From the Vineyard Gazette editions of March 1973:

Everything that could be said about spring was said last year, not to mention some years before last year, but spring is again a favorite topic. There are reliable signs of the shift of season — for instance, the boat schedule will change next week. What better evidence could there be that spring is just ahead?

A redwing joined the winter birds feeding under an Edgartown kitchen window last Sunday, Feb. 25. That’s not the earliest on record, but it’s early. Incidentally, the redwing looked miserable and did not say, “Kree-ee-ee”! If most of us were redwings, we wouldn’t, either. The vernal equinox (1:13 p.m. on March 20) is less than three weeks away. Under the sun of the equinox, all creatures will be equal. There will be no elite, and what a relief for the vocabulary!

The best time for seeding a new lawn is just after the last snow. So when a neighbor is observed seeding his lawn, one can be sure there will be no more snow, providing the neighbor knows his business. If he is depending on the wrong almanac or the wrong twinge of rheumatism, he must be scored with an error, though his lawn will still grow.

Old timers recall that their grandfathers planted potatoes in March, and that’s an article of faith to hang on to, but it doesn’t get the frost out of the ground. March is the high month of the year for respiratory diseases, even on the Vineyard. The deceitful month invites carelessness, and it also has a lot of sudden contrasts of temperature. Human resistance is worn out, too. April is nearer, February has gone astern, and just look now at that blue myrtle blossom under the glossy leaves, and those daffodil spires stubbornly coming up through rugged ground!

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Only yesterday zoning seemed to be well thought of. It was advocated by people of experience, theoretical knowledge and wisdom (these last two are often worlds apart), and no one doubted it would work. The thing in dispute was how it would work, because in our free society different people have different ideas — and different economic interests.

John Quincy Adams was the authority who wrote — and to John Marshall, of all people — that law logic was “an artificial system of reasoning, exclusively used in courts of justice, but good for nothing anywhere else.”

Now the United States Supreme Court has upheld a lower court ruling which strikes down one-acre zoning in Freehold, N.J. Massachusetts law, we are told, is similar to New Jersey law. How about our one-acre zoning, then? Are we just fooling around? Can any speculator go to court and say he can’t put cheap houses — if any — on large lots of land and therefore must have smaller lots on the Vineyard? And will the courts say, why yes, of course, by all means chop up the land so that you can get rich in a hurry?

Zoning is already so crippled that preservation of a special place such as the Vineyard demands some different and better means of keeping the arrangement of our destinies within our own control at least on our own Island.

It is our own, isn’t it? We haven’t heard differently.

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The Vineyard had its first March fog on Sunday, illustrating once again the moderating influence of old ocean which runs its strength and importance all around us. In the fall the ocean moderates the chill out of the air, and in the spring it moderates the early warmth out of the air.

The March fog is ocean’s chief means of springtime moderation, and it can make a 37 degree temperature feel like 27. It can also drip and wet the feet of little children and the beards of old men who nowadays have no chimney corner to go to. An oil burner is a poor substitute for a chimney corner so far as old men are concerned.

To report further on the state of the Vineyard, no one has reported a single dandelion and the reporting of snowdrops, that meagre and purposeless flower, is not exciting. The Island was dank at the weekend and probably still is, and it is a tribute to the temperaments of Vineyarders that they can somewhat moderate even an early March fog.

In Edgartown the town clock strikes once at 4 a.m., thus propounding a riddle to the wakeful inhabitants. The ancient Egyptians went to a lot of trouble to build a Sphinx embodying a perpetual puzzlement, whereas all they really needed was a clock that struck once at 4 a.m.

When mornings are lighter, as they certainly are when fog permits, the significance is lost because there are so few roosters to begin crowing, and so few cows to tromp in the barn. Times are not what they used to be, except for springtime which still remembers the most recent glaciation and, for all that any of us know, looks forward to another glaciation which will bring all our problems to an end.

Compiled by Hilary Wall
library@mvgazette.com