MARGARET KNIGHT
508-627-8894
Winter finally showed up last weekend to remind us it’s all just beginning. Its official start, winter solstice, was Wednesday. The official start also means the days will begin to get longer, and the sun higher — it couldn’t get much lower, that’s for sure! Our new solar panels have been struggling to produce any electricity as the sun skims the treetops along the south side of the yard.
Tillie and Gladys Jeffers used to say winter doesn’t come until the swamps and ponds fill. They’re full now! When I went out walking on Monday, the peat swamp near our house had a thin layer of beautiful black ice, reflecting a darker version of the wind-blown clouds and trees overhead. This is the time of year we sometimes get perfect ice for skating on Brine’s Pond, before the snow — or whatever type of precipitation falls this winter — makes the surface bumpy with pockmarks.
There are still 2012 Chappy Community Center calendars available. You can order them by calling Marvene O’Rourke at 508-627-7902. The front cover photo of a luminous quahaug against a pale green sea is worth the price alone.
The CCC annual Christmas Eve dinner is on Saturday starting at 6 p.m. Bring friends and family for a delicious feast, and enjoy the holiday spirit with your fellow Chappaquiddickers. The community center looks festive with tree and greens. All are welcome.
The Chappy cell committee met again last Friday and spent telephone time with David Maxson, consultant to the town who wrote up a request for proposal to solicit bids for installing a distributed antennae system (DAS) on Chappy. The committee, with the help of planning board assistant Georgianna Greenough, worked on refining language to reflect the desires of the group to get cell service on Chappy next year without a cell tower, and hopefully hooking into an already existing “hotel” site, like the future one at Katama Farm silo. The next meeting to approve the improved request for proposal to give to the selectmen will be on Friday, Jan. 6, at 2:30 p.m. in the town hall.
Peter Wells traveled to Texas to see Peter Wells. Peter is Peter’s nephew and godchild, and he just graduated from Air Force Basic Training in San Antonio, following in his grandfather’s footsteps. Peter said, “When flying over the Gulf Coast I couldn’t help thinking of Paul Simon’s song about going to Graceland, which starts out ‘The Mississippi delta was shining like a National guitar.’ The National guitar he refers to is an acoustic guitar with a bright chrome body. The delta from 35,000 feet was quite a sight. Talk about waterborne erosion on a grand scale; Mother Nature is just doodling with Wasque when compared to the enormous impressionist sculpture she’s working on in the delta.”
Sidney and I have been keeping a busy schedule with all the events, and last Saturday we took a nap to prepare for going to the evening performance of the live radio play It’s a Wonderful Life, which started at 8 p.m. — late for us to head off Chappy. We woke up, got some food together to eat in the car (not a great habit, but somehow it feels more relaxing to eat in the car than gobble a meal and rush for the ferry), and headed down to the Point. When we were nearly there, Sidney exclaimed, “We might as well turn around right now and go home!” I didn’t understand what he was talking about at first, but then I got it: It was 7:40 p.m. and the ferry was tucked in until 9 p.m. We go out that late so seldom that we totally forgot to consider the ferry schedule. Such is life on Chappy in the winter — with aging brains. We parked at the Point, and ate our dinner looking out over the water and the lights of Edgartown, and then headed home to watch another episode of the West Wing series, our latest video addiction. Nothing like a quiet night at home on Chappaquiddick.
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