The Vineyard Gazette - Martha's Vineyard News

January ↓
February ↓
March ↓
April ↓
May ↓
June ↓
July ↓
August ↓
September ↓
October ↓
November ↓
December ↓

As you journey though this next year, may snapping turtles always give you the right of way, and ospreys invite you to their nests for tea. May pinkletinks sing songs of love to you this spring, and otters teach you to mud slide with grace and style. May bunny rabbits let you borrow their ears just for the fun of it, and sea turtles show you how to live with a roof on your back.

And all year long, as you dream your 2015 dreams, may you be caressed by Snowy Owl wings, so as you soar to new heights and the most courageous of places, everyone will watch you open-mouthed in awe.

Happy New Year from The Notebook.

Remember when you were assigned to watch the clouds and take note of what they looked like. Third grade, maybe first, or even fifth, it is a standard of elementary school. But why not of the office? After all, adults need to look up and get lost in the cottonballs of their imagination, too.

Today the Notebook saw a dragon eating a Viking ship (there are always dragons in the sky it seems). To the west there was a series of hairdo’s from the 1970s, but just below this beautiful display a coyote appeared, long of tooth and chasing a tufted titmouse.

To the east, a rooster turned into Aunt Helen, who hadn’t been seen since she passed away two decades ago. But it was her up there, no doubt about it. With a little help from the wind, she headed toward her 1970s hairdo. The journey was a hard one, what with the dragons and coyotes and Vikings all scattered about, but she made it. Nothing could ever hold her back.

Remember The Jungle by Upton Sinclair, the meatpacking muckraking book once frequently assigned in high school? Young Stanislovas lost his ears on a cold day when he returned home and his father tried to rub them warm. They snapped off instead.

It felt about that cold out there this week. On Thursday, it was two degrees in the early morning. At least they had each other, those couple of degrees, and the temperature didn’t drop to just one.

The water is 35 degrees now, ice forms on the ponds, hand holding is separated by gloved interference and everyone’s breath resembles chimney smoke. But up in the sky, in a rare visit, Comet Lovejoy climbs across our galaxy, not to return for another eight thousand years.

If you go out to see it tonight, make sure you wear a hat.

The Notebook was feeling fragile. Mortality was getting it down as it does some days. This may seem a strange feeling for something that will live on in an email galaxy, tumbling around here and there, but never showing the worse for wear. But not all of its friends are technology based. And some days hurt more than others.

When this happens the Notebook turns to words. Today it is this middle stanza from William Butler Yeats’s poem, When You are Old.

“How many loved your moments of glad grace, And loved your beauty with love false or true; But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you, And loved the sorrows of your changing face.”

While out wandering, the Notebook came upon a grove of trees wrapped in burlap for the winter. They loomed like Dementors, guarding the home and garage. Elsewhere, burlapped bushes seemed to call forth a pod of hippos. Each time the wind blew, they frolicked in chubby glee as if down at the water hole.

To the right, what appeared to be two burlapped seahorses pitched woo to each other, while nearby a group of denuded hedges complained in a fit of January crankiness because they had received no winter coat.

There wasn’t a person in sight during all of this activity. But the icy rain understood, the gray sky agreed and a stray rabbit concurred — you can see the strangest of sights just by standing still.

Recently, on a quiet holiday weekend The Notebook travelled the Island, first venturing forth down Snake Hollow Road to see if there was indeed a community of snakes making camp. All was quiet and not a snake was to be found, at least not slithering out in the open. But plenty of dirt was found down Old Dirt Road, along with some mud and puddles, too, making it a wonderfully messy affair. Hopes were raised to turn back the clocks of extinction by turning down Heath Hen Lane. But alas Booming Ben did not appear.

But whether a road contains or does not contain that which is advertised does not matter. To misquote Robert Frost, the Notebook likes to live by the old adage, Two roads diverged in a wood, and I - I took the one with the weirdest name. And that has made all the difference.

Imagine a place where the inventions include a bad dream eraser where bad dreams are heated until they melt and then become the bedrock of good dreams; an ice cream hat that constantly warms the brain so ice cream can be wolfed down with no worries of brain freeze; a stuffed animal finder that roams the house in search of lost Teddy Bears and other nighttime soothers; a self-cleaning rabbit cage; and an alarm that uses a long finger to tickle rather than a harsh bell to clang.

There is such a place, it’s called first grade, in particular a recent invention convention. The results may have been made mostly of cardboard, and work better in theory than action, but the future looks very bright and soothing.

At press time Monday, as the Vineyard was about to be walloped by a powerful winter storm and people scurried about like ants making preparations, thoughts turned briefly to Frost. Not that famous poem, but another one, also written in 1923 and titled Dust of Snow.

The way a crow
Shook down on me
The dust of snow
From a hemlock tree

Has given my heart
A change of mood
And saved some part
Of a day I had rued

Greetings from the Island in January, hunkering down for a blizzard, Robert Frost style.

Snow cloaks sidewalks and drifts across fences, obscuring things we know are there. It turns the field into a sledding hill, the front yard into a sea of snowmen. Who doesn't want to be the first one to tread across a blanket of snow, to hear the crunch-crunch-crunch of the footsteps we leave behind?

As the wind howled and the snow fell for so improbably long during this week's blizzard, the world outside our windows changed. And around the Island, inside hospitals and barns, there were signs of new life. At the Farm Institute, Tim Connelly and Elana Baumann-Carbrey stayed in a leaking barn during the storm to tend the animals and to be there to welcome a new lamb. The blizzard baby, of course, was named Juno.

And at Martha's Vineyard Hospital, where 22 employees slept in temporary beds for the duration of the storm, more new life (in more comfortable conditions). Tiffany Vanderhoop and Jason Widdiss welcomed a baby boy born in the wee hours of Wednesday morning.

Late Wednesday night, Gazette office manager Kathy Agin and her husband Dave became the proud parents of twin boys, Will and Zach. Their many aunts and uncles at the Gazette can't wait to meet them. Welcome to the snowy world, little ones.

What makes a great rivalry? On Sunday Brady versus Wilson did not disappoint. But there are others of course. Alabama versus LSU. Army versus Navy. The Red Sox versus the Yankees. The Vineyard versus Nantucket. Up-Island versus down. Winter versus summer. On that front we can report with authority that winter is holding a comfortable lead, but with 46 days until spring, it’s only a matter of time until Islanders are baring their legs again. Until then, with six inches of gray slush on the ground, the biggest rivalry around here is Muck boots versus Bogs.

A harbor in winter is a place full of sights and sounds all its own. On the upper porch of a summer house, shuttered for winter, a loose gate bangs. Rigging clinks on the boats and rafts of the oystermen, pulled in tight near the beach these days, away from the thick ice in Katama Bay. Sea ducks swim in small circles, quacking. At day’s end the eastern sky is a wide painting of broken gray clouds, the western sky brushed with deep orange.

A lone oyster farmer walks across the near-shore ice and begins to pull bags of farmed oysters from the cold water. Jason Bennett, who grew these oysters, brings in the bags two at a time. He will bring in 30 bags today, he tells the Notebook. The oysters are cream-colored, clean and beautiful in their net bags. They’ll be shipped to the mainland. Not enough market on the Vineyard in winter, the oysterman says. “Eat fish and live long. Eat oysters and love long,” is his prescription.

When the present is filled with snowdrifts, sleet and rain, a visit to the past can be a good antidote. What part of your past is up to you, but childhood always has its merits. Replaying the first kiss will always bring warmth, and oddly enough hauling two heavy sacks of newspapers for an after school job brings a smile now, perhaps in part because that job is extinct.

Old hairstyles bring smiles, too, but what lingers longest along these journeys of the mind are memories of time, the sheer amount of it available to simply hang out and laugh with friends who were everything once, and then as the world expanded and the years piled high became like shadows.

The heart feels full when remembering, perhaps because it carries more deeply what the mind can only picture. Two kids holding hands while walking home at night, a carpool of teens making their way to school each morning, the lingering and laughing on playgrounds, backyards and basements, and through it all the parents who worried and watched over them all, some of whom are gone now, but never in memory. Never ever.

A lone seagull stands one-footed on a piling in the harbor, its beak turned toward the wind and snow. Meanwhile 23 pigeons tuck themselves into roosts beneath the roof of Memorial Wharf. They don’t even show their beaks they are so intent on avoiding the elements.

It seems a typical February scene, gray and stark, until the ducks appear. At first there are just two of them, paddling together, wing to wing. Then four more arrive, from where it is unclear. The six paddle in time and then stop, beginning to drift with the current. There are no quacks or other signs of communication. But then the tide decides to announce itself as a hopeless romantic. The birds form a near-perfect heart, if just for a moment, and then fly away as one.

If this seems implausible, a duck heart in the harbor, consider the many ways in which love often makes no real sense either. Such is the way with matters of the most important. Happy Valentine’s Day.

And for a special treat, the Gazette published its first edition of The Vine today, a new monthly publication for our subscribers that also arrives free in every mailbox on the Island. Let us know what you think.

How much snow has the Vineyard had this winter? Accumulations can be measured with some degree of accuracy, but how to precisely measure winter’s cumulative effect on the psyche — that is a task which strains the best methods of meteorologists. The first storms bring excitement with their novelty. We revel in the physical work of storm prep and marvel at the beauty so much snow brings to the landscape. But as the season wears on, the pure exhilaration of being so hardy begins to wane. We’re running out of firewood, tired of wearing ski wear to work, sore from so much shoveling, longing for the first signs of spring. They’re coming of course, albeit in baby steps this year. A little more daylight. The first crocus. The scream of an osprey circling overhead. Alewives rushing through streams. The Notebook wanders in its mind to these places.

A long time ago down a metaphoric dark alley a man said, hey Notebook I have something you need. The Notebook was young and wild then, performing Tarzan yells laced with profanity during open mic readings. But didn’t everyone do that, back when the hunger for life was so huge it hurt not to run at full throttle? But this wasn’t about stopping to notice the dew on a chipmunk’s whisker, or maybe it was.

