After the Parade

WITHOUT CAUSE

Editors, Vineyard Gazette:

Gunther Schuller wastes no time. The noted American composer sleeps little and occasionally forgets to eat.

“Eight hours every night?” he said to an NPR reporter last year. “Life is too short.”

In fact, when Delores Stevens, artistic director of the Martha’s Vineyard Chamber Music Society, asked him last January to write a piece for this summer’s 40th anniversary concert season, he barely hesitated.

I have been attending Camp Jabberwocky for 47 years. Participating in the Fourth of July parade is one of my favorite activities while at camp. It gives me and my fellow campers the opportunity to celebrate Independence Day as well as our independence. In our outrageous costumes with our fun-loving counselors, we also express our appreciation to our Martha’s Vineyard friends.

Islanders take the ferry to that other place, America. We even voted in Nineteen-Seventy-Seven to leave the state, and maybe the nation, too — when Beacon Hill moved to remove the Island’s seat in the statehouse, thereby leaving us with less representation for the taxation states always impose. So what if our ragtag secessionist revolution failed politically; the spirit of separation remains strong. Few remember the proposed Vineyard anthem, but a few more still have the flags of our one nation, and more than a few have good stories from those heady days when freedom was on every Islander’s mind again. In our hearts we remain a place apart.

Independence Day 2010

In the rush of our day to day lives with all its routines and rigors, we often fail to take note or are caught unaware of those special moments that end up being among the most important of our lives. Well, last week, we experienced exactly one of those days and we cannot let it go uncelebrated. Just 12 years removed from bankruptcy and following nine years of planning, three years of fund-raising and three years in construction — we officially welcomed our first patients to the brand new Martha’s Vineyard Hospital on June 22.