Margaret Knight>

508 627-8894

(margaret02539@yahoo.com)

Chappaquiddick had its first snow last Sunday evening. The tentative white covering was gone when I got up early the next morning. Still, it proves that winter has begun, unofficially anyway. There was ice on Brine’s Pond on Wednesday morning. Christmas in Edgartown always comes a bit before the official day as well, and all kinds of events are scheduled for this weekend.

On our little island, the annual Christmas Tea will take place this Sunday from 3 to 5 p.m. at the community center. The building will be decorated to celebrate the season, and a fire will be roaring in the grate. You can expect delicious tea sandwiches, tasty sweets, and gleaming silver pots of freshly brewed tea served into delicate china cups. It’s high tea on Chappaquiddick and all are invited — men, women, and children — we’ll have hot chocolate too.

This weekend St. Andrew’s Church is hosting Miracles of Christmas, medieval plays and carols, directed by Liz Villard, with Abigail Southard and Caleb Enos in the cast and Pat Rose as stage manager.

The Edgartown library has temporarily set up shop in the selectmen’s meeting room because of an emergency involving the library furnace. You can reach librarians and renew books, etc. by calling 508-627-6189 at the town hall, or you can leave a message at the regular number.

Copies of the 2008 Chappy calendar will be available for purchase at the Martha’s Vineyard Museum this weekend. You can also order copies by calling Karen Gazarian at 508-627-9663. Sales from the calendar help support the Chappaquiddick Community Center, which operates totally on donations.

According to Karen, the 2007 Chappy calendar contained a trivia contest, in which some of the questions were simple and others were more difficult, involving research or an extensive knowledge of Chappy. Anne Heywood is the contest winner. Karen says, “Anne went above and beyond to name all of the bodies of water that touch or are on Chappy. The employees in the Edgartown assessors office will never be the same!” Anne spent countless hours poring over their maps and came up with over 80 different bodies of water. “And these are not puddles in someone’s driveway,” says Karen. Some are very familiar, while others are nameless. Congratulations to Anne — she received a complimentary 2008 Chappy calendar. If anyone wants the answers to all the questions, no doubt Anne will be willing to give them.

Last weekend I was sitting in a small church in Bremen, Me., when I looked back and saw a familiar face in a pew behind me. It was Ann Creamer, fellow Chappaquiddicker. It took us both a second to recognize each other — the sighting was so unexpected.

This was a service for my husband’s half-brother, a generation older, who used to live in the nearby town of Round Pond. Ann’s husband, Fritz, knew Sidney’s brother from a lunch group called the Romeos, which stands for Retired Old Men Eating Out.

As part of the service, Fritz gave a heartfelt rendition of the poem If, by Rudyard Kipling. Sidney’s brother had had to recite this poem for his parents’ guests when he was a little boy, and he sometimes performed it for the entertainment of the Romeos, with whom he lunched weekly until just before his 90th birthday.