The man opened his raincoat, it was raining, and handed over a book of poetry — The Simple Truth by Philip Levine, and then nothing was ever the same again. Mr. Levine died this week, on Valentine’s Day, at the age of 87. But his words live on.

Some things you know all your life. They are so simple and true they must be said without elegance, meter and rhyme, they must be laid on the table beside the salt shaker, the glass of water, the absence of light gathering in the shadows of picture frames, they must be naked and alone, they must stand for themselves. Can you taste what I am saying? It is onions or potatoes, a pinch of simple salt, the wealth of melting butter.

Listen to the quiet. You can hear it all around the Island. In town centers the sidewalks are rolled up; on the outskirts of the villages, grocery store parking lots are empty. It’s school vacation week and nearly everyone has fled, some south for the sun, others north for real snow, the kind you can ski on. Good riddance to cabin fever was the common refrain of the fleeing. Left behind, alone with our thoughts, the Island remains starkly beautiful. Bare branches reach for a gray-blue sky. We reach with outstretched arms for a friend who left this world suddenly last week, awash in sadness that we never got to say goodbye

For all the human complaints about shoveling and cold, this winter has also been tough for the birds. As reported in today’s Gazette, snow-covered ground and ice-covered ponds make it hard for feathered friends. Bird feeders are attracting crowds and water birds are flocking together whenever they can find open water amid the ice.

Humans, too, seem to flock together more than usual this time of year, when the ice and snow and seasonal closures limit the options for where to go. On a Saturday morning before a snowstorm, the YMCA is packed, filled with people eager to get in a run or a yoga class or to take the kids for a swim in the pool before the days of cabin fever ahead. Islanders gather at the post office, the dump, supermarket aisles, stocking up on necessities, glad to be out of the house. We seem to see everyone we know at the movie theatre on a Friday night, or at one of the few restaurants open for an evening out.

Come summer the search is on for the empty beach, the moment of quiet. Here on the other side of the year, the search is for warmth and food and companionship. We’re all in it together, friends and neighbors, hooded mergansers and song sparrows. Remember to fill the feeders.

On the second leg of an airplane trip during school break, while high above the ground and deep in the clouds, a little girl grows drowsy and reaches for her security blanket. To her and her father’s horror they realize she left it on the last plane. The little girl begins crying, huge heaving sighs that rock her small shoulders back and forth. The scene mirrors that of her favorite book by Mo Willems, featuring a little girl named Trixie and her beloved Knuffle Bunny. In the final book of the trilogy Trixie loses Knuffle Bunny on a plane, too.

The little girl’s father reminds her that when Trixie finally found Knuffle Bunny she realized that she no longer needed it and gave it to a crying baby on the plane.

“But I’m not Trixie and I’m not ready to give up my blanket,” the little girl wails. The father hugs her and pats her cheek, her tears running down into the palm of his hand. The little girl reaches for his shirt sleeve, holds it between her fingers, puts her thumb in her mouth and then promptly falls asleep.

The father leans back, worried about what will happen when she wakes, but also at peace as he remembers the day of her birth when she fell asleep in his arms for the first time, her hand resting on his cheek while his tears ran down into the palm of her tiny hand.

The snow was falling so beautifully early Thursday morning that The Notebook found itself at peace with the winter that will never end. It walked outside and joined the company of several forest creatures, including a squirrel with specks of birdseed on its whiskers, and a cardinal who couldn’t stop complaining about the squirrel’s greedy nature. A tawny rabbit led the way with an air of unmatched authority.

The company moved through the woods until it came to a house where another rabbit stood behind a large fenced-in area, its pink nose poking through the wire holes.

The wild rabbit asked for a moment to be alone and as the rest of us remained at the wooded edge, it approached and stood nose to nose for several moments with its friend, relative or lover. We never found out the answer because a door to the house opened then and the wild rabbit ran off, disappearing into the falling snow, which was falling harder now, leaving a hush over the landscape that muffled but did not extinguish the sound of our collective heartbeats as the caged rabbit was lifted up and carried away to a fate we did not understand.

Sometimes The Notebook feels untethered, drifting in an online universe, and the urge grows strong to turn to something it can actually hold onto. To the library The Notebook then travels, to be grounded in the camaraderie of books. On a recent visit, while lost in the stacks and wandering among the poets, the great Galway Kinnell cried out for attention. He died this past October and so his call was especially keen.

According to the check-out slip on one of his books, Mr. Kinnell was very popular in 2001, getting checked-out 6 different times. In 2002 his check-out rate dropped to 4, and then for the next three years just once annually each year. Since 2008 he had been completely forgotten. But not anymore.

On the tidal mud, just before sunset, dozens of starfishes were creeping. It was as though the mud were a sky and enormous, imperfect stars moved across it as slowly as the actual stars cross heaven. All at once they stopped, and, as if they had simply increased their receptivity to gravity, they sank down into the mud, faded down into it and lay still, and by the time pink of sunset broke across them they were as invisible as the true stars at daybreak.

This week, most of the 51.3 inches of snow that fell on the Island this winter melted, and the treasure hunting began for those things lost since the world turned white.

A swarm of birds found food on a grassy plot of land by Morning Glory Farm that come summer will once again be filled with corn. A Labrador Retriever found her favorite ball, the red one with all the tooth marks. And a six year old girl, about to turn seven, found her lost tooth, the big front one, that fell out while she walked in from the car on a night so cold and dark even the tooth fairy couldn’t find it.

Gus Ben David stopped by the office this week. He held winter in one hand, and spring in the other. “We lost one hundred per cent of our barn owls,” he said, due to the cold. “But that’s nature’s way, keeping the gene pool strong. New birds will come.”

Jim Athearn didn’t come by the office, but when asked to weigh in on the winter he said it had been a good one for the fields. The melting snow leads to a higher water table, and winter’s blanket acts like a free covering of mulch for the land.

But at the Offshore Ale House on Sunday, winter was nowhere to be found among all the warm blasts of community and caring, as hundreds upon hundreds visited the restaurant for the Jam for Sam fundraiser, to support nine-year old Samantha Caldwell as she battles brain cancer. Folks even smiled when told it was a two-hour wait to sit down to eat. Good luck to you Samantha on your hard journey, and know that wherever you go, the Vineyard goes with you.

Down a certain lonely looking road, the telephone poles stood at attention, or better yet surrendering with their wooden arms posted upright. The wires traveling through and past them mirrored the yellow lines of the road. It was a William Eggleston moment, that brilliant photographer who brought majesty to the mundane through his pictures.

Trees pushed by a gentle wind scratched the belly of the sky, and a lone fire hydrant added a dash of red to the conversation. Signs took on a deeper meaning: Dead End, Not a Through Way, Coops Bait and Tackle.

It can always be this way, when the world is looked at closely. Why then does it feel like such a gift to finally stop and stare with wonder.

The benefit of insomnia, yes there can be some, is the dark and the quiet if allowed to be embraced. Out of doors becomes a wild place, no matter where you are, in its isolation and the mysterious scuttling sounds coming from the underbrush. Indoors too can be haunting, in the best of ways, as old friends pay visits. Not the human kind, not really, but those from books read long ago and revisited from time to time as the shelves unwrap their gifts yet again, by candlelight if you should choose. Here then a passage from Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities.

When a man rides a long time through wild regions he feels the desire for a city. Finally he comes to Isidora, a city where the buildings have spiral staircases encrusted with spiral seashells, where perfect telescopes and violins are made, where the foreigner hesitating between two women always encounters a third, where cockfights degenerate into bloody brawls among the betters. He was thinking of all these things when he desired a city. Isidora, therefore, is the city of his dreams: with one difference. The dreamed-of city contained him as a young man; he arrives at Isidora in his old age. In the square there is the wall where the old men sit and watch the young go by; he is seated in a row with them. Desires are already memories.

The world had turned gray, a monochrome mush of March with no interruption on the horizon, and The Notebook was feeling dark and dreary. It went for a drive about 3 p.m. on a weekday and soon found itself behind a school bus, usually a stop and go exercise in impatience.

But then the bus door opened and the kids stepped out in a burst of colors — purples, blues, pinks, yellows and reds. The kids laughed and splashed through puddles in boots decorated with ducks and badgers, kittens and flying umbrellas. There was skipping and smiling, little sisters holding the hands of big brothers and dogs barking welcome home greetings.

And then the last small child walked out dressed as Spider Man. He looked around as if searching for the Green Goblin, Dr. Octavius or Halloween, still seven months away. And then he saw his father, smiling and leaning against a tree. The boy pretended to shoot webs from his palms, and the father pretended to be caught, and then the two pulled each other closer, hand over hand down the imaginary line. And when they reached each other, they pressed their palms together and held this pose for a moment before the father put the boy on his shoulders.

The school bus started up then and The Notebook drove on but stopped as soon as it could because its heart was too full to drive. Skipping felt much better.

They say March comes in like a lion and out like a lamb, or vice versa. Looking at the weather, it’s hard to tell if there are any lambs on the horizon. But from the perspective of words, we lost a true lion here at the end of March. Vineyarder Margaret (Peggy) Freydburg died on Friday at age 107.

The Notebook cherishes words and wordsmiths; these are its oxygen and its breakfast, lunch and dinner. Mrs. Freydburg embodied all that the Notebook holds dear. In her words: “Writing is an absolute need for me — the need to express myself and express experience.” And here she is again, taking us home today:

Two swimmers diving in together side by side exactly. Man and woman — I can see the sickle-splash of arms and legs in ardent crawl, and the watery tumult of pumping feet.

The seriousness of their purpose shouts to heaven, and gives this pond and sky a grounding and a glory, announcing that their heading out, together, side by side, is no more the single purpose of their beings, than is the night of sleeping side by side. And they have found that that’s the simple whole of it.

As a yoga class moved in unison into a high lunge last Saturday morning, the rain outside the window turned to fat snowflakes. “I don’t even want to say what I see outside,” the instructor said, before turning and waving her fingers at the unwelcome wet snow.

