The Vineyard Gazette - Martha's Vineyard News

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

On the cusp of a new year The Notebook turns to the gray outdoors, wanders down a woodsy path and then realizes it has no words for what it feels. So instead it looks to another writer to say what it cannot, as it does from time to time. Donald Hall is 87 years old and lives alone in New Hampshire. His subject is often solitude, the beauty and complexity of this nearly extinct species. Here he is in an excerpt from recent essay:

From an overstuffed blue chair in my living room I look out the window at the unpainted old barn, golden and empty of its cows and of Riley the horse. I look at a tulip; I look at snow. In the parlor’s mechanical chair, I write these paragraphs and dictate letters. I also watch television news, often without listening, and lie back in the enormous comfort of solitude.

People want to come visit, but mostly I refuse them, preserving my continuous silence. Linda comes two nights a week. My two best male friends from New Hampshire, who live in Maine and Manhattan, seldom drop by. A few hours a week, Carole does my laundry and counts my pills and picks up after me. I look forward to her presence and feel relief when she leaves. Now and then, especially at night, solitude loses its soft power and loneliness takes over. I am grateful when solitude returns.

A man watches his young daughter roller skate across the kitchen floor, back and forth, back and forth. It is a new present but already she can roll backwards and forwards while eating a sandwich or even a bowl of cereal. While she rolls she talks about her wish to be on a roller derby team, the one in Portland, Oregon called the Rose City Rollers. She has never been to Oregon but the Rose City Rollers are the main characters in her favorite book. No other team will do.

The man smiles at the thought of his daughter as a roller derby queen, a girl not afraid to be tough and to take some lumps. She will need this armor he thinks, as the winds of change blow against her. On an impulse he asks her if she’d like to go to the women’s march in Washington DC, just the two of them.

His daughter stops rolling and smiles. Yes, yes, yes, she says. Then she begins marching in place while chanting: I’m a little woman, I’m a little woman, I’m a little woman.

Her chant and the sound of her skates stomping on the floor echo throughout the house. For the first time in awhile the man looks toward the future and smiles.

When he was a young boy, during the first snowstorm one year, he and his best friend built a snow fort in the front yard, close to the road. They created a large stock of snowballs and then began pelting cars as they drove by in the street. It was a dumb thing to do. Throwing snowballs at cars is dangerous for the drivers. And building a fort loaded up with snowballs next to your front door kind of gives away who the perpetrators are.

A man stopped his car after being hit, knocked on the front door and that was the last time that winter the young boy was allowed outside to play.

Walking through the woods this weekend, as the first snowfall fell on the Vineyard, he remembered that day and his best childhood friend. For years they were inseparable, but then later, as an adult, the friend took a hard turn down a difficult path and they lost touch.

The man thinks about his old friend from time to time, and the memories of their time together as children always make him smile. He wonders if his friend remembers those days too, wherever he is, and whether they make him smile too.

The world of roadside goods is an eclectic one. For Free signs rest atop car seats, old doors, dishwashers, sinks, pallets, the occasional leaky canoe, file cabinets, maybe even little sisters or older brothers depending on the sibling rivalry of the day.
Outside the home of an interior designer by trade, it is a veritable smorgasbord of nearly new housewares. The designer even keeps track of how long it will take for a certain item to be claimed; a sport of sorts for those dabbling in roadside riches.
Recently, she put out a shower door, in good shape. It was spotted and taken away in a matter of minutes. The next day, however, there was a thump and a clunk outside as the shower door was returned.
It didn’t fit, the returner said.
No backsies the designer said. But it was too late. The shower door remains out there by the side of road, a lonely outcast in need of a good cleaning itself now.

The beach at night is a talkative thing. The low murmur of the ocean is an amiable friend, but the cold wind buffets the ears like an argument. A footstep is recorded with a subtle shift in texture and syllables, but then disappears as a flock of geese settle in nearby.

In the night sky, the stars are strong and nearly silent, whispering to each other but not to you, not on this night. The horizon line looks dull and gray in the dark, but is bold in conversation, asking so many questions, the hard ones you’d prefer to avoid.

Insistent and rather annoying, you turn instead to the dunes, those quiet mounds that want nothing from you. It occurs to you, as it does from time to time, how shy they are which is how you feel right now, standing alone in front of them on such a dark and noisy night.

For no other reason than he is feeling low, a man decides to visit some ghosts. He drives to the old house and watches from his perch in the driver’s seat. At first no one stirs inside, the new owners not winter people. But there is movement soon enough.

The tree he had climbed as a child is gone, but his younger self waves from the fourth branch, still waging a war against a nest of earwigs. The porch has changed too, the side entrance switched to one in front, making it more open to the street. His brothers emerge from the side entrance with badminton racquets, and his father smiles, raising his gin and tonic in the air, the sides of the glass sweating in the summer sun.

Down the street the library is now a pharmacy and the tackle shop nearby is a private residence. His mother shrugs her shoulders and turns back to her book, always one to roll with the passing of time.

The day grows late but two ghosts are missing and so he lingers even though he is late for something not very important. He keeps watching the porch, which is part of the problem. His grandparents are inside. His grandmother stands vigil by the stove waiting for his grandfather to finish cleaning the fish he caught for supper.

