic, it’s a bit of a jaunt from West Tisbury where I now live, but Oak Bluffs is on the water and West Tisbury center isn’t, and getting a glimpse of boats and a harbor seemed a cooling and inviting prospect. My Saturday afternoon stroll along the harbor and Circuit avenue brought back many memories.
When I fell and broke my wrist in early August, my normal hectic routine — daily tennis, regular kayaking, and too many hours working at the computer — came to a screeching halt. With my left arm and hand encased in a high-tech black Exos cast, my choices at first seemed limited.
Water is an essential ingredient for the existence of life as we know it. Water is the only substance naturally present on the earth that exists in three distinct states — solid, liquid and gas.
In the water molecule, oxygen is the central atom. It has four pairs of valence electrons surrounding it.
On the west end of Edgartown a 350-acre plot of land called Pohogonot Farm is nestled deep in the scrub oak forest on the south shore of Martha’s Vineyard. In 1893 my great-great-grandfather George D. Flynn first visited Pohogonot Farm. He fell in love with this piece of property while recovering from a railroad accident, and ended up purchasing 1,500 acres of land between 1906 and 1917. Four houses built by the Samuel Smith family existed on Pohogonot when first bought.
This past June I went back to Bimini in the Bahamas to see old friends and to locate a few places that I visit in my dreams. One afternoon I rode my bike from the south end of the island three miles north to the tiny settlement of Porgy Bay, where my wife Bonnie and I spent magic summers when we were in our twenties. I like to say to people that Bimini hasn’t changed much in the past fifty years but that is just something I wish to believe. I passed a new medical clinic and athletic center, and ungainly concrete houses on both sides of the dusty road.