The class, a sea of arms extended to the ceiling, joined the instructor in loud laughter before arms went down, gazes shifted, and the snow receded from consciousness.

When it’s April, or almost April, it is possible to laugh at the snow. Cold nights are bearable. Put on an extra layer, it’s almost over. What’s a little snow when spring is on the move. The osprey have returned to their Vineyard nests. At Lambert’s Cove, the pinkletinks make their spring song. Birds on the Old Whaling Church clock tower sing to the blue sky. If you listen, it almost sounds like they are saying “soon, soon, soon.”

Does the momma bird ever think, as her chicks prepare to leave the nest, no not this one, and decide to keep a bird by her side for, well, forever. So it feels these days as the Gazette prepares to say goodbye to Ivy Ashe. This Friday will be her last day.

Four years ago Ivy came to the Gazette as an intern, photographer mostly, and then became a full time writer and photographer. Her stories speak to her personality in the newsroom — heartfelt and always a lot of fun. She is the little sister, the quirky aunt, the good friend and the hard worker who never forgets to smile, too.

It is the nature of the Gazette that young reporters come here to learn to use their wings. But then they fly away, in this case to Hawaii, and a job at a daily paper there. We wish Ivy good luck, while at the same time cherishing our own good luck at having her with us these past few years.

Twelve little piggies, just three weeks old, chase each other around a pen. They run in a tight herd, round their lean-to home, splashing through the mud. White and black checked, a brown one, too -- the whole gang with tiny tails and snouts flat as shovels.

In a separate pen, a group of older pigs, three months old now but looking like teenage toughs, chase papa pig, a boar as big as a bear. He replies with a snort and with his tremendous nose lifts one of the pigs from under the belly. The piggie goes airborne, flipping end over end but landing on its feet. The others line up, waiting their turn, bugging papa pig one by one.

So often the sea and sky and crowded ferry boats take center stage. But inland, behind the trees, where the roads don’t go and crowds don’t notice and the ticket price is always free, the show goes on, starring whatever is right in front of you.

Aerodynamically speaking a bumblebee shouldn’t be able to fly. Its tiny wings should not be able to support itself in the air, and yet fly it does, perhaps because it doesn’t know the laws of physics. The lesson to be gleaned is that anything is possible.

On a similar note, pinkletinks, those teeny-tiny frogs who recently emerged from the mud, are singing in voices so loud one youngster compared them to police sirens. It shouldn’t be possible, that this chorus of nature could rise to such levels, but they are singing about love after all. This fervent call from the muck seems as perfect as any metaphor to describe love in all of its mysterious majesty — the quickening of the heartbeat, the senses taking leave, the preening and the public displays.

Oh, spring. Oh, love. Oh, the very public mating calls of thousands of tiny frogs. Damn it felt good to be warm again this weekend.

Someone left a pair of lungs out to dry. Or rather it was a group of clouds in the sky that resembled perfectly an enormous breath being inhaled. Cirrus or cumulonimbus clouds, it is hard to remember that lesson. But no matter what type they were. What is important is that even the sky takes a pause now and then to take it all in.

But what does it see when it looks down, perhaps at the same moment that we look up? Delight or danger or a bit of both most likely. And surely some sadness, too.

There is just so much to behold of life, even during the blink of one deep breath.

A life lived close to the land sometimes has its quirks. John Stanwood of West Tisbury emailed the Gazette on Monday with the following short tale:

“The other day I stopped at Thimble Farm then headed up Island. After a while I saw a rustling creature on the passenger side floor and realized I had hitchhiker in the form of a chicken. The ‘chickhiker’ had a tour of the Island with me up to the Allen Farm and back!”

A case of extreme hitchhiking came over the police scanner this week. That means hitching while standing in the middle of the road. The scanner also reported that tractor-trailers are getting stuck on the streets of Tisbury again. GPS sends them out Franklin down Spring, and then they are trapped, unable to make the turn onto Main.

Tis the season for out-of-town truckers and aggressive hitchhikers as the Island gets ready for the big push.

And then there was this report from a backyard in West Tisbury. A pet rabbit broke free of its outdoor enclosure,battering its head against a screen door until breaking it open. A wild bunny stood nearby, the same one that visits each evening around dusk to nuzzle noses between the chicken wire. The last sight a seven-year-old girl saw was of two white tails heading for the treeline.

“She’s going to get some babies,” the little girl said of her pet rabbit, not shedding a tear.

Indeed, but hopefully no extreme hitchhiking, too. Animals usually have more sense than that.

An old friend called the other day. Your daffodils are surely blooming now, one old friend said to another. Then a new friend emailed with an invitation to dinner. The night sky, inky and splashed with stars that hang above your vegetable garden, is simply beautiful, one new friend said to another.

Friendship on the Vineyard crosses many boundaries, sometimes cultural. Yesterday news came into the Gazette that the regional high school’s annual Brazilian Friendship Lunch had won recognition from the Southern Poverty Law Center for teaching tolerance and overcoming bias. What a nice way to start the week, to consider that we all could become more tolerant as we enrich our lives through friendship, both old and new.

One spring day some 25 years ago, two young sisters went on a treasure hunt around their Midwestern backyard. They filled their red wagon with dandelions and flowers plucked from the garden, dug in the dirt in futile hopes of finding dinosaur bones, and searched for heart-shaped rocks for their mother’s collection.

Last week the two sisters took walks together on Island beaches, relishing the feel of sand between their toes, and old treasure-hunting habits quickly surfaced. One favors striped rocks, the other anything pleasing to the eye. Both sought flat, round skipping rocks, sending them sailing out over the water in short hops. That thing poking out of the sand, could it be an arrowhead or a megalodon tooth? They found a heart-shaped rock for their mom and left the beach, their pockets full of treasures.

The Notebook hit the road recently and at the end of a long airplane flight a five year old boy put away his electronic device and took notice. “Want to play a game?” he said.

What followed was a few heated rounds of seatbelt wars. The boy held up both ends of his seatbelt and declared one the good guy and one the villain. Then he smashed them together repeatedly, the winner consistently on the side of good. But then, similar to a video game, the boy started inventing more complex levels to the game. Finally, at the fifth level, the one with “volcanoes and lava and big flying stuff with teeth and claws and ten tails,” the dark side rose and good was vanquished.

The Notebook, always a kindred spirit to wild flights of imagination, thought this new friend and his game were totally awesome, especially the fifth level, and told the boy so.

“Nah,” he said. “I didn’t like the fifth level because the good guy lost. I’m going to delete it.”

The boy walked off down the plane then, his Thomas the Tank Engine backpack slung low around his shoulders. But just before disembarking he turned and waved.

“Hey,” he said. “Want to come to my birthday party? It’s on June 2nd, and I’ll be six years old. My house is brick and there is a red truck and blue car in the driveway. You can’t miss it.”

Is it a job requirement for builders to love classic rock? Or perhaps it is only the backbeat of Led Zeppelin or Lynyrd Skynyrd that reverberates loud enough to compete with a nail gun.

Does watching a bird soar against a deep blue sky make the toes twitch? Or is this just the feet’s way of requesting a switch to flip-flops.

And what about short skirts? Do they make all hearts beat faster, both the wearers and the admirers? Of course they do.

The water temperature is 59 degrees, the buds are blooming and everything, thanks to the mid-May sun, feels golden again.

Somewhere out there a young woman takes a step, and then another step and then perhaps a hundred thousand more, give or take. She carries a load on her back, literally and perhaps metaphorically, too. But don’t we all.

The walk appears to have a beginning and an ending, a starting line and a finish line to cross, but that is just a mirage. An experience of tooth and nail, of sinew and awestruck silence, never really ends. The rhythm of each step will continue to dig deeply, burrowing into the heart and reverberating forever.

Be well and watch out for snakes.

On Tuesday most people woke up in homes and then turned to cups of coffee. But at least one man woke up in a houseboat and per his mid-May tradition took a dip in the water. He declared it breathtaking. On the eve of another man’s birthday, his young son asked him what time during the night he was born. “I’m starting a new tradition,” the son explained. “At the precise time of your birth I will wake you up and beat you with sticks.”

A woman remembers her grandfather who attached a spinnaker to his kayak and sailed back and forth near the Oak Bluffs Steamship pier, trolling for blues and stripers. That was a long time ago, but each season when the fish return from their journey south, she walks down to the seawall and waves to his memory.

In praise of traditions — the big, small and very weird.

In this time of graduations, these words from an essay entitled Calliope Times by Edward Hoagland come to mind. Mr. Hoagland lives a few doors down from the Gazette. A formidable essayist and author of dozens of books, he is in his 80s now, but like everyone, he was once a young adult looking for something to do during his college summers. He decided to run away and join the circus. The complete essay is published in his collection Compass Points.

“Though I don’t remember my words to the circus, I believed I had an intuitive understanding of animals and wanted to test it further. And to my surprise a brief note from Winter Quarters in Sarasota, Florida, enclosing a route card, informed that I could have a job with the “Animal Department” if I showed up when school let out. Luckily, my parents didn’t object, it being in both of their families’ tradition that young men went out into the world during the summer and worked — my father on a cattle ship from San Francisco to Europe after his sophomore year, my mother’s brothers and their friends at logging jobs in the woods. Though I was allergic to hay, I trusted in life and ignored the obvious probability that the only animals a stripling like me might be permitted to touch would be the horses. I’d just have to deal with the scariness of an asthma attack when that eventually occurred.”

This week the Island turned green as if by magic, save a few dustbowls due to lack of rain. Maples leaves of every size burst forth all over, their seeds helicoptering slowly to the ground. Towering tulip trees and Northern Catalpas spread their wide mitts against the backdrop of the blue sky, and even the oaks are on their way. Hedges that were previously brown sticks of transparency to the homes they flanked, are now full and flush, blocking views of what lies within. But the imagination is always green and fertile.