The man waves but they don’t see him, which is fine. It’s been a long time and he’d rather watch them standing side by side, talking to each other again as if they and the house had never left.

For most Islanders, January is a month to embrace or simply survive. It’s all a matter of perspective. Embrace the deep quiet with long, solitary walks, clearing old trails along the way, noticing how the pale sun illuminates the bare treetops in the western sky at day’s end.

Survive when the bitter cold seeps through the floorboards of the old farmhouse by wearing thick socks and drinking endless mugs of steaming tea. An old friend, once a newspaperman but now a potter, made the mug. It’s bowl-shaped and beautifully crafted, somehow both delicate and sturdy. Like the rest of us, it survives the long winter.

A call came in from the past, a surprising source that made him think about so much he had left undone. Not the tally of to-do lists unchecked or the mental makeup of some bucket list to be filled. Instead his mind drifted to people and places he had turned his back on, not deliberately or even decisively, but rather through the slow accumulation of time.

How had this happened he wondered, while at the same time knowing the answer.

He did not pick up the phone, not then, choosing instead to walk outside through the darkened streets, searching for his younger self to ask him who he had been.

How had this happened he wondered, while at the same time knowing the answer.

He did not pick up the phone, not then, choosing instead to walk outside through the darkened streets, searching for his younger self to ask him who he had been.

There is a gull up-Island in Menemsha. That by itself is not news. After all, gulls are everywhere on the Vineyard, soaring, swimming, begging, having a chat with a neighbor. This gull stands out though. His tongue sticks out his neck.

The sight is peculiar, but the gull seems not to notice, and his standing among the bird community does not appear compromised by the oddity. The avian world is much more accepting of differences than we humans.

But the question remains, what happened? Was it a fish lure that slit his throat, a clam shell or something more sinister?

Most likely we will never know and it doesn’t really matter. The gull likes french fries, just like you do. Only it has to work a bit harder when eating them.

A man tucks his young daughter into bed, wondering when and how the process became so involved. First he must scratch her back, paying careful attention to her shoulder blades. Then she rolls onto her back, raises her arm and has him rest his forehead in her armpit while she counts to five. Never four or six, always five.

Finally, he must suggest an animal for her to count as she falls asleep — always a different one and not too scary. Through the years, he has been through all manner of domestic and wild creatures, from cats and dogs to badgers and lemurs, to the pygmy three-toad sloth, a northern hairy-nosed wombat, even the elephant shrew and the stubfoot toad.

At a loss he says tigers. Too boring and too scary, she says. How about baby tigers? She thinks for a moment. Okay, baby tigers are cute. I’ll let it slide, this time.

Last week Howard Attebery died. His widow Cynthia Riggs, said the generous outpouring from the community made her remember a poem her mother Dionis Coffin Riggs wrote many years ago in response to the death of her grandfather. The Notebook is pleased to share the poem here.

Grandma ran upstairs
to put the red tablecloth
in the attic window.

Aunt went down the road
as fast as she could to fetch Sam West.

They sent me with a note
to Emily Baxter.

I was not to look toward the barn (and I didn’t)
because Grandpa had fallen

out there
where he had tied the cow
to milk her in the bright May evening

Antone
saw the red signal
from across the valley.

Sam West
left his supper
untouched.

Emily
sent Will over to help
and kept me with her
Entertaining me
with her pictures.

I saw the message
their eyes exchanged
when Aunt came for me.

Next morning
Aunt told me
what I already knew.

When I went downstairs
Martha West, Sam’s wife,
was scrubbing our kitchen floor.

And Susie Scott, crying, said,
“M’s Cleaveland, I’ll do your wash
this week
for nothing.”

On the roads, beaches and harbors, a wide open emptiness seems to devour everything. The sky is a cranky gray, the wind a piercing dagger and the waves a reminder of distant shores. But somewhere amidst this deep mid-winter baggage a little girl discovers her competitive streak. It is the annual spelling bee and she is determined to be tops. She is too young to advance to the school competition and so her grade will have to do.

But first she must get past a certain little boy, a ferocious speller who has her tossing and turning at night, spelling out caterpillar, imprecise and nemesis in her sleep.

The bee is set for Valentine’s Day, an ironic twist that has her cutting out a heart shaped card for her competitor while also muttering about how he’s going down. Winner gets a plaque. Runner up gets a pencil. She draws pencils all over his Valentine’s Day card, then heads to school with the determined look of a champion.

Here are a few headlines from our website:

On an otherwise unremarkable morning, a rabbit paused its wild ways to approach a man who knelt down with his hand outstretched. The rabbit gave the man’s fingers a nuzzle, its whiskers soft but inquisitive, then ran off into the woods with a suspicious looking friend.
The hour was early and the air mostly quiet, except for a few gossipy birds gathered at a respectful distance.
The moment was brief but the man felt it deeply. He remembered the children’s pet rabbit, killed by a neighborhood dog. But looking back wasn’t the only direction his thoughts took. Glancing forward he fell into metaphor, with the rabbit signifying all manner of loved ones lost.
Perhaps it was February, perhaps it was the dawn. Perhaps it meant nothing, perhaps it meant everything. He stood up and called out, which only made the birds fly away and the silence that followed strike deeper.

