Commentary
When Sandy Pimentel from the Martha’s Vineyard Community Services board of directors called me back in January to ask if I would consider hosting the 2013 Possible Dreams auction, taking up the gavel where legendary humorist Art Buchwald left off, I was completely blown away.
Someone once told me that writers are people who have failed at other careers. That’s not always true, but it is for me.
I moved to the Vineyard in 2006 and still feel like a washashore.
Back in the day, as they say, when a lot was two words and a newspaper lede (which this is right here – the opening paragraph) was a lead, and when a woman was called Jaymie it was spelled Jamie and not Jaime, which should be pronounced Hymay as it is in Spanish, back then when all was right with the world (but not nearly as right as it is today), I read books. Real books with bindings and pages, both hard and soft cover. I still do.
The following essays were the top three winners in the annual Della Hardman Day essay contest for students at the Martha’s Vineyard Regional High School. The theme this year was: “Does entertainment such as video games, TV, movies and social media, have the capacity to ‘ruin’ society, as Neal Gabler suggested in his book Life the Movie: How Entertainment Conquered Reality.”
Last weekend the Charles W. Morgan was relaunched on her 172nd birthday after a major rebuild; much of her remains original including the keelson. The live oak in her massive double sawn frames was salvaged after a southern U.S. hurricane, and she has been rebuilt absolutely true to her original design and methods of construction. She was originally launched from the Hillman Shipyard in New Bedford (the Hillman family came from Chilmark) on July 21, 1841, and sailed on 37 voyages with the last voyage in 1921.