Opinion
A few weeks ago, in mid-December I was chatting with a woman I had just met in Vineyard Haven in the way strangers talk when waiting for their holiday gifts to be rung up at the cash register. Suddenly she stopped the banter and said, “You should come to a party someone told me about.”
A huge snowstorm that brought blizzard conditions and record snowfall to much of the Northeast a day after Christmas was comparatively kind here, where only a light snow fell. Still, with winds gusting to nearly 70 miles per hour on the Vineyard and extreme high tides, the severe storm left thousands of down-Island homes without power, many holiday travellers stranded, Island roads flooded and icy enough to cause several accidents, and erosion transforming some Island beaches.
Always a bridesmaid, never a bride: It’s the story of my life. But the hairiest part of the story is that I am the only bridesmaid I know with a mustache.
That is why I was not surprised to find out that I recently finished second in the Robert Goulet Memorial Mustached American of the Year Contest.
We’ve been accused of being lazy, complacent, having everything handed to us on a silver platter, growing up in the boom years without a care in the world. Trust me, I know some of those people.
Cold and Comfort
From Gazette editions at the turn of the year 1935:
Richard L. Pease of Oak Bluffs opened the ice harvest season at Crystal Lake, harvesting ice eight inches or better in thickness and of a fine quality. Granted a freezing temperature, or anything approaching it for a few days, Mr. Pease expected to fill all available space in his icehouses.
Nature’s Everyday Strength
High tides follow low, the full moon follows the new, the spring ever follows the bitter cold. Nature freely offers us her perspective; the nature writer Hal Borland said, “If you would know strength and patience, welcome the company of trees.” So as we pause to make sense of this year’s elections, selectmen, line items and legal battles, we offer a selection of the Gazette’s observations of our natural world from throughout the months of Two Thousand and Ten.
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