Three dads, a mom and a grandmother bob about in the YMCA pool, each one holding an infant, less than a year old. The babies all wear swim caps perched atop their chubby faces. They hold tightly onto their caregivers with looks that vary from delight to deep consternation.

It is a potentially mundane scene, happening all over the world as babies are introduced to the water. But then an instructor appears carrying a large plastic watering can. One by one she waters each small child and their caregivers too, the drops floating down on them like a mild rain. The metaphor of flowers growing is so strong a man smells it all the way upstairs while riding an exercise bike to nowhere.

The colorful swim caps, small mouths tilted back to catch the drops, and one child nibbling on his mother’s nose -the scene continues to blossom until the children begin yawning, tired it seems of holding the future on their small shoulders. Afternoon naps beckon below, while upstairs the miles churn by in cycle of sweat and gratitude.

The other day in the Edgartown Stop & Shop it was business as usual, with lines at the register filled with people keeping to themselves and cashiers dutifully going about their business. The scene wasn’t entirely grim, but a mixture of quiet grumbling and folks anxious to be somewhere else, either home with their groceries or clocking out at the end of a shift, doesn’t make for a party atmosphere.

But then Adele’s voice came over the loudspeaker, singing her signature song Someone Like You. Slowly the mood shifted, first with a bit of foot tapping and head swaying. Then a cashier started to sing along, her customers joined in, followed by one register after another. It was as if a commercial had broken out, but with no cameras or director yelling cut. Just a bunch of shoppers on the Vineyard coming out of their New England shells to let loose for a moment.

When the song ended, the baggers went back to bagging, the cashiers to tabulating and the customers to shopping. Anyone entering the store wouldn’t have known that anything exceptional had occurred minutes before, except for all the smiles which continued to linger on everyone’s faces.

Seven years ago this week a boy was born. He arrived in the world early — three months early — weighing just under four pounds. That day his grandmother drove to Boston to meet her first grandchild. He was pink and tiny in his hospital crib. She gave him her little finger and he squeezed it. And somehow she knew that all would be okay. Last week the same boy and his grandmother rode a chairlift together to the top of a mountain in Vermont. They skied to the bottom, side by side, laughing and calling to each other as they crisscrossed the snowy slopes. That night in the friend’s cabin where they were staying, the boy fell from his bed, the way almost-seven-year-olds sometimes do in the wee hours. His grandmother picked him up, gently tucked him in and squeezed his little finger.

Lions and lambs might work for the mainland, but on the Vineyard March came in like a chorus of pinkletinks and red-winged blackbirds in a field of blooming purple crocuses.

Last Thursday Gail Barmakian in Oak Bluffs reported that she heard the season’s first pinkletinks, those spring peepers whose song heralds the arrival of spring. The next morning Albert O. Fischer heard them singing up-Island, and who could blame them, when late February brings 60-degree days.

Emails arrived at the Gazette with pictures of blooming crocuses and daffodils. Over the weekend Randy Rynd in Vineyard Haven sent word that a large flock of red-winged blackbirds had arrived, the first of the season, “singing loudly and exuberantly from the trees.”

This is known as the quietest week on the Island as families flee for the winter school break. But those who stayed were treated to the sights and sounds of spring’s arrival; a page turned in the natural program.

At night he dreamed of an old acquaintance from grammar school. He had not seen him for decades and yet there he was, with his father no less, looking not much different than he did in the third grade.

The friend’s father, whom he did not know well, had aged considerably. He could no longer talk and only nodded or smiled now. At one point, in this netherworld, the dreamer placed his hand on the father’s cheek to help steady and comfort the old man.

When he woke the feeling was still so powerful that he was disoriented. He was mildly unmoored by this visit to the past and the passage of time, but mostly it was the hand on the cheek that held him in check. The feeling followed him around all day, right up to the point when he put his children to bed and placed his hand on each of their small, quiet cheeks and told them he loved them.

How was your day? Heavy, a man says. He is not speaking metaphorically either. He works with concrete. What else is there to say about my day, he continues, except that I move heavy around all day long.

Elsewhere, four large hawks cruise low down a lonely road. They fly together and separate, it seems, their wing spans announcing a show of power among the fields and stone walls. Bird of prey know they’re cool.

In the harbor, two ducks play follow the leader, diving and bobbing, diving and bobbing. They float about 20 feet away from each other, nature’s equivalent of parallel play. The sun is out, the wind warm and the ducks not harried by multitasking.

One man takes it all in, the heavy, the cool and the web-footed. Then he continues on his way.

A man is told by his son that his eyebrows have become the featured exhibit in several art projects.

Excuse me? the father asks.

My friend says your eyebrows are lovely beyond words, have mystical healing powers and can summon giants.

I don’t believe this, the father says.

It’s true, the son says. My friend photoshopped your eyebrows so that they are riding a herd of woolly mammoths. In another scene, your eyebrows float above the horizon line, lassoed to a pair of slow moving clouds. Should I go on?

The father pauses. To him, his eyebrows have always looked like sad moments better left unsaid. But he smiles at the thought of their moment in the sun, even if they are the object of middle-school mockery. When did these kids become so funny, he wonders.

I don’t know, the father says. Is there more?

Much more, his son says. Much, much more.

The harbingers of spring set sail in January but were marooned in March. The wind joined the argument, howling so loud into the night a little girl on the eve of her ninth birthday couldn’t sleep. Which meant her father couldn’t either.

