HOLLY NADLER
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Isn’t there a line we can queue in to get our money back for this last cold week of April? Yeah, now I’m supposed to quote T.S. Eliot about April being the “cruelest month” as if we need to be reminded. Obviously Eliot grew up on a similar latitude to ours.
Sorry to sound so crusty. All the other town columnists have been chipper about signs of spring — the lilacs and the shad trees, the first striped bass, and the first summer people newly arrived to open their houses, confident in their outlook that their pipes won’t freeze. Also, as I peruse recent columns, I notice mention of a few warm days. Really? I must have slept through them. Or is there such a thing as April iciness going straight to the nervous system and causing mental blackouts?
One sign of spring is the perennial tag sale. Let me tell you how much luck Jack and I have already encountered with this plan. When we married our fortunes together last October, we’d both unloaded most of our worldly goods, or so we thought. Still, when it came time to packing up everything we still owned, it seemed like quite a lot as we stuffed it into a spare horse stall in our friend Michelle’s Chilmark barn.
We’re both what you could call, not exactly old hippies — Jack just missed the cusp, on the older side, of the flower child revolution — but we’re definitely old bohemians. Old bohemians believe that storage is like plaque in your arteries — it needs to be broken down and carried out of the circulatory system. Also it’s expensive. There’s a study that shows people pay five times more over time for storing stuff than the price of the stuff is worth. And there’s the socio-spiritual dimension: why should anything be sitting around gathering dust when someone somewhere can use it?
Okay, so we’re having a tag sale. Sometime this month. Or next month. Or, well, sooner or later.
Last weekend we decided to face the boxes and baskets stacked in the horse stall to separate out everything we intended to sell or otherwise unload. We quickly established that three piles would be necessary: one for the tag sale, a second for long-term storage (yes, there will always be some need for that) and a third for anything that would enrich our lives now, e.g. gloves, space heaters, knit caps and extra blankets.
So we began a two-hour process of slicing open boxes, sorting, repacking, deciding on things we really can’t bear to part with or will reconsider parting with at some future date, just not now, not yet. At the end of two hours, the light was beginning to fade. We still had mounds of boxes, but whereas our earlier consignment of goods into the stall had left us with reasonably tidy layers, now containers were stacked at precarious angles, books spilled out onto the plywood floor, bits of furniture were overturned, cartons were open and spewing half-inspected, unwrapped miscellany. The whole pile was begging for a truck with a hydraulic shovel to come and take it all away.
And then Jack pointed out the repository of goods assembled outside the stall; everything we’d culled for our tag sale. Three ratty items sat on the dusty concrete: A red and green painted wooden salad bowl that always had a bit of stickiness clinging to it unless you scrubbed it with Ajax, but who wants even a microscopic fleck of Ajax mixed in with one’s tomatoes and basil vinaigrette; a small aquarium, unused, still in its box which Jack had never broken out to harbor a few goldfish; and, finally, a cloth bag from China with an origami-shaped dragon in bright orange and gold hues against a navy blue background. I had deemed it too lurid to use as a purse, yet too pretty to be deployed for groceries, thus it rested in utter futility in a drawer.
The next morning I told Jack, “Bad news — I’ve decided to use the Chinese bag for groceries, I mean, why not? So we’re down to two tag sale items. Plus I should mention I have my doubts about trying to sell a sticky salad bowl. We should toss it.”
He mulled this over. “Maybe I WILL start an aquarium one day.”
I’ll keep you updated about the tag sale . . .
A memorial date has been set to celebrate the life of artist and writer Peggy Thayer, who died unexpectedly this past January, two days after her 56th birthday. She was the first born to parents Roger and Jane Thayer of Sengekontacket in Oak Bluffs. She is also survived by her partner of 22 years, Sandy Raymond, with whom she lived in Island Grove. The memorial will take place on Saturday, May 15, from 1 to 4 p.m. at Featherstone Gallery in the front building. Peggy’s exceptional art will be on display and her favorite music will be played.
Coming up from May 3 to 9, Leslie Hewson of Mediterranean Restaurant on Beach Road in Oak Bluffs will be participating in this year’s Boston Bakes for Breast Cancer. All 100 per cent of the proceeds from desserts will go to breast cancer research at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute.
Leslie’s late mother, Pat, was a three-time breast cancer survivor who passed away in 2003 at the age of 70. Since she was her daughter’s culinary inspiration, Patsy is being honored by Boston Bakes for Breast Cancer. The Sweet Life Cafe, also in Oak Bluffs, is participating as well.
The Oak Bluffs Public Library is hosting an author signing on May 8 from 2:30 to 3:45. Carol McCleary will talk about her newly released historical suspense novel, The Alchemy of Murder. The book features Nellie Bly, the world’s first investigative reporter, as well as historical characters such as Jules Verne, Louis Pasteur and Oscar Wilde.
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