HOLLY NADLER

508-274-2329

(hollynadler@gmail.com)

Just got back from a quick trip to the West Coast to visit family. Thank God they don’t live in some freezing place like Fargo, N.D. As always when leaving the Island, there are new sci fi technologies to learn. My son, Charlie, fed checks into an automatic teller machine and each one was gobbled, scanned and receipted in the blink of an eye. Also, at the Los Feliz Public Library, I discovered that logging on to the Internet involved a preliminary registration at a big, complicated computer. I was flummoxed and asked a young man at the Info desk to help out. Then a second computer got me into familiar terrain — more like our own one-step hookup libraries — where you enter a card number (in this case, my sister’s) and your cortisol level slowly returns to normal, or at least your own normal, which for me is medium high.

My sister, by the way, did a vanity intervention. She took one look at me, with my graying hair puffed out like Einstein’s, a halt in my gait from chronic Lyme and slipping on the back-home ice one too many times, and suffering the general malaise that descends on Island women in the winter when we bundle up in 17 layers to run our errands; no one can see the lack of maintenance. Anyway, Sis took me to her Armenian beauty salon ladies in Van Nuys and they cut, dyed and blow-dried my hair until I emerged like one of those make-over babes on reality shows. This episode could be called Search and Rescue of Scary Vineyard Women.

Charlie, my sister and I and two old friends from high school days, Beth and John Jensen (dad has house in Chilmark), ate out at the Hamburger Hamlet in Sherman Oaks. John swaggered over to Charlie, flashing his T-shirt from a vintage guitar store. “I’m cool, right?” John asked the decades-younger man.

Charlie nodded, “You’re good.”

“No, I’m cool,” John insisted. “I’m really cool.”

Charlie said, “You’re cool for your demographic.”

What a concept! We’re all cool for our demographic.

My mother, my sister, Charlie and I met our 84.7-year-old relative Chic Wolk, who provided us with information about our ancestors. At a French bistro on Ventura boulevard, he handed out a family tree starting circa 1840s with Zaide (Yiddish for grandfather) and Bubbe (grandma) at the top. Funnily, Bubbe had always been Bubbe. When she was a baby, she came down with diphtheria. The village rabbi said no name should be given the stricken infant because that would confuse the Angel of Death. It worked! She lived to have her own children, then grandchildren, at which point the name Bubbe was finally valid.

We also learned the family came from Moldova, one of those dreary, landlocked former Russian provinces whose population nowadays tests as the most depressed in the world. Great. Zeide heard that a new pogrom was scheduled for his area, so he decreed that his family of 10 would move to Palestine. Unfortunately, Zeide had no idea how to get to Palestine, or where it was even located on a map, and who had a map anyway? Two older sons led the way instead to Rotterdam, across the ocean, and finally to Chicago. Oy.

So how does a descendant of this Moldovian clan end up on Martha’s Vineyard? Just sheer good luck, isn’t it?

Quick travel tip: This past Monday night, I waltzed through the metal screener at airport security. Nothing chimed or dinged, but the checkpoint guy spoke earnestly into his mic, “Female agent to vet passenger, asap!”

I kept at him with a high level of Bart Simpson annoyingness, “Why?” “What did I do?” “What’s up?” “Is it my reading glasses?” “Is it a random check?” “Why me?”

Finally he told me, somewhat sheepishly, “It’s your long dark skirt.” Oh, of course, that would identify me as an al-Quaeda operative.

I had to stand on two footprint marks for a quick patdown. Thank God they didn’t find that big tube of toothpaste I’d slipped into my right boot.

On the home front: Don’t miss the upcoming Oak Bluffs candidates’ forum on Wednesday, March 30 at 7 p.m. in the O.B. Public Library meeting room. Meet the candidates for elected office before voting on April 14. Five people are running in the selectmen’s race, and you’ll want to know more about the contested races for planning board, finance committee, and wastewater commission. These debates are always lively, so come and join the fun.