She was nervous, she said. Not about her birthday, that was her father’s concern, this continual growing up that tugged at his heart. No, a skating show loomed and she had butterflies beating in her belly louder than the wind.

Her father remembered his fears as a kid, the sports arena a place more of inner demons than peer competition. Later he would become frightened of nearly everything, each morning a catalogue of what could go wrong. He didn’t mention this to his daughter, nor the behavior done to beat back the fear. That talk would come later, when she was a teenager, he imagined.

For now he stroked her forehead and said nervousness was part of the game. The only antidote he knew of was to remember why you were doing it in the first place.

Why is that? his daughter asked. Because it’s fun, he said.

She smiled then. Oh yeah, I forgot about that part.

Spring makes me feel muscular, she said, like I spent the evening in a garage pounding a truck tire with a large mallet.
Spring makes me feel like an owl, he said, like I spent the evening eating mice and frogs.
Spring makes me feel hoarse, she said, like I spent the day shouting my name.
Spring makes me feel quiet, he said, like I spent the day listening but not hearing.
So what does it all add up to? he asked.
She did not hesitate: a tall tree, a thin branch and two hearts beating so fast they could almost fly.

In the early morning gray, he sat waiting. The lights were out, the house quiet, and the wind knocking against the windows with a steady beat.

He liked these morning moments, when nothing happened except for surprise visits from the past, memories so clear it was as if they were happening again in the present.

On that morning he was young, then old, then young again. It was such a long journey that later, when his children joined him on the couch, they found him sound asleep and smiling.

Before the big show the young actors practiced their sword fighting in the aisles, Max put the final touches on everyone’s makeup and the director made a few cast changes due to the arrival of a stomach bug with very poor timing.

Snacks were passed out, heads were crowned, shoulders caped and then the warm-ups began. Shout to the exit sign the director advised, before setting her actors free to improvise a medley of made-up dances that included peeling a banana and rocking a mullet.

For one lone soul seated near the exit sign it was a moment to rival the actual show. But then, with each new giggle and twirl and hokey pokey shimmer, the years and stages of life suddenly began vanishing into that Arthurian mist until those capes and crowns were replaced by car keys and prom gowns and journeys to a distant land called college.

He shook his head to clear the future from his eyes, but was unsuccessful until one young princess in particular stopped by to see him and let him know another father was so much better at braiding hair.

Nature contains many harbingers of spring, from nesting ospreys to pinkletinks pleading for love, but town politics also signal the new season. Town meetings arrive in April, perhaps not lusty affairs, but town annual reports are also on the prowl.

The casual passerby may judge these reports wrongly, thinking they only contain spreadsheets and jargon-laden tours of various organizations. But consider this gem from Edgartown’s animal control officer Barbara Prada: “Then we were called for a swan that fell out of the sky, dead.”

The who-done-it will not be disclosed here. For that you must dig deep within the town reports. After all, life and death matters are buried within.

Some days it is essential to walk down to the ocean’s edge, to smell the saltwater and the seaweed and watch small insects scuttle about beneath an early April sun. Some days it is essential to sit on the sand while eating lunch and listen to a pair of gulls discuss whether you will give them part of your sandwich.

Some days it is essential to linger a moment longer than necessary in order to watch a group of people collect a small sample of sand. Some days it is essential to ask them why, and to find out they will send the sample to a friend who is very sick and will never feel this sand again except by mail.

Some days it is essential to weep for someone you have never met nor ever will because that is exactly what you and the world need.

The skies may be grey and full of rain, but that doesn’t stop the spring peepers from peeping, the seasonal restaurants from returning one by one, and the carpenters from working overtime to prepare for summer guests or owners. Nor does it stop Little Leaguers from dusting off their mitts and cleats and throwing arms or town meeting season from getting into full swing.

The seasonal rhythms arrive each year, a mixture of familiarity and change, almost like those notches on the door marking a child’s growth. The notches are always the same up close, a series of dashes made in pencil or pen. Taking a few steps back reveals a much different story; the passing of time stretched out in the blink of an eye.

It was the usual Monday morning round of how was your weekend discussions at the Gazette. There had been a roller skating party, momentous leaf raking followed by deep sleeping, a little bit of venturing out after recovering from a cold, house work, yard work, day drinking, pinkletink listening, a snapping turtle nightmare, ordering of baby chickens, it all flowed seamlessly until two co-workers said swimming. In the ocean. On April 9.

They admitted it was cold but said it was quite warm when you got out of the water. They didn't appear worse for wear, either, but rather seemed to smile brighter, walk lighter and laugh easier thanks to their baptismal dive. Plus, the gauntlet had been thrown. Will you be next?

On a quiet day last fall, a little girl sits on her front lawn contemplating a cricket making its way across the grass. Then from the nearby woods a rabbit appears. He stops and pricks up his ears. When the little girl calls out to him, he approaches, sniffs her outstretched hand and curls up in her lap.

A few months earlier, this little girl’s pet bunny was killed by a dog. The wild bunny’s welcome attention feels like the return of her lost pet, but even better. Her actual pet never liked snuggling.