The only downside to this river of chlorophyll surging once again is the pollen it produces. Itchy eyes, swollen noses, woeful wheezing — it’s enough to wish for winter once again. No, not really. Better to simply consider it a rite of passage for walking through the gateway that is Memorial Day weekend.

‘Tis the season. Summer 2015 starts now.

Amid the backdrop of sun and blue skies this Memorial Day weekend, there were also the red, white and blue of flags at cemeteries all over the Island. The colors mixed together to form a patchwork of activities and emotions. There was leisure and picnics, art shows and film festivals, traffic and beach outings, asparagus and a wish for strawberries soon to arrive.

But hovering over it all, although sometimes forgotten altogether, but then suddenly emerging as if from some peripheral vision of consciousness to take center stage, was a feeling of sadness. Memorial Day honors the ultimate sacrifice, dying for one’s country. And this is not just about the past, but rather the present and the future, too.

But may there come a day when war is not spoken of in the present tense, and this tradition need only honor something that occurred long ago.

It began as a wooden structure sitting atop the Gay Head Cliffs. The year was 1799, and although the Island must have been a very quiet place then, the seas were busy, still essential highways for travel, supplies and work. The structure was rebuilt with brick in 1856, but the purpose of the lighthouse remained the same - to offer protection and direction for those moving about on the vast ocean.

Yesterday, the Island returned the favor, protecting the lighthouse this time from the encroaching sea and eroding cliffs. The move inland, 129 feet in total, began just before noon on Thursday under gray and rainy skies. A huge hole, one hundred tons of steel, feats of engineering, plus a bit of Ivory Soap to grease the way, and then off it went, inch by imperceptible inch. The move should take just a few days. A mere blink in the lifespan of the lighthouse. But one you want to take in with wide-open eyes.

Images of spring and summer come in many forms. The beach, of course, is often central, as are ice cream cones and backyard barbecues. So too are sprinklers waving in the late afternoon, lady bugs left to wander up and down the arm (bad luck to shoo them away) and books read on the back porch.

And at night, as the light nibbles more and more time for itself, it is often games of tag that speak loudest to the past and present. Stop and lend an ear to the wind. In the distance or close by hear the shrieks of glee still echoing from neighborhood lawns as barefoot kids run and stop during Freeze Tag, Flashlight Tag, TV Tag, Blind Man’s Bluff, Marco Polo (for those with pools), Duck, Duck Goose, Kick the Can, Sharks and Minnows, the list goes on and on. There are so many variations to tag but they all circle around a single theme — run and be chased.

There is nothing to buy, no rules to read, no age limit up or down and no reason to ever end the game, not when the crickets and lightning bugs and cool of evening still whisper their songs of summer. Can’t you hear it? You’re it, you’re time is now, and everyone is waiting for you to join them outside.

As the bluefish return to the Island and a fishing frenzy begins yet again, it seems fitting to revisit John Hersey’s classic tale published in 1987 with the one word title: Blues.

"Blues strike like Blacksmiths’ hammers. In fact, what will occur to you first about these animals is that they are vicious; it will take time for you to see what truly beautiful mechanisms they are. Back in 1871, Professor Spencer Fullerton Bair, who became the first head of the now defunct U.S. Commission of Fish and Fisheries, rightly called the bluefish ‘an animated chopping machine.’ He described how a school of blues will rove like a pack of hungry wolves, destroying everything in sight, leaving a trail of fragments of their prey and stain of blood and oil on the sea."

Goodness. Have fun, but don’t turn your back. Or stay at home and spend some time with Mr. Hersey, although he would be disappointed if you chose that option. “Fish On,” as he would say.

In the early morning light they walked to the edge of the yard where a stone marker had been placed late the night before. By the light of the moon there had been digging and tears and then a pet laid to rest, but the children did not see that.

They brought with them cards made at the breakfast table, and decorated the gravesite with carrots and lettuce. There were pictures, too, made with chalk on the stone, drawn in the shaky hand of the very small. A bunny and a cat nuzzling noses through a wire fence, an unlikely pair of friends. Baby bunnies, too.

The backyard is quieter now. They hadn’t realized how often they looked out the windows but life does go on out there. A wild rabbit stops by to visit but moves along. A rooster crows, the woodpecker drums and the birds sing. But it is still so quiet out there.

Do you remember the day you graduated from high school? Who sat to your left and to your right, the girl with the long ponytail sitting in front of you and the way the clouds hovered above but did not spill until later that evening? Do you remember your parents crying, your siblings laughing, your dog wondering what all the fuss was about? Do you remember rubbing the tassel on your cap between your forefinger and thumb, hearing your name called and watching it echo in the wind? Do you remember the sound your gown made when you walked across the stage?

And how about after, when the crowds dispersed and you were alone for a moment before the parties began? Do you remember that moment when you wondered, if perhaps for the first time ever, who the heck you really were? Of course you do.

The Martha’s Vineyard Regional High School class of 2015 graduation ceremony is this Sunday at 1:30 p.m. at the Tabernacle.

It felt so unfamiliar, the sound and feel and effect of rain. To look at a puddle, to watch a small twig float in a puddle, to stomp in a puddle, it was all so new that every step and sound became an almost curious experience. Leaves appeared to grow greener and larger with each drop. Catalpa and tulip tree leaves widened like catcher’s mitts, a privet hedge thickened like a sponge, and a cluster of horse chestnut leaves resembled a gathering of spider crabs as the weight of water from above made them scurry about.

Monday was a small gift after a long hard road of endlessly dry and sunny days. It was also a chance to think about the words of Tu Fu:

A slight rain comes, bathed in dawn light. I hear it among treetop leaves before mist arrives. Soon it sprinkles the soil and, windblown, follows clouds away. Deepened colors grace thatch homes for a moment. Flocks and herds of things wild glisten faintly. Then the scent of musk opens across half a mountain — and lingers on past noon.

A young boy, just eight years old, stands alone in left field, his blond curls poking out from under his baseball cap. It is his first season in Little League, but he knows what to do. It is the playoffs now and already he is an experienced hand. Back up, his team yells when a power hitter steps up to the plate. But the boy stands still. He knows he is in the right spot.

The ball is hit high and hard, so much so that time seems to stop for a very long time. Long enough for all heads to turn to left field, long enough for parents to stand in the bleachers and younger siblings to stop doing cartwheels on the sidelines. Long enough for the coach to span the entire field, to see his team finally pull together as one and then to feel his heart skip as he sees himself standing out there so long ago on a day just like this one.

And then, as the ball descends, the coach watches as his players begin to age, to go from grammar school to middle school to waving at him from cars that they now drive. His players have become men and he wonders how the time flew as quickly as a ball through the air. Then the ball hits the mitt with a smack and the vision is erased. All that is left is an eight year old boy with a smile as wide as the sky, holding his mitt up high as the cheers of the crowd lift him off his feet.

If feeling cranky or harried or just down in the mouth try this out — find a baby and smile at it. Unless it is asleep or burping or transfixed by some moving object, odds are an even bigger smile will erupt, maybe even with some feet kicking, arms waving and cooing, too.

A baby understands that smiling feels good, but even better that it is contagious. We were all babies once and we all knew this once, included as it was with our DNA and pudgy cheeks.

The Notebook does not like to give advice, far better to drift about on rafts built of memories and moments. But why not try this out for size for a day — smile at everyone you meet, not too big and not too small, but just right. Cliche or goofy or sentimental who cares. Sometimes it’s just what you and the world needs.

Because it is now summer and the days long enough for memories of all the summers before to drift in and out of the screen door, attention once again turns to James Agee and his ode to summer. Here is an excerpt from Knoxville: Summer of 1915, written by Mr. Agee in 1938.

We are talking now of summer evenings in Knoxville Tennessee in the time that I lived there so successfully disguised to myself as a child.

We all lie there, my mother, my father, my uncle, my aunt, and I too am lying there. First we were sitting up, then one of us lay down, and then we all lay down, on our stomachs, or on our sides, or on our backs, and they have kept on talking. They are not talking much, and the talk is quiet, of nothing in particular, of nothing at all in particular, of nothing at all.

The stars are wide and alive, they seem each like a smile of great sweetness, and they seem very near. All my people are larger bodies than mine, quiet, with voices gentle and meaningless like the voices of sleeping birds. One is an artist, he is living at home. One is a musician, she is living at home. One is my mother who is good to me. One is my father who is good to me. By some chance, here they are, all on this earth; and who shall ever tell the sorrow of being on this earth, lying, on quilts, on the grass, in a summer evening, among the sounds of night. May God bless my people, my uncle, my aunt, my mother, my good father, oh, remember them kindly in their time of trouble; and in the hour of their taking away.

The water temperature is now 73 degrees, and the fireflies are dotting the evenings with gold. Venus and Jupiter are making out in the heavens above, and a couple got married yesterday in the Mini Park in Edgartown. Just like that, two people, a justice of the peace and whoever walked by as witnesses and attendees. It was romantic and brief, and very worrisome for the wedding economy. The event looked to have cost nothing, save a few dollars for ice cream cones afterwards.

Here comes July in all its hot and heavy breathing. May it stay that way and never boil over.

A young boy hops on his bicycle. His buddy is with him. They ride off down the road while a parent watches until they roll out of sight. The kids have a bit of cash, maybe some water bottles and the vaguest of plans. What they have in abundance, though, and for perhaps the first time, is freedom.

Everyone remembers it, that first summer when the parents, the babysitters, the watchful eyes of so many, finally stepped back, nervously, and gave way to the open road. Scheduled playdates turned into unplanned adventures, and everything was exciting because the decisions were finally one’s very own.

Later, the sun set and the rules returned — brush your teeth, clean your plate, be nice to your sister. But for a few hours it was just you and your buddy and nobody to tell you what to do.

Happy Independence Day in all its forms.

An old woman sits on her porch watching the crowds walk back and forth. It is the busy season and she waves to everyone, enjoying the show passing in front of her, even when the people don’t wave back. At her feet is her very young grandson, lying down on his stomach and drawing pictures of purple polar bears and snapping turtles. The two sit in silence but eventually the boy looks up and speaks. “Courage, grandma,” he says. “We need more courage.”

