Opinion
A neighborhood place to get a drink, share some food, watch sports or just relax after a long week. This is the essence of a good pub, one that stands the test of time, or at least a number of decades. Seasons in Oak Bluffs fit this description for 27 years, and for many of those years offered a whole lot more, too.
On Sunday, Feb. 3, Seasons will bring football fans together for one last Super Bowl. At closing time the doors will shut on another era on Circuit avenue.
Consider the lowly oyster, a homely bivalve if ever there was one.
It has always seemed unlikely as a culinary delicacy. But it turns out that flavor is only part of its charm.
Shellfish constables in Edgartown and Oak Bluffs have proposed a relatively low cost plan to harness the oyster’s exceptional ability to remove nitrogen from water to help reduce pollution in Sengekontacket Pond. According to a 2009 report by the Martha’s Vineyard Commission, an adult oyster can pump and filter up to 50 gallons of pond water per day.
While watching the Ken Burns Dust Bowl documentary on PBS recently, it occurred to me that there are some strong parallels between the Dust Bowl of the 1920s and 1930s and the severe problems associated with climate change that Americans are just beginning to face. The Dust Bowl was almost entirely caused by widespread plowing of the virgin prairies on the Great Plains, and planting of wheat crops year after year, with furrows extending farther than the eye could see (the amber waves of grain).
In the middle of the night my son Hardy yells for me. He is eight, and usually at least one of his parents immediately appears by his bedside if he whimpers in the dark. But tonight I move slowly. After all I am weighed down under three blankets and wearing a sweatshirt, sweatpants, hat and mittens. And yet I am still shivering. Cathlin is already occupied with Pickle, age four. Cathlin doesn’t have the bone-rattling chills like I do. Her symptoms are exhaustion and an overt phlegminess that makes lying down to sleep futile.
I’ve been granted my wish for winter snow — albeit accompanied by temperatures of 10 to 12 degrees midweek. That was what the thermometer registered early Wednesday morning when I chose to walk. Even my adventurous, well-furred yellow cat declined to go outdoors as I set out, intelligently preferring the warmth of a bed to the frigid outdoors. On Tuesday, the day after the snow fell and temperatures were warmer, he had happily snuffled about in it. That day I had followed my usual route through the West Tisbury woods past Glimmerglass Pond.
With the snowfall on the night of Jan. 21, I was a bit slow getting out to feed Thunder the next morning. I had defrosted the hummingbird feeder first and fed and watered the ducks when I looked up to see a huge black boar heading toward the beach right into the force of the frigid wind. Thunder was out of his pen again! Grabbing a pot that held the remains of my chicken soup from the night before, I ran out calling his name. The wind off the water, even though warmer than inland air, had stopped him in his tracks.