The bunny continues to visit every few days, usually in the morning before she heads off to school or at night around dinner time. She feeds it carrots and lettuce and strokes its fur, while it sits calmly in her lap before returning to the woods. This goes on for months. The little girl names the bunny Alex.

In early spring the bunny stops visiting. The family asks around and discovers a neighbor took it to the animal shelter. It seemed too tame to survive the wild, the neighbor said.

The little girl’s father wipes her tears and then drives to the animal shelter, fearing the worst. The demand for pet rabbits on Easter weekend must surely be high. But Easter is also about resurrection, and later that evening Alex the bunny and the little girl are reunited.

The thwack of the bat, a line drive. The thrill of a 10-year-old making the catch. The kid was agile, just learning to play shortstop. The pitcher turned with a grin. Good job, little brother. Sitting in the stands, as he did for every game and practice, the dad beamed. Those were his boys. Athletes both of them, one growing tall and gangly, the other wiry and low to the ground.

This was all yesterday, on a balmy spring day like today, when the April sun finally warmed the dirt and kids played ball and nothing was wrong with the world. Now the two boys are grown and married. One has a child. The other one has taken over the family business. Last week they lost their dad to cancer. Their coach wrote them an email, remembering those halcyon Little League days. But most of all remembering a father’s boundless love for his children.

Earth Day arrives tomorrow for the 25th year, calling to mind a poem by environmental writer Wendell Berry:

When despair grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting for their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

May you take to the outdoors and find your own moment of freedom.

The jumping bridge is still empty, looking a bit forlorn after a lonely winter. Rental bikes announce their presence in great numbers but only a few get taken for a spin. Tourists wander about but the pace is still a quiet one. A father and daughter walk slowly through town, hand in hand. They stop and the man traces his finger across a plaque bearing the names of Vineyard soldiers who gave their lives in wars past. His daughter watches him closely, taking in the moment patiently but perhaps also itching for an ice cream cone.

Elsewhere an osprey dives down in search of lunch but is beaten to the punch by another bird swimming on the surface. The osprey retreats to the air with empty talons as the other bird rearranges the fish in its beak and then inhales it whole.

Theoretically, there is always time for this sort of thing, watching and waiting and breathing it all in. And yet it also feels quaint, like a rotary phone, eight-track tape or pair of Ocean Pacific corduroy shorts. But sometimes time travel is as easy as sitting at the edge of a quiet stream and wondering how it ever got to be so late.

The winds of deep emotion can blow in the most unlikely of places. Take for example a biography exhibit by a group of third and fourth graders, the children standing at their stations, dressed in the costumes of their characters and telling stories to parents who walk by.

The usual suspects are there: JFK, Frederick Douglass, Alexander Graham Bell, Beyoncé. A pigtailed girl talking about Nancy Kerrigan taking a bat to the knee but still striving for Olympic glory begins to set a new tone. The poetry of Phillis Wheatley, sold into slavery as a child, furthers this mood, as does a video of Helen Keller giving an impassioned speech for social justice.

But it is a girl with long blond curls, deep blues eyes and a wide smile that causes one dad to tear up and have to take a time-out in the hallway. The little girl is dressed in an astronaut suit; her name tag says Christa McAuliffe, the teacher who died in January of 1986, when the Challenger Shuttle exploded 73 seconds after lift off. The little girl with the clear blue eyes tells this story with passion, while pointing to a letter written in Christa’s own hand, discovered on the internet, and a girl scout strap representing her childhood in New Hampshire.

“She inspires me,” the little girl continued, “because she was so brave.”

Yesterday under cloudy skies, the Chilmark School kids participated in the annual May Day festivities, walking round and round in relative unison until a Maypole was decorated with bright ribbons. The scene was present day, but you wouldn’t know it without a calendar.

Further down Island, a young girl brought three baby chicks to her classroom share. Maybelle, Cloud and Maya were well behaved at school and earned high marks from the teacher. But the chicks were taken with their brief encounter with the wider world, and upon arriving home were no longer content to be confined to their small pen in the corner of the kitchen. One by one, they escaped and raced about the house as their young charge tried valiantly to corral them.

The scene was present day, but again you wouldn’t know it without a calendar.

The Notebook went silent last Friday — the headlines sent out with no vignette — and was pleased that some noticed. Calls came in to see if there had been foul play, perhaps a viral cyberworm sent from some jealous e-blast. One subscriber said she was almost too afraid to ask, fearing that like some low-ratings sitcom The Notebook had been cancelled.

The truth was, of course, love. It is spring after all and The Notebook is not immune. Last week it ran off with a voluptuous snapping turtle named Felicity Overbite. The two spent the week in the muck, dining on minnows and algae and easy prey pinkletinks. Work called but there were no phones out there among the ferns and fronds and dragonflies.

But it didn’t last. No one really thought it would. After all, it takes a lot to crack the hard heart of dinosaur kin, even one named Felicity. The Notebook barely escaped a complete devouring disguised as a good night kiss.

And so today The Notebook is back, shaken but not stirred, and with sincerest apologies.

intro

On a warm spring night a man takes himself outside to listen to his life. He hears a cat scream, a woman laugh, an owl hoot and a truck rumble down a lonely dirt road. Then the wind hushes everything to a whisper and for a moment something in his heart gives way. He looks behind him and sees so many forks in the road and begins to question every turn and twist on this his only journey. It is that kind of night.