The woman nods and turns back to the street. She finds her grandson a bit odd and she likes this. She still remembers the exact day when she was so much younger and decided not to be odd anymore. She has always regretted this.

The woman smiles to herself, reaches out her hand and grabs the boy’s big toe, screaming as loud as she can, “Snapping Turtle.”

The boy yells but then turns and sees it is his grandmother. They both begin laughing and can’t stop, not even when the people passing by pause to watch them now, waving and asking if they are okay, which only makes them laugh harder.

As another summer begins its journey, and families who have come to the Island for generations introduce their newest members to the beaches and towns and traditions, the essay Once More to the Lake by E.B. White comes to mind. In that piece he journeys to the lake of his youth with his young son and experiences the vertigo of both the past and the present in every moment. The Notebook steps aside for the master.

When I got back there, with my boy, and we settled into a camp near a farmhouse and into the kind of summertime I had known, I could tell that it was going to be pretty much the same as it had been before — I knew it, lying in bed the first morning, smelling the bedroom, and hearing the boy sneak quietly out and go off along the shore in a boat. I began to sustain the illusion that he was I, and therefore, by simple transposition, that I was my father. This sensation persisted, kept cropping up all the time we were there. It was not an entirely new feeling, but in this setting it grew much stronger. I seemed to be living a dual existence. I would be in the middle of some simple act, I would be picking up a bait box or laying down a table fork, or I would be saying something, and suddenly it would be not I but my father who was saying the words or making the gesture. It gave me a creepy sensation.

A father takes pictures of his two daughters climbing in a dogwood tree. The daughters begin swaying up and down on the limb bringing a shower of white petals floating slowly to the ground. It is a thick storm and for a moment it looks like January has made a move on July.

A little brother, by the looks of things a new walker and not yet a talker, comes running into the picture with his hands raised. He laughs and smiles and twirls among the snowfall of petals. And then, just when it seems the scene can not get any cuter, another new walker stumbles into view, hands also raised, with his mouth open and his tongue outstretched. There is laughter and the stomping of small feet and it only ends when the two boys look at each other, hug, and then fall to the ground.

The two sets of parents see this, and perhaps one other person sitting on a bench nearby. But not the older sisters or the man walking briskly through the park inhaling an iced coffee or the woman talking heatedly on her phone. Not the squirrels playing tag or the young woman reading a book or the cars in the road or the airplanes in the sky.

But it happened and it was perfect and the sound of those small boys laughing continues to echo in that park. Go for a walk, follow the sound and whatever you do don’t stop and wonder how any of this is possible.

Sometimes, when The Notebook feels rutted in routine, it likes to sit at bus stops around the Island, always in the very early morning. This always feels like slipping into the skin of an Edward Hopper painting, not the dark loneliness of Nighthawks, but still a huddled quiet from which to observe something or nothing at all.

The world moves more infrequently at this time of day, but that is true at home too. Out on a bench, chosen at random, the sights are all new and perspectives shift. Often the past stops by to chat and discuss those days when one needed little more than a toothbrush to be content.

But this is never about the guilt of accumulation, not out there on an unfamiliar bench with the birds and chipmunks and an occasional rabbit wandering by. No, this handshake with the past feels much more helpful than that, a gentle reminder of what the heart feels like when it is truly free.

The Island and the Gazette lost a dear friend this weekend with the death of Leslie J. (for jazz) Stark. Leslie had been a proofreader for the Gazette, and each week he came in on Wednesday afternoons, just after leading the weekly Cancer Support Group meeting. When he left work at night he was often already in costume, heading to a theatre rehearsal or ballroom dance affair. The man was everywhere around the Island, and yet when he was with you he was only with you.

The beauty though of larger than life people is that when they leave the scene they don’t really. Their personality is just too big to fade. Leslie is still here in the office doing his Ted Baxter imitation, drinking coffee at the Black Dog, playing poker with his buddies, discussing jazz, giving support to those fighting cancer, and commanding the stage and urging others to take a dip in the theatrical waters too.

Most of all it is his smile that holds steady, ear to ear, with a hearty laugh. He loved and embraced life, all of it, and inspired everyone else to do the same.

“I’ve waited all year for July and now it’s almost over,” a womanlaments while walking down the street. She is moving fast but then just as quickly she stops, turns around and heads in the opposite direction.

“I’m calling a do over,” she says and then disappears in a blur from whence she came.

Perhaps it is that easy, or perhaps there had been too much sun that day on the beach. Do overs can be like that, three parts desire mixed with two parts feverish dream. The result is anyone’s guess, but wouldn’t it be fun for all of us if she succeeds.

A young man, not sure of who he wants to be, but sure that he is finally searching rather than floating with the current, opens a book. He is sitting in a small apartment in New York city, so small that if he stands with his hands outstretched he can touch the walls on either side. So small he can wash his dinner dishes while sitting in his bed. So small the mice and the cockroaches must bunk together in one hole in the wall.

The young man loves this apartment and he will never forget it. He will also never forget the opening words of the book he has been given, and how they made his heart jump. Not in recognition, his past is not this writer’s past, but in possibility.

We were on our way to the colmado for an errand, a beer for my tio, when Rafa stood still and tilted his head, as if listening to a message I couldn’t hear, something beamed in from afar. We were close to the colmado; you could hear the music and the gentle clop of drunken voices. I was nine that summer, but my brother was twelve, and he was the one who wanted to see Ysrael, who looked out towards Barbacoa and said, We should pay that kid a visit.

The words were written by Junot Diaz, and were the first paragraph of the first story of his first collection of stories, Drown. Mr. Diaz recently arrived on the Vineyard. He will read at the NoepeCenter for Literary Arts at 4:30 p.m. on Thursday, July 30.

The young man, now old, will be there.

It is not the fault of the rooster crowing or the dog barking or the birds chirping, all of them usually up way too early. It is not the fault of a child asking for water or a heavy wind making the curtains dance. It is not the fault of a nightmare about a past without a future.

No, it is something else that wakes you, something you left on the bedside table when you turned off the light. It is the book you are reading.

And now while the rest of the family sleeps — and the neighborhood, the Island, it feels like the whole world still slumbers — you slip into your most comfortable chair, open the pages and disappear down an unfamiliar path created it seems just for you.

The Martha’s Vineyard Book Festival starts today — and you are ready.

Whenever Jerry Kohlberg visited the Gazette he would stop at each desk to say hello to everyone individually. He knew each employee by name, and if they were a writer, by their bylines too. Often writers would receive notes from him expressing how much he appreciated a certain story.

During the summer months, Jerry would also ask after the interns. He wanted to meet them, know how they were doing and find out what they were working on. These are usually college kids, unaware that the man in the baseball cap listening intently to them was a former titan of Wall Street. In much the same way, he was just Jerry on the Chilmark ball field, his native competitiveness the only hint that the affable third baseman had another side.

More than the untold financial contributions he made over decades, often anonymously, to help the greater Vineyard community, it was his generosity of spirit that we will most remember.

The Vineyard Gazette mourns the loss of Jerry Kohlberg while it also celebrates the life of an exceptional man.

The Notebook steps aside this week to give a nod to its printed friend. Today the Vineyard Gazette is distributed free in all of the Island mailboxes, a once-a-year summer tradition. While reading online is of course encouraged, so is clearing off the breakfast table, or maybe even the living room floor, to spread the paper out to its full length — about the same size as the wing span of a fully grown osprey.

The printing press rumbled long into the night, with staffers and interns taking shifts — I got 7 p.m. to midnight, count me in from midnight to whenever.

It’s a full group affair and thanks goes out to all corners of the office and beyond.

Sometimes The Notebook likes to shut down the eyes and let itself be led by scent. The nose tends to dig deeper than the eyes, which so often feel stuck in the present moment. There is no need for a blindfold to shut down the power to see. That would be dangerous and might arouse giggles, which would be contrary to this journey. All that is necessary is a heightened awareness of the air and what it brings.

The coconut smell of suntan lotion is common everywhere, just as the smell of fudge is big in certain circles. Shade smells stronger than heat, just as dogs smell stronger than people, in most cases.

Pass by a park and be struck by an orchestra of scents — cigarette smoke, a man who prefers not to bathe during vacation and another who chooses to bathe too much, hot coffee and a chicken salad sandwich. What about anger and sadness and joy, yes they do give off singular scents.

But perhaps strongest of all are the plants — so many flowers and trees with names unknown, but with the power to send one back in time to a porch, scribbling away on a summer’s day in a coloring book and surrounded by so many who are not alive anymore, not in the literal sense. But with one deep breath they are all brought back to life. So is the feeling of how one person in particular soothed your nightmares by scratching your back lightly and in a circular motion until all was quiet. You tried so hard to stay awake because the world felt so perfect at that moment, but you never could.

Each winter around February the search begins for summer interns. It’s a long process, from the initial emails and phone calls, to the final choices. And yet still the candidates feel more like parts than whole people until they arrive on the Island. Then they quickly fold into the fabric of both the newsroom and the community. For the editorial interns, their bylines are everywhere in the paper, covering everything from Ginkgo trees and artists, to politics and the building of sand castles. For the other interns, their contributions may be less visible but no less essential.

By late summer they are family and it is hard to remember when they were not a part of the team, and also that they are only temporary. Then, usually when the water temperature begins to ebb rather than flow (it went from 77 to 75 degrees this week), reality comes to visit and the interns return to their other lives — most often school.

The Gazette thanks Megan Cerullo, Alex Floyd, Annabelle Hackney, Sarah Rooney and Louisa McCullough for their talents, hard work and good humor. We miss you already, more than you know.

The morning began in the usual way at the Edgartown Post Office. There was a long line, lots of grumbling, and some people fleeing the space just after walking in and seeing the mess.

