Commentary
Annie and I spent a lot of time at the beach through the years. I stayed at the tide line. She took off for the dune grass looking for small mammals. There were plenty. If she caught a scent of something underground, she would crouch, her big plume of a tail wagging furiously, and leap straight up into the air like an Arctic fox. She was a border collie mix, big at 55 pounds, and the thrill of the chase was what engaged her.
One day at the beach I saw her in the distance trotting toward me and there was something in her mouth.
In public seminars this month, the Vineyard Conservation Society, using colorful and frightful maps, showed how we were on our way to becoming the next Atlantis. My wife and I just bought here and now they’re telling me “here” may not be here for long? Here I was enjoying my status as a washashore and now they have the audacity to inform me that life’s odyssey is destined to make me an out-at-sea? Why worry about securing my next appointment with the electrician or the plumber if my future is among flotsam and jetsam?
In the cemeteries in Oak
Bluffs, Oak Grove and Sacred Heart, stars and stripes mark the graves of veterans, men and women who fought and served in wars ranging from the Civil War to the World Wars and up to Afghanistan.
Last Saturday morning, Patryck Nascimento, a Brazilian student at the Martha’s Vineyard Regional High School, volunteered to plant American flags and replace old ones at the two cemeteries.
It’s Memorial Day weekend and sometimes I think we forget what that’s about. First, it’s about our war dead. No matter how you feel about war, we all hurt for the sons and daughters who don’t come back or come home damaged, and how that reverberates through the psyche of our society. It is also about people missing from our lives leaving that permanent, empty and personal sense of loss. All through life, things and people fall away, reminding us that we are all going to have a turn. It’s the ultimate equal opportunity.
It was not until I cleared the underbrush
I saw unfurling monk-like bodies of ferns
It was not until I walked the lonely pond
forsythia fronds and red bud bloomed in the water
I was recently invited to give a lecture for the Piano Tuners Association of the UK at their centennial meeting to be held in Bournemouth, England. It turns out that Bournemouth is very close to the place were my ancient ancestor and direct descendant, Phillip Stanwood, is believed to have come from when he sailed to New England in the year 1652. I accepted the teaching invitation and knew that I would finally be able to visit and explore the place of my English roots. Would I find a feeling of resonance and connection?