He changes direction and looks ahead, taking in everything from the grass to the trees and the stars above. They all join the conversation, not with words but with coded messages he doesn’t understand. And yet, standing alone out there in the dark, he begins to feel better as if he had heard exactly what he needed to hear.

The Gazette turned 171 years young on Sunday, May 14. It was created during the golden age of whaling by Edgar Marchant and first went to presses on May 14, 1846. The front page that day included one story entitled The Vulture’s Friend and a poem called My Sister’s Death. Kind of a dark beginning, but the mood lifted a bit on the inside pages. For example, Mrs. F. Allen took out an advertisement saying that she was “happy to receive steady or transient company” at her place of residence.

In other news, the Edgartown Variety Store had reopened after a fire and was fully stocked with spring and summer dry goods, including a variety of silks and muslins. It also took note of those heading off on voyages: “Our fellow citizens who are going on voyages to sea, will find a fine assortment of Flannels, Hosiery, Duck, Blue Drillings, and everything they want.”

But alas, the New Bedford oil market “remained dull and had no transactions to report.” There was no mention of tourism or the coming summer season. It was, after all, a different time. One in which The Notebook, at nearly four years old, looks back on with much admiration.

In the Gazette classifieds, tucked between some test prep advertisements and legal notices, is a heading for animals. In case you were wondering what sort of items might be included there, take this week’s notice, sent in apparently by a lonely rooster, with feathered shanks no less. It is entitled Young Rooster Seeks Own Harem.

The rooster asks for nothing more than room and board and some hens with which to keep company through the long, dark nights. There is no mention as to whether he is an early riser, but the ad does suggest that chicken dinners are not part of the bargain.

The Notebook hopes the young lad finds a match but cautions that he keep mum about any success. After all, a discreet bedside manner could be the difference between life and death.

Backstage at the performing arts center was busy on Saturday as dance moms and a dad or two worked on costumes, makeup and hair before the Kaleidoscope dance recital. One little girl in a wildflower leotard was invited into the seniors lounge, a separate room for older girls to change and hang out. She couldn’t believe her good luck. But she wasn’t allowed in another area, cordoned off for the in-between ages. “Stay away, we are in puberty,” the girls told her.

At the finale, all the dancers took the stage representing the concert’s theme of A Camping Trip, from baby bears to marshmallows, song birds, black flies, poison ivy, flashlights and of course the seniors dancing their final performances with the troupe they had been with since they were baby bears, or whatever that year’s equivalent themed animal was. To look onstage was to see the entire span of a young girl’s journey, dancing her way to maturity while friends and family cheered and more than a few cried as they left a bit of their hearts out there amidst the folded up programs and sneaked in snacks. The dancers were growing up, all of them, year by year, from ballet slipper to pointed toe, from kindergarten to college as quick as an arabesque.

Perhaps that is why the baby bears stole the show, those preschoolers in their tiny tutus twirling and growling and showing their claws. Watching them, each parent could once again believe that time was on their side forever.

The carpenters and caretakers are exhausted, the house cleaners too. The tree experts have been pruning till they’re purple, the chefs horse from breaking in their summer staffs, and the road crews running out of steam after chopping, clearing, cementing and cleaning the streets and sidewalks.

It takes a lot to get an Island ready for the summer season so it looks spick and span and open for business. But ready or not here they come by boat and plane, packed by the dozens in one car alone or thousands streaming in from every port of call. They travel by two legs or maybe four, who can count anymore. Memorial Day weekend is here. Let the good times roll.

Operating out of a single room in the Vineyard Gazette building, the small staff of Martha’s Vineyard Magazine labors each month to deliver perfect packages of words and pictures that, as the publication’s tagline boasts, bring out the best in the Vineyard.

But ushering in new life? That’s a little beyond their scope.

The Notebook has been assured that it was at Martha’s Vineyard Hospital, not Martha’s Vineyard Magazine, where little Oliver Montanile came into the world on May 19, as curiously but erroneously reported in last week’s Vineyard Gazette.

Here’s to the contributions of both the magazine and the maternity ward. May they never be confused again.

It rained for all of April and Islanders smiled and spoke the old adage about showers bringing flowers.

It rained for all of May and Islanders stopped smiling so much. The sky is crying, a young boy told his grandmother on the phone one day in May as she checked on a dam he and his brother had built in a stream near her house last fall.

The dam held. Yesterday May turned to June. Flowers were blooming. The sky had dried its tears. The sun came out. And people were smiling again.

In kindergarten he wore a Spiderman suit to class everyday. He also ate paste, sang when it rained and calmed himself at night by imagining an enormous bug on top of which kids of all sizes and colors played in perfect harmony.

In fourth grade he fell hard for his teacher, her long blond hair distracting him in ways he didn’t understand.

In seventh grade his teacher wore a rainbow colored wig every Friday and for two months let the class do nothing but read books all day. He cried when the year ended.

In high school he was confused, afraid, excited and then confused again. But when he closes his eyes he can remember every moment and everybody, be they teacher, friend, custodian or the squirrel that lived across the street from the school.

On Sunday at the graduation ceremony there will be cheers and tears, which is how it should be. How else to describe a journey so long in length and even longer in memories. Congratulations to the class of 2017. Long may you remember these days.