But then a very large spider wandered by. It was the size of a small girl’s hand, with long legs, a hairy body and a bit of an attitude about it. It didn’t dart or cower, but rather sauntered its way across the tiles. Those in line took in its appearance calmly too, as if the oversized arachnid was no match for the nightmare they were already experiencing.

Then one man got out of line, he had given up any hope of reaching the counter, and walked the spider to the door, slowly coaxing the old gal along.

A person walking in asked if it was the man’s pet, to which he replied, yes, but I forgot his leash today. The next woman coming through the doors looked down at the floor and remarked that the spider wasn’t nearly as ugly as her mother in law.

At this point, those in line started laughing, quietly at first and then heavily and without stopping for air. It was a rare day indeed at the Edgartown Post Office, where the sound of laughter had presumably never been heard before.

In the early morning a man and his young daughter launch their kayak. She is still small enough to sit on a towel between his knees while he paddles, her curls bobbing gently as the boat sways in the current. Sometimes they work together, four sets of hands on the one set of paddles, other times he does the work, and for a short bit she tries to shoulder the responsibility, her tiny arms struggling to carve the water just so.

They land on the far side of the pond, a small sliver of sand they call their own, and find all manner of discoveries in the shallows — tiny dead white crabs fully intact, minnows and shells, the mystery of seaweed. On land they follow bird tracks, and then retrace their own tracks back to the water’s edge. They pause for a moment, place three pebbles in each of their last footprints because why not, and then they are back in the boat again, hovering just a breath above the water in the deep stillness of an August morning.

Later that evening, the man goes to a party where he overhears another man talking about how in a week he will drop off his daughter at college. Upon hearing this, he shudders and looks up at the sky into the fading golden twilight, wondering how it ever got so late.

At sunrise on Monday morning, the fairgrounds were quiet. Some of the rides had already left the Island and the midway looked like the Vineyard in February, all shuttered and dark. The two young men who captained the balloon dart booth and said that all winners had to hug their parents before getting their prize were either asleep in one of the many RV’s still parked on the grounds or on their way to the next small town.

But what of the Ferris wheel man, so familiar now, year after year, holding his perch a mere inches from the rotating colossus of metal? His stance is at once relaxed and death defying as a high wire act. Who is he and has he ever been injured, standing there unflinching hour after hour in the hot summer sun. No one has seen him smile, not in years, but he doesn’t carry a full scowl underneath his bushy mustache either.

On Saturday after finishing her ride, one girl whispered to a friend that he looked like a man with a grouchy throat. Then, as she exited the Ferris wheel, the man called her back. She turned in fear at perhaps having been overheard.

“You forgot your stuffed giraffe, young miss,” he said.

And so, to Mr. Ferris wheel man, this Notebook is for you, wherever you now are, standing guard against those nottall enough to ride and those who try to swing in their seats, but also keeping watch for the forgotten treasures of so many who judged you wrong.

How many erasers will you need this year? How many pencils? Definitely new sneakers, but what of the spiral notebook, the new skirt or pants and shirts? Will the tan remain past the first week of school and will the new homeroom teacher be cool?

Will second grade be harder than first? Will Calculus make the mind burst?

Will she look your way in study hall? And if she does, will you finally be brave enough to call?

Remember when each September meant all of these things and more? And remember your best friend from high school who now appears impossibly at your door saying come on let's not be late, another year of tardy slips and we won’t graduate.

The first time he visited the newsroom it was hard to imagine that this man was the prince of horror, or some moniker to that effect. Wes Craven looked more like a professor, but that wasn’t apt either, although he had been a professor early in his career. He was too quiet to be a professor, more likely to listen than hold forth, to observe and let others lead. Unless of course he was on a film set. Then he loved to lead, building a family out of all the disparate parts of the movie-making community.

From time to time The Notebook defers to its mentors and this morning, to honor the passing of Mr. Craven, it does so once again. Here he is in his own words:

For a long time there was a bird that visited my garden every morning. Early, just in time to lighten the day. Antic, loud, always moving, with a song that was at once raucous and spectacularly original, he lifted my spirits every time he was there. This morning for the first time, the robin wasn’t there, and the silence was deafening.

test

Fall is still weeks away but in most respects the heartbeat of summer has slowed. Parking spaces are easy to come by, soon beaches will no longer be exclusive and there is time now to ponder a lone spider weaving a web not far above a co-workers head. Another co-worker seems to have a thing for yellow highlighters — eight does seem a bit much.

And what about pinkletinks, those stars of the springtime show? What exactly do they do all summer, after going public with their full throated mating roar all spring? And what about snapping turtles? Not that they are a metaphor for the end of summer. It’s just that snapping turtles are always on the Notebook’s mind. And now they are on yours too this Labor Day weekend as you travel home or stay put, visitor or Islander or lovely pinkletink, all quiet with introspection, something the end of summer always seems to summon.

A pile of books in the corner of a spare room proved a useful distraction from end-of-summer cleaning over the long weekend. Pages fell open in the Martha’s Vineyard Cookbook, penned more than 40 years ago by Louise Tate King and Jean Wexler, with its epilogue that has withstood the test of time:

Summer is over. The signs on the shops have been taken down and No Trespassing signs nailed up. Shutters are closed on the summer houses; chains hang across roadways; gates are closed. Out at Squibnocket the rocks roll in on the rising tides and begin covering the summer sand; and the only sounds heard there besides the wash of the water and the crying of the gulls is the occasional plop of a few handfuls of sand as little by little the precious, coveted sea cliffs of Martha’s Vineyard erode . . . The Island is disappearing; through the millennia to come it will be washed away.

But for the moment — and one hopes for the rest of our time — the Vineyard is safe, at least from a geological standpoint. Radical change, if it occurs, will be brought about by those who live or want to live on it.

Hairy, downy, showy, slender, fragrant, stiff, late, lance-leaved, blue-stemmed, sweet. These are just a few of the different types of goldenrod that bloom in North America. In fact there are 130 types in the United States alone. On the Vineyard, seaside goldenrod is an odds-on favorite. During a jaunt along a wooded section of the north shore recently, a late-day sun suddenly broke through the leafy canopy, illuminating a graceful stand of goldenrod all on its own, like a painting in a museum. A member of the sunflower family, goldenrod provides last big flower show of the summer. So go out and enjoy the show.

On an otherwise unremarkable day a man walks onto his porch and sits down. As he sits there, he feels a faint wind blow across his face. He turns to look at the large bush in front of him and stares deeply at the maze of twigs and leaves and tiny bugs running about. He tries to remember the last time he sat down on the porch but he can’t. Then something catches his eye deep within the bush.

It is green and resembles all of the other leaves. But it is somehow bigger, maybe plumper. He looks closer and sees that it is a green caterpillar resting motionless and undetected, until that very moment.

The man is reminded of the William Carlos Williams’ poem: So much depends upon, a red wheel barrow, glazed with rain water, beside the white chickens.

He continues to watch the caterpillar, finally understanding the poem for the first time, and he doesn’t turn away, not until his daughter asks him why he is crying.

Two young dads walk down the street. Nothing out of the ordinary there. But both are pushing strollers, with wee ones cooing and drooling from within. Everyone who passes them smiles. One woman even slows down her car and whistles at them.

Times may change, but perceptions stand still. Had this been two moms, it would have seemed ordinary.

Then the wind blows, and with it a faint whiff of fall fills the air. One man looks to the other and something unsaid passes between them. The man on the right makes a break for it, pushing his stroller a bit faster up the street, and then he veers slightly to the right. This somehow looks familiar. Ah yes, it is a passing route.

The other dad tosses him a football (where was that hiding?), and the catch is made one-handed. There is no victory spike, though. Just a quiet high five as the babies are asleep.

Then the two dads stroller on, sippy cups hooked into their belt loops like six-shooters with a snack pack of Cheerios for backup.

Have you ever held by the gills a striped bass so large it made your biceps throb? Have you ever grabbed an albie by the tail, cradling its head to keep it safe so that it could be returned safely to the water? Have you ever fished through the night, doing double derby weigh-ins, evening and morning, and then headed to work fueled by fish guts and coffee? Or do you only wish you had?

Well, now is the time to cross over. The water is warm (but getting cooler), skies are blue and the fish are waiting below for you. Honest. So get up out of your comfy seat and head outside - to the beach, to the sea, to that place where you can cast out your questions and reel in your soul.

Derby fever, catch it.

Fifty years ago today, the following words written by Truman Capote appeared in The New Yorker:

The village of Holcomb stands on the high wheat plains of western Kansas, a lonesome area that other Kansans call “out there.” Some seventy miles east of the Colorado border, the countryside, with its hard blue skies and desert-clear air, has an atmosphere that is rather more Far West than Middle West. The local accent is barbed with a prairie twang, a ranch-hand nasalness, and the men, many of them, wear narrow frontier trousers, Stetsons, and high-heeled boots with pointed toes. The land is flat, and the views are awesomely extensive; horses, herds of cattle, a white cluster of grain elevators rising as gracefully as Greek temples are visible long before a traveller reaches them.

It was the first installment of what would become the book In Cold Blood. And oddly enough, a man from Oak Bluffs was there too among the hard blue skies, Stetsons and grain elevators.

There was some complaining about the nature of names. Super Moon, Blood Moon, these monikers were not welcomed in certain purist circles, those who have watched the heavens for years and do not appreciate new attention-getting taglines. The unfathomable expanse of ‘up there’ — mysterious, violent, constant but varied — is always enough.

But all could agree that Sunday night was the moon’s show. Stars and galaxies and planets all took a backseat to the big round orb — full and white as a spotlight, and then slipping behind a gray curtain to return as brown or reddish depending on one’s description.

Children stayed up late, some groups shot off fireworks, others congregated on beaches to take photographs or to just sit back and watch by the ocean’s edge, another frontier of mystery.

Why is it that by standing so small in the shadow of something so large, one feels more full?

One morning, while watching the rain come down, a man remembers how as a small child he and his first-ever best friend loved to wander outside during a storm. The streets would be empty, no other wanderers at least, and they felt like pioneers, wet and rugged and more alive than those huddling inside.

