Word Play

Fis-SIP-par-ous — adj. Tending to break up into parts, divisive.

It’s often depressing to read about the world outside our own lovely Island, but we do it anyway and occasionally we learn a new word or gain a new insight about some aspect of our own situation. Venerable foreign correspondent John F. Burns of The New York Times was our source for both last Sunday in an essay on the elusive trail of Osama bin Laden.

It helped to have a dictionary handy when reading Mr. Burns’s piece, which included seldom-seen words like irredentist, evanescent and fissiparous. Mr. Burns used the latter to describe Pakistan’s efforts to resist the kind of tribalism more often associated with neighboring Afghanistan.

It’s a word that is fun to say, and surprisingly useful even here on the Vineyard, where it’s easy to find evidence in places that the community fabric is unraveling. A long winter can have the tendency to magnify divisions, and we’re ready for a season where we are just too busy to argue among ourselves.

For now the summer and the shared hope of a needed boost to the uncertain local economy will serve to stave off fissiparousness, and there are promising signs of a rebound. We need to develop a longer-term vision to bind and sustain in the months and years to come.