He had a dream that so many of his loved ones were dancing in one place, the people he had known the longest, from before he had any idea who he was mostly because he was afraid to look. And because it was a dream everyone was dressed in the same color clothes, the shirts and dresses, jackets and shoes all painted with nearly the same pattern too. Only the shape of everyone’s story differed.

But then, as the music played and the sweat poured down and the smiles grew wider with each new song, it appeared as if all of their individual journeys began to somehow merge and overlap until there was only one magnificent story, something he wanted to read over and over again. He thought about reaching out to touch it but was afraid it would disappear.

But then, just as he was about to let it all fade away, someone whispered in his ear that it would be okay. And so he opened his eyes, which was when he realized he had not been dreaming at all.

At some point in the Little League season he discovered he could no longer cheer from the sidelines anymore. It would be the last year for his son, aging out of a journey that had begun as a toddler in T-ball. So many years watching not just his child but all of the kids grow up together had come to this — he wanted them all to win, every child and every team.

It had always been so but not to this degree.

And so this year he watched the games quietly, something new for him, and, he discovered, revelatory. Each at bat or pitch or play in the field was both beautiful and timeless. At some points he saw himself out there, sliding into second base as a child, his father and mother young again and his grandparents alive and smiling at him. At other points, the players on the field, so accomplished now, walked backwards in time. Instead of hot grounders, they chased crickets and picked daisies in the afternoon sun.

He soaked it all up with a smile. But then, on that last afternoon of the last season, his son stepped up to the plate and he couldn’t stay quiet anymore. But when he tried to cheer his voice cracked and nothing came out.

Each night a father’s young daughter asks him to suggest an animal for her to count. The process is part of their goodnight routine. She is not one to rely on counting sheep night after night. But the ritual has been going on for years now and it is getting much more difficult for the father to come up with new animals. Repeat animals are okay, but just certain ones on certain evenings.

One night, after his daughter rejects one after another animal suggestion, he grows frustrated. How much longer can we keep this up, he howls, tired and ready for bed himself. The young girl grows silent, turns away, and mutters something quietly into her pillow.

I can’t hear you, the father says.

She turns to him: When you tell me an animal it helps me think of you when I count them, she says. That’s why I ask you to do this.

The father sighs, his parenting solar plexus punched yet again by the magnitude of his ignorance. How about a baby snow leopard? he suggests.

That sounds perfect, she says.

This weekend, while attending a funeral and listening to stories of a long life well lived, the Notebook thought about the phrase, live every day as if it were your last. It’s a fine philosophy, one that could get you revved up to make every moment count. But it can also be limiting, this attention to self.

Sitting in the pew, crying and laughing in equal measure, the Notebook realized the woman being celebrated had given that phrase an important shift — she lived every day as if it were everyone’s last. In this way, she made others feel loved, needed and nurtured every single day. What could be better than that?

At one point in the service, one of the speakers could barely make it though his talk, his voice cracking several times. And yet when he finished speaking and stepped away from the pulpit he broke into song, giving everyone a clear melody to guide them home.

Clear the way the world is waking, clear the way the world is waking, clear the way the world is waking, night is over and day is breaking.

Earlier this week the Gazette photographers, both in-house and freelance, gathered for lunch in the office. There was casual conversation and quite a bit of the more technical variety. Some of this had to do with equipment, lighting and DPI (dots per inch). The vagaries of the printing press were also taken into consideration. Humid days versus hot, dry ones, the changing nature of the Edgartown water system each month — so much that is beyond human control affects how photos will appear in the paper.

But in the end, the true nature of photography was put so expertly by Albert O. Fischer.

When I shoot I’m shooting memories. I take so many pictures of Keith Farm, but every time I’m taking a picture of my father.

Thank you to all our photographers and the memories they capture for everyone.

The streets and ferry boats are filled, so too the parks, beaches and restaurants. July Fourth is around the corner and everything is moving fast and open for business.

And yet, although the Island has shifted its pace dramatically in the past few weeks, the backyard has not changed much. A rabbit still visits each morning, nibbling the clover and looking quizzically at a man drinking coffee in larger and larger gulps.

Birds and insects and all manner of moths have not shifted their speed either, although they do live in an eat or be eaten world. Spiders take their sweet time spinning and the chickens seem perfectly content under a bush doing nothing much all day.

At night the lightning bugs still do their thing too, blinking their yellow blinks, a fine metaphor to slow down if you want one.

From time to time The Notebook defers this space to its mentors, and today it does so with sadness after learning of the recent death of Brian Doyle at the age of 60. Mr. Doyle was primarily an essayist but could hit home runs in all genres. No one was better when it came to writing about children and parenting, subjects especially dear to The Notebook. Here he is in an excerpt from his essay Yes:

So I trudge upstairs to hold my daughter in my lap, and rub my old chapped hands across the thin sharp blades of her shoulders, and shuffle with sons on shoulders in the blue hours of night, waiting patiently for them to belch like river barges, or hear Joe happily blowing bubbles of spit in his crib simply because he can do it and is pretty proud of himself about the whole thing. I say yes to them, yes yes yes, and to exhaustion I say yes, and to the puzzling wonder of my wife’s love I say O yes, and to horror and fear and joy I say yes, to rich cheerful chaos that leads me sooner to the grave and happier along that muddy grave road I say yes, to my absolute surprise and with unbidden tears I say yes yes O yes.