They raced leaves, twigs, acorn tops and small bugs down rapids created curbside, and then watched with no disappointment as their handpicked boats disappeared down the sewer — there was always more material to choose from.

In the wind and the rain, they wandered the streets and the fields and the backyards with impunity. Once, while squishing along with his friend past a schoolyard, he had a feeling of peace so overwhelming he has never felt it so intensely again.

One morning, while watching the rain come down, a man rises from his couch, opens the door and walks out into the wide wet world, unaware that he is still wearing his pajamas and slippers.

She says I hope to get in one more swim before it gets too cold. He says I have already moved on to walking in the woods. She says next week the sun sets at 6 p.m. He says three weeks after that daylight saving time ends.

She says she likes to listen to baseball on the radio, only the playoffs, and it doesn’t matter who wins. He says football is fall’s game, like apple picking and watching out for falling acorns. She says there is beauty in the cold fall mornings when no one else is awake, the house is still and the yard beckons in the breeze. He says fall mornings are muddy but the nights are so clear he can see into the future.

She says what about winter, do you sometimes build small snowmen, pour maple syrup on their heads and then eat them? He says yes, of course I do.

She says let’s meet again come winter. He says it’s a date.

A man dropped by the office the other day with an overflowing bag of vegetables — beets, carrots, peppers, various sweet potatoes. He was a welcome sight, just as the man with the Chilmark Chocolates was the week prior. Sometimes cookies or muffins show up, brought over by slipper-shod feet. And every so often a man brings in a box of baby birds to look at (no, not to eat). A trio of owls, an eagle — it is always a surprise.

It’s times like these when the office feels more like a home with a door that is always open.

Down the street a young woman in a French maid outfit sweeps the sidewalk, the Romanian barista says goodbye for the season as he heads off to Scotland, and a woman in a very large hat turns her head to hide her famous face. Each one is a piece of the neighborhood puzzle which continues to shift and shape from day to day, and yet also remain largely the same.

Columbus Day weekend smiled on the Vineyard, with brisk sales going on at every store you could find and that just-right combination of summery and early fall weather that only seems to happen here. On Saturday a chilly breeze buffeted the north side of the Island, but on the south side where it was sheltered and warm, Lucy Vincent beach was as crowded as a summer day. (Notable difference: people were clothed and had many dogs in tow.) Last swim? Monday was the day for that; time now to put away the beach towels for another season. Here are a few headlines from our website.

On Saturday night the last weigh-in for the 2015 Martha’s Vineyard Striped Bass and Bluefish Derby will take place. The Notebook always follows the derby closely, but the sleepless nights, the big catches and the ones that got away, seemed to swim a bit closer this year. With four weigh-ins to go, colleague Karen Altieri is still at the top of the charts for a shore caught bluefish, weighing in at 15.65 pounds.

Karen caught her blue in the early days of the derby. She knew it was a big one, and the scales confirmed it. And then the waiting began. Not that her wait is a static thing by any means as she is still out there on the beach every day. But it can be mighty stressful out in front.

There is a protocol around the office, a dance of talking up the big day, but not too much. The power of the jinx always threatens, and heck the Notebook wants a ride in that new boat too.

And so may the derby gods smile on all those who walk the shores in search of the big one, but may they also smile on any big bluefish, giving them the strength to throw off a lure and live at least two more days.

The Notebook was pondering a seagull recently. There is the magic of flight, always at the forefront when watching a bird, but also the wonder of an elusive dinner. The seagull hovered in the air with a shellfish, dropping it repeatedly onto the road, trying to crack it open and get at the meat inside.

This went on in a continual loop for quite some time — perhaps the shell was too hard, the road too soft or the skill of the bird lacking in some way. The Notebook has seen this ritual hundreds of times but there is always something wondrous about watching the ingenuity of a creature without hands at work.

Time stopped for a moment as the seagull continued to retrieve and drop the mollusk, still with no luck. Later, while passing a grocery store, the Notebook felt an acute sadness knowing that all it needed to do for dinner was walk through those doors.

While driving, a man listens to his young daughter in the back seat talking animatedly to her two mermaid dolls. Nothing else in the world exists for her at this moment but the imaginary bubble she has created.

The man smiles and thinks back to a time when he and his brother and their best friend created whole towns in the basement for their assortment of rubber creepy crawlers, complete with homes and businesses and hot rod cars. There was day and night too, demarcated by a flick of the light switch. In the dark, crimes were committed, both violent and mundane, to be investigated by a policeman, always played by a large floppylobster.

Where does unfettered imagination disappear to, he wonders. Does it close up completely, wither away from lack of use or morph into a new form of creativity? He is not sure, but for a moment on a windy morning he allows himself to be led back to that time when reality and make believe were one, and his world had no limits. He begins laughing and can’t stop, not even when his daughter tells him he is interfering with her play.

There are fears of driving over bridges, fears of small places and of wide open spaces, of cocktails parties and of being alone. Fears of elevators and escalators are not uncommon, and snapping turtles nibble the edges of our consciousness. One man fears the name Stan above all others and a woman cowers upon seeing a cat in a tutu.

A young boy worries that his penmanship is cursed, a grandmother recoils at the sound of crickets chirping, and for so many the dark basement is one giant cobweb of ill will. Bare porches with rocking chairs keeping 3/4 time with the wind should always be avoided, say some. Others warn against walking backwards, the number six, tiny garages, puppets, mimes and marionettes.

Why bring this up now, during the quiet time of falling leaves, flannel shirts and windows aglow with soft evening lights? Because the moon is full, the salt has been spilled, the mirror cracked and the black cat definitely on the prowl. Halloween looms around the next dark corner. Are you ready?

A man raises three boys in quick manly succession and then is confronted with granddaughters. He decides to build one a doll house. Not just any doll house, but a perfect one with many rooms, tiny furniture, wall paper and shingles made with hundreds of broken popsicle sticks. It is his first after all, and he quickly grows attached to it.

The project takes nearly a year. Working late into the night he often loses track of time, and in the dark he sometimes wonders what it would have been like to have a daughter.

When the time comes to finally give the doll house to his granddaughter she is overjoyed. She immediately begins to play with it but then when it is time to go home she asks out loud how they will put it in the car.

Her grandfather replies that it will be staying at his house. His excuse is that he can look after it and keep it safe until she returns to visit again, but deep down he can’t bear to think of her playing with the doll house without him.

On Nov. 1, a man visits Waskosim’s Rock in Chilmark. He walks further uphill to a meadow and sits on a quiet rock with a view of an endless landscape of red and orange hues. It is like Mars, the red planet, up there, as the beauty of fall swallows up all the other colors.

But then a breeze begins and the leaves undulate back and forth in waves of the nearly dead, the remaining leaves so close to falling now, and closing the curtain on another season.

For a moment the man’s breath stops as the metaphor of so much death calls out to him. But then he remembers it is All Saints’ Day, and his perspective shifts to one of gratitude for all those who came before him. In the hush of the late afternoon, he stands and bows to this scene that he knows he will try to explain later, but surely fail.

The thing about dreams, she said, is that they taste so good.

He thought for a moment. He had dreams of flying, of falling, of standing naked in front of large audiences, of getting the girl, of losing the girl, of his grandmother revealed as the world’s archvillain, and even one of being a fish. That had always been his favorite, the joy of gills and speeding through the depths with a flick of his tail. But he could not remember any dreams about food.

How do they taste? he asked.

Like the fourth grade, she said, when everything was new and no one knew my name but you.

From time to time, The Notebook stands aside to make room for a mentor. Who it will be is usually determined by the mood of the late afternoon sunlight or a leaf blowing down a quiet road. Today it is William Maxwell, the writer and fiction editor of the New Yorker for so many years. Here is the beginning of his essay Nearing 90. Mr. Maxwell died at the age of 91.

Out of the corner of my eye I see my 90th birthday approaching. It is one year and six months away. How long after that will I be the person I am now?

I don’t yet need a cane but I have a feeling that my table manners have deteriorated. My posture is what you’d expect of someone addicted to sitting in front of a typewriter, but it was always that way. “Stand up straight,” my father would say. “You’re all bent over like an old man.” It didn’t bother me then and it doesn’t now, though I agree that an erect carriage is a pleasure to see, in someone of any age.

I have regrets but there are not very many of them and, fortunately, I forget what they are. I forget names too, but it is not yet serious. What I am trying to remember and can’t, quite often my wife will remember. And vice versa. She is in and out during the day but I know she will be home when evening comes, and so I am never lonely.

Long ago, a neighbor in the country, looking at our flower garden, said, “Children and roses reflect their care.”

This is true of the very old as well.

On an otherwise unremarkable day The Notebook was given a quiz by one of its younger readers to determine its spirit animal. Disembodied email services always like to think of themselves as having a spirit of some kind. It hoped for something ferocious like a mountain lion or wolverine. Or something precious and fleeting like a snowflake or dandelion seed blowing in the wind, neither of which are animals but definitely full of spirit.

The test chose snapping turtle, and The Notebook fell silent as it pondered one of life’s universal curveballs — what happens when what you fear most in life turns out to be your guide?

In a church up-Island on Sunday there was a bowl of water placed in front of the altar. “This bowl is our tears,” the minister said. She put her hand in the water, scooped it up and let the liquid fall slowly from her hand back into the bowl. “My tears are for Paris,” she said. “For the victims and the families.”

Others approached the bowl.

My tears are for peace. My tears are for the refugees. My tears are for the parents.

In the pew, he remembers Paris, of being twenty four and walking for nearly three days straight, trying to see everything. His tears are for how kind the people were to him even though he couldn’t speak a word. How they fed him and sang to him and made him feel as if the world was both huge and small at the same time.

My tears are for the children, for a world where suffering is everywhere. My tears are for violence, for poverty, for hate. My tears are for hope.

To have the hot hand is always a pleasure; to be on the hot seat never so. But what about a combo? Such was the case in the Gazette sales office the other day, when a smoking hot account manager mistakenly lit his pants on fire by standing too close to a space heater.

