MARGARET KNIGHT

508-627-8894

(margaret02539@yahoo.com)

The good news is that the electric cable installed underground on Chappy is an unqualified success. The crew borrowed Peter Wells’s generator to energize and test the wire on Monday, and all went as expected. The poles on Chappy are ready to be taken down. The under-harbor cable is ready to be hooked up, too, but rumor has it that all is not well on this front. It appears that NStar got what they needed, but not what they wanted — that’s the bad news. They wanted four conduits under the harbor, to be ready for future needs, but it seems that only one was successfully installed and able to hold cable. It remains to be seen if the others are usable at all, or will be replaced (after million-dollar law suits to determine who’s responsible), or whether the present cable under the harbor will be kept as back up.

With the new electric cables, the Chappy Firehouse will now be able to use some of their equipment that is wired for three-phase — which is used in newer municipal buildings — including their compressor, water heater, and a vacuum system that sucks out fumes when the trucks are running inside.

My uncle, Curry Jones, celebrated his 88th birthday this past Wednesday. He came to our house for dinner earlier in the week, and we got to hear about his younger years as a chemist, where he met his wife, Peggy, in the lab’s lunchroom, and as the sole navigator on a Navy destroyer in the Caribbean. When he and Peggy retired to Chappy many years later in the 1980s, Curry was involved in fund-raising efforts for the new hospital in an earlier effort to expand, and served on the planning board.

Curry arrived for dinner with a recent copy of the Concord [N.H.] Insider, published by the Concord Monitor, in which his daughter, Marianne Jones, was voted one of “Concord’s Hottest Hunkettes.” Marianne — I believe she’s some distant relative of mine — was interviewed as one of eight women hunkettes. In her regular life, she’s the executive director of the Women’s Fund of New Hampshire, of which we’re all very proud. Reading the interviews, the hunkettes did seem to be having fun with their new titles. Finishing the sentence, “Being named a Concord hunkette makes me feel...” Marianne said, “like I finally get the title I deserve!”

Carol Fuller would like to announce her new grandchild, Rory John Fuller, born 1/11/11 in New York to Matthew and Laura Fuller. He is the eighth grandchild of Sam and Carol Fuller, who live on North Neck Road and Wellesley. Carol says, “He will be among those of us who consider ourselves Chappaquiddickers and love life on our little island.”

The film Dinner Rush (USA, 2000), directed by Bob Giraldi, will be shown at the Edgartown Public Library’s fat-free film festival on Tuesday, Feb. 8 at 7 p.m.

Last Saturday a few of us Chappaquiddickers made our way to the library to hear Jon Katz speak. For once, Pat Rose, library trustee, went to the library for an enjoyable reason rather than a tension-filled meeting. Jon entertained us with stories about his dogs’ and his life in upstate New York where he has a farm. It sounded as if he has the farm partly in order to write about the animals, although he writes about his dogs in their life off the farm, too. His dog Izzy is a hospice dog, and Jon described the way Izzy is able to get close to people and calm them down. I think it was Izzy who was able to stop a food fight at an Alzheimer’s ward when even the attendants had given up. Jon was on a tour for his new book, Rose in a Storm, and to promote libraries.

Speaking of farm animals, our hens spent the fall and early winter in the underbrush behind their house, after Ms. Red got attacked by a hawk. I would go visit them down there at the bottom of the yard, but they never came out for more than a quick snack. I didn’t blame them for hiding out, but I did miss their company.

When the days started to lengthen and the sun rose a little higher, when the song birds broke into short riffs on warm days — as if spring were almost here — the chickens appeared in the yard. A week or two into January, I saw them making their way across the lawn to the woods on the other side of the yard, their first foray out into the world in three months. Within a few days they were back visiting the front porch and the “chicken patio” in the sunny corner near the side door, begging for cracked corn. They were a little skittish at first, but before long they were ready to come right into the mud room, or even the house, to get their treats. I let Dark Beak into our attached greenhouse recently and, after sampling the kale growing there, she took a dust bath on the dirt floor. Buffy looked longingly in through the glass, but I didn’t let her in because it’s difficult to get more than one chicken back out of the greenhouse.

The downside of all these chicken visitations is that the red-tailed hawk is back. I chased it away from the yard a couple of times, but then last week it must have attacked Puffed-Up Wind Bag. We found her dead in the underbrush with head injuries — she had probably escaped, only to die in the bushes. She was one of the older chickens that was headed for the soup pot before she came to our house, but we’re still sad to lose her. Mostly it’s enjoyable running a chicken retirement home, but with all these mishaps I’m worried they may revoke my license.

In other Chappy chicken news, the Livingstons lost all but one of their small flock to a raccoon attack. The remaining Araucana, who lays blue eggs, went to live at Pimneymouse Farm with the small flock there. Most chickens take a break from laying, but the Pimpneymouse chickens have been producing eggs all winter. They used to have problems with hawks, but Hatsy says their chickens are let out of the pen only once a week, so the hawks seem to have lost interest in the flock.

Question of the week from Peter Wells (who sums up the week saying, “Everyone, in general, is behaving themselves.”): How did Litchfield Road get its name? (We want specific answers here.)