MARGARET KNIGHT
508-627-8894
Now that the holidays are over, the “crowds” have left and we have the Island to ourselves. It’s a quiet time of year and the Chappaquiddickers still here are settling in for the duration, getting out those indoor projects, big spy thrillers, 1,000 piece puzzles or just breathing a sigh of relief to have made it this far in the year. Or maybe they’re thinking about that trip to somewhere warm where not everything out the window is brown or gray.
This week gave us a taste of real winter weather with temperatures in the single digits, but today is the first day the sun starts to rise earlier — one minute at a time — a hopeful sign. I’m rarely out of the house before it’s up these days, but last week I headed down to the ferry just as the sky began to brighten. A flock of pigeons was practicing their flight patterns above the harbor, and as I waited for the ferry, the sky’s pale light reflected on all the waterside windows of the big North Water Street houses, making it look as if they were full of early risers.
The main erosion at Wasque has moved easterly toward the Fishermen’s Landing in the past month. After filling in and then eating away the Swan Pond, the wide beach at Wasque Point is now gone and the waves lap the bottom step at high tide. Change is happening at a rapid rate as the Edgartown side of Norton Point builds up in the Chappy direction. My brother, Richard, sent a picture of the picnic table area at the top of the stairs at Fishermen’s Landing, where we took a family picture at Thanksgiving, which shows that the part of the land we were standing on is now gone.
In Edgartown Library news, the library trustees have posted their search for a new library director to replace Felicia Cheney. Felicia will be at the library until the end of January, after which she will be sorely missed. No offense to other town libraries, which I do like to visit, but I’ve always been grateful for my town’s library, which has so much to do with its great staff. According to the library Web site, of the New York Times 100 notable books, the CLAMS network — to which Edgartown belongs — has 96 of them available at present. During January, while picking up one of the notables you can bring in donations for the Island Food Pantry and wipe out your overdue fines.
The answer to last week’s question of how many catch basins there are on Chappy is five. They were cleaned out on the Tuesday before Christmas, for the first time in perhaps decades. Peter Wells provided the answer — as well as the question — and he should know because he uncovered the grates and marked them with cones so the cleaning crew could find them. Hopefully we’ll have improved drainage on the road this year.
Perhaps a catch basin could be installed at the top of the ferry line on the Chappy side. The hole at the beginning of the pull-off area is almost deep enough to put one in without even digging. I heard a rumor that Roger Becker was going to sail his radio-controlled model boat there after a big rain — and the boat has a keel. If you know it’s there, you can avoid it, but when the crater is filled with water, its jagged bottom lurks beneath the surface, hoping to cause a ruckus with an axle or two. The humps of dirt you bump over next to the crater would fit nicely into that hole, since that’s where they came from originally, no doubt.
Peter Wells writes, “This past Friday two dozen hardy Chappaquiddickers posed on the ferry for a photo shoot. I hope that they have all recovered from their colds by now. The temperature was only 45 degrees but they were dressed in summer clothes. One more photo with a summertime flavor was needed for “The Chappy Ferry Book,” which will be introduced this coming June. Thanks to all who participated.”
On Tuesday, the selectmen approved the Chappy cell committee’s progress, and voted to send the RFP for a Distributed Antennae System prepared by David Maxson, the town’s cell service consultant, to town counsel to check on legalities. A town meeting warrant article has been submitted regarding a location for a DAS hub building. First choice would be at the Katama silos or somewhere there is already cell equipment being planned, but a list of possible other locations on town-owned properties is being checked out for conservation restrictions on construction. Prior to sending out the RFP, it will need to be listed in the Central Register, which is a publication with information about contracts that are being put out to bid for any public facility in Massachusetts.
While I was off-Island last weekend I stopped to see Curry Jones where he lives at Heritage Heights in Concord, N.H. He and Peggy had moved there from Chappy a number of years ago, and now after a couple of winters back on Chappy, he moved north again this November. So it’s not all new to him. There’s a group of men with whom he regularly lunches, and his daughter, Marianne, and her family live nearby. We can look forward to seeing Curry on Chappy next summer.
The beginning of a new year is a reminder that this is the first day of the rest of one’s life, with all its possibilities — which reminds me of a friend’s “Swiss cheese theory” of life. Even back at age 21, she saw life like this: The older you get, the more things there are to avoid, the more holes in the cheese, the more life becomes limited. Even back then it seemed a surprisingly mature philosophy of life — as in a crotchety old person’s way of looking at things. But many times the Swiss cheese theory has come up over the years for Sidney and me. In a way, it does seem to fit, that there are more and more things I know I don’t want to do, experiences I’d rather avoid. But there’s another aspect the theory doesn’t address: There are always new and unknown experiences to be had. Maybe the analogy works if you think there are also more cheeses to step onto — unknown cheeses. The crotchety old person part of me says: Yeah, more new holes to fall into. May they be interesting, and not too deep!
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