For a few minutes, he was unaware of his fate, perhaps thinking he was warming to his own pitch and the smell of smoke just a byproduct of his wizardry. He was brought back to earth by his colleagues’ shrieks.

Elsewhere in the office, a reporter ordered himself a pair of slippers for Christmas, but mistakenly received 23 pairs, one for each size and color the company stocked. The box was a big as Bobcat, filled with all manner of snugly footwear, which now adorn the whole staff — just in time as space heaters have been banned from the building.

A man and his seven year old daughter set out to see the new Peanuts movie. They enter the theatre, find seats and begin munching popcorn. When the lights go down and the cartoon characters arrive the little girl stares at the screen. But when Snoopy enters the scene, sitting atop his doghouse and then flying off to chase the Red Baron, she turns to her father.

“Hey Dad, it’s your tattoo,” she says very loudly. Heads turn and the man sinks into his seat, but yes, she is right. No snakes or Chinese characters. No anchors or nods to mom. No broken hearts, lost loves or symbols of a rugged past. Just Snoopy flying through the open sky, hiding out on his hip forever.

He leans over to his daughter, whispering loud enough for anyone near enough to hear. “The guy had just run out of skulls and razor wire, honest.”

Thanks for an open window on a dark night, the rain falling outside in a steady beat. Thanks for morning mud puddles and the joyous three year olds who play in them.

Thanks for food and homes and tables and chairs, for quiet nooks and even coat hooks.

Thanks for schools and teachers and the never ending journey of knowledge.

Thanks for the memory today, while driving past a sleeping corn field, of a dear friend departed to soon but still so deeply present.

Thanks for ancestors who travelled hard roads so that we could travel smoother ones.

Thanks for everything, the good, the bad and the in between.

Thanks for words and sentences, paragraphs and stories, and for readers, readers everywhere.

One afternoon this past weekend an elderly couple made their way up a rural road in West Tisbury. The woman sat in a wheelchair while the man slowly pushed her up an incline. When they came to a crossing they stopped and remained there by the side of the road. A passing motorist stopped to see if they needed any help.

No thank you, the man said. We are all set.

As the motorist drove away he glanced in his rearview mirror at the scene unfolding. The older couple were looking off in the same direction, across a large field and towards the treeline. The sun had begun to set, brushing the raised branches of the trees and bathing everything, but especially the old couple, in a sea of gold.

The motorist drove away thinking he had seen everything, in that one moment, of their lives together. And perhaps he was right.

A Gazette employee recently received a vacuum as a gift from her mother. The gift came in the mail and was well received. A cynic might say mom was angling for a clean room as she was coming to visit soon. But cynics don’t exist in a newsroom. Not ever.

All seemed normal, but then a few days later another vacuum arrived in the mail. And then two days later another vacuum arrived. To some this might seem an odd and unique event. But readers of The Notebook remember how a different Gazette employee recently received 23 pairs of slippers in the mail after ordering just one.

What gives? Well consider another fact. On the same day as all those slippers arrived, a large truck tire appeared in the Gazette’s side patio. Now, journalists are usually adverse to embracing coincidence or superstition as a motive. But then how else to describe the sight of so many Gazette employees strolling outside to place their palms on the tire and then running to their computers to shop.

The sun had just set when the Island Home docked at Vineyard Haven Harbor Sunday afternoon. Passengers dispersed and were heading for their cars when from inside a small SUV a joyous barking broke through the quiet homecoming routine. A black dog leaned halfway out of a passenger-side window, yelping and barking hello while a woman in the driver’s seat laughed. A Bernese mountain dog crossing the street chimed in with a few barks of his own.

Two men, one a teenager, smiled as they walked toward the car. When the men finished loading their bags and settled into their car the dog quieted down. But as the SUV pulled away and dusk settled onto the harbor, the happy barks echoed in the enveloping darkness.

At the imprecise moment when day turns to night and a gray hush begins to fall about the Island, an aerial snapshot is taken. At the high school track, a young woman jogging pauses as a family of skunks ambles from the woods, crosses the track and begins digging in the grassy infield. After waiting patiently she resumes running but at a much faster pace now.

In town, a young boy brings his bike to an abrupt stop and stares at a Sycamore tree, its bark shed for the season revealing an almost camouflage pattern.

Outside a library, a group of parents waiting for their children discusses the merits of breakfast for dinner. After all, it’s the only time wine is acceptable with pancakes, one parent says.

And in a graveyard all alone, a man kneels in the wet grass, removes his hat and says hello to his friend for the first time in this place. And although he knows the answer, he still wonders what took him so long.

In Edgartown last Saturday, among the crowds wandering the streets a little boy possibly four years old darted about near his parents muttering to himself,“I’ve got villain issues. I’ve got villain issues.”

A few minutes later, as his father tried to gather him to leave and the boy resisted loudly, the dad said to mom, he’s hopped up on sugar and overtired. If only dad knew the reality, that his son was just a bit stressed from saving the world — so many villains and just not enough little boys to vanquish them.

Elsewhere on the parade route, seventh grader Owen Atkins received a Gazette hat — a collector’s item, if you will, made by Gazette staff the day before out of recent newspapers and thrown to passersby during the parade. After wearing it for a bit, young Owen removed the hat and checked it out. And there among the folded articles, by some rare coincidence, was his name, along with others from the Oak Bluffs School in acknowledgement for achieving seventh grade high honors.

Owen thought that was pretty cool. So did The Notebook.

Sometimes it is the sight of something so simple. The other morning, under tired skies and beside sloshy boots, a young child walked with his mother. He took a few steps and then lifted his small hand into his mother’s palm, where it fit perfectly. Neither parent or child looked at each other, they didn’t have to, as they walked along as one.

When does this begin and when does it end, this walking hand in hand, big and small? Because yes it does end, as surely as saying goodnight at bedside, scratching backs while outside the winter wind howls and buckling car seats will someday say goodbye. What happens next is anyone’s guess as the days are swallowed up by years.

Filled with such thoughts a father says to his small daughter, please promise you won’t ever get any bigger. Later that same night the girl begins to weep in front of her mother saying, daddy doesn’t want me get any bigger, but I can’t help it.

Another misstep on the road of parenting, fixed however by holding her hand until she falls asleep.

When he was a boy, it was tradition for the family to take a drive one night before Christmas to look at the lights all over town and beyond. They drove through the streets nearby, and then headed up into the hills and surrounding towns where the homes were so large that in the dark they looked like castles. He looked at those houses with their candles aglow in so many windows, and couldn’t help wondering what those kids found under their trees on Christmas morning.

But he was more curious than jealous because in that car on those nights with his parents and brothers he always felt as if he too was aglow, wrapped in holiday lights for all to see.

At some point the tradition ended. He can’t remember when or how old he was. But he thinks about it every year, when the lights come on again and he drives through the night with his own family now, seated behind the steering wheel, but much more firmly planted in the backseat with his face pressed against the cold window, calling to his parents and brothers, look at that one, look at that one, look at that one.

It is late and he can’t sleep but that is okay because he does not have to get up for work the next day or the few days after that. He wanders about the house, pausing in front of a wall of bookshelves. He stares and then steps closer and passes his hand over the titles, stopping at one he has not read for years. He pulls it out, remembering when he first encountered the book in his twenties, and then read it again in his thirties. He sees for a moment the journey of his own self through the decades, his course charted by all the books he has ever read. It is a good way to count the days he thinks, now sitting on the couch in the dark with just one lamp lit to guide him. He opens the book, Sophie’s Choice by William Styron:

In those days cheap apartments were almost impossible to find in Manhattan, so I had to move to Brooklyn. This was in 1947, and one of the pleasant features of that summer which I so vividly remember was the weather, which was sunny and mild, flower-fragrant, almost as if the days had been arrested in a seemingly perpetual springtime. I was grateful for that if for nothing else, since my youth, I felt, was at its lowest ebb. At twenty-two, struggling to become some kind of writer, I found that the creative heat which at eighteen had nearly consumed me with its gorgeous, relentless flame had flickered out to a dim pilot light registering little more than a token glow in my breast, or wherever my hungriest aspirations once resided.

Directory

Sections

Towns

Notebook Archive - 2015

Directory

Sections

Towns

Notebook Archive - 2015

Friday, January 2

Tuesday, January 6

Friday, January 9

Tuesday, January 13

Friday, January 16

Tuesday, January 20

Friday, January 23

Tuesday, January 27

Friday, January 30

Tuesday, February 3

Friday, February 6

Tuesday, February 10

Friday, February 13

Tuesday, February 17

Friday, February 20

Tuesday, February 24

Friday, February 27

Tuesday, March 3

Friday, March 6

Tuesday, March 10

Friday, March 13

Tuesday, March 17

Friday, March 20

Tuesday, March 24

Friday, March 27

Tuesday, March 31

Friday, April 3

Tuesday, April 7

Friday, April 10

Tuesday, April 14

Friday, April 17

Tuesday, April 21

Friday, April 24

Tuesday, April 28

Friday, May 1

Tuesday, May 5

Friday, May 8

Tuesday, May 12

Friday, May 15

Tuesday, May 19

Friday, May 22

Tuesday, May 26

Friday, May 29

Tuesday, June 2

Friday, June 5

Tuesday, June 9

Friday, June 12

Tuesday, June 16

Friday, June 19

Tuesday, June 23

Friday, June 26

Tuesday, June 30

Friday, July 3

Tuesday, July 7

Friday, July 10

Tuesday, July 14

Friday, July 17

Tuesday, July 21

Friday, July 24

Tuesday, July 28

Friday, July 31

Tuesday, August 4

Friday, August 7

Tuesday, August 11

Friday, August 14

Tuesday, August 18

Friday, August 21

Tuesday, August 25

Friday, August 28

Tuesday, September 1

Friday, September 4

Friday, September 4

Tuesday, September 8

Friday, September 11

Tuesday, September 15

Friday, September 18