Someone once asked where the Notebook lives or, to be more precise, where it writes. To answer both questions, because to write is to live for some: The Graveyard. It always offers the perfect mix of spirit and solitude; externally quiet while internally loud in its timely discourse.

The locations do change however, the better to include more voices. Isiah Coffin and his wife Henrietta are a very nice couple, so too are Charles Barney and Content Landers. The Mayhews have their story, as do the Luces, Huxfords and Hardings. Today, on July 4, the Fisher family provided a suitable seat for a mental meander.

Capt. Lorenzo Fisher lived to 84, dying on April 16 1899. He rests next to his wife Sabra and four children, ranging from young Sabra who died at 87, young Lorenzo at 66, Uriah at 14 and Sarah at age 7. On this Fourth of July, Independence Day, the Fishers provided some needed historical ballast to remain afloat amidst present day peculiarities. Looking out on the scene, a soft breeze blowing, the sun shining, ocean beckoning and a few children floating by on bicycles, the Fishers declared that all in all not much has changed, except for the bicycles which looked pretty neat.

Happy Fourth to everyone. May history come alive to both comfort and confound you.

Recently, the advice was given to sit with a leaf for a minute or a day and start a relationship. It seemed like sound advice. After all, leaves may be everywhere but how many do you really know?

A minute seemed quite easy — a loving glance up close, maybe a short chat about the villainy of caterpillars and the tenderness of summer showers. Hours felt like a much more difficult endeavor. Toddlers talk to nature, waddling up close and personal on a regular basis, but that was so very long ago.

The first hour echoed a first date, shy and full of awkward silences. The second hour proved similar, but then from out of the clear blue sky something like a relationship did begin to blossom. It was not all rainbows, though. Leaves have many issues, and rightfully so it turns out. There was thorny talk about de-forestation, pesticides, warming trends and just plain indifference. But it was a start, and by the end of the day, when the raccoons emerged and a skunk ambled by with impunity, a new type of silence had emerged, one pregnant with possibility.

Wander the streets of town during the early morning hours and mostly what you will see are very young children, accompanied by their tired parents of course. They arrive in strollers, on little toddler feet, carried in arms or pushed in small police car replicas. While the rest of the world sleeps, babies rise with the sun and will not be deterred, especially not on vacation.

It reminded one man, now a bit past the days of early morning duties, of those days when sleep, like so much else, had suddenly been banished from his life. It was a rude awakening in every sense of the word.

And yet, while watching a mother peek under the netting of a stroller and then later a father guide his young son in a toddler truck down the sidewalk, he felt a small hand clutch at his heart. He recalled those first stroller days, when all other tasks and to-do lists fell away for the first time in his life. He finally felt at peace because he knew he was doing the most important thing he could be doing, and that nothing else mattered.

The fact that when women drove by they honked and catcalled at him helped too. A man pushing a baby carriage is treated like a God, he discovered. Sadly, the same did not appear true for women. It was merely expected.

While you were sleeping Nancy Hall was sorting books. While you were making beach plans or playing a few sets of tennis Nancy Hall was sorting books. While you were eating lunch Nancy Hall was still sorting books.

Ms. Hall is a volunteer for the West Tisbury Library book sale taking place later this summer at the West Tisbury School. She holds court in the classics section, Monday through Friday, 7:30 a.m. to noon. She started sorting on July 5 and will be there sorting until the end of July. It’s a nice place to hang out. Charles Dickens is there, Tolstoy and Toni Morrison too, and there is no need for sunscreen or bug spray. Other volunteers take charge of the art sections, the self-help aisles, rows and rows of nonfiction.

Gone are the bouncing of basketballs and shrieks of young children. The gym is quiet, filled with hardbacks and paperbacks and a few bookworms spending their summer mornings sorting through the wisdom of the ages. Occasionally a visitor will stop by and sit for a few moments before heading off, recharged, for the day. You can always tell a reader by how little it takes to make them happy.

A large scoop of ice cream leans dangerously over the side of a cone while its owner, a small boy, is distracted by a passing dog. The boy seems to have no clue, standing out there on the sidewalk on an otherwise glorious vacation day. The mint chip continues to lean, following a preordained path trod by so many young children and ice creams throughout the ages; wide smile upon receiving, furrowed brow during the melting stage, a distracted glance serving as an intermission, then a climactic free fall, followed by a waterfall of tears. But not in this case. Just in time, his father leaps to the rescue, tilting the cone’s axis point so that gravity works in its favor. Then Dad carefully shows his youngster how to beat fate by licking around the edges, not just on top, to transform the two pieces — ice cream and cone — into one object bonded together in a type of free form masonry. The boy watches in appreciation, in wonder, in glory, and then in growing apprehension as the father seems unable to stop his tutorial. And then the tears do start as a young boy’s cry echoes down the block: Mom, make Dad stop eating my ice cream!

The photograph is of three boys, the smallest flanked by his two older brothers. They are all quite young, bare chested and at the beach, poised for eternity as if ready to rush the camera or, in a larger sense, life.

There are so many photographs taken over the course of a lifetime, but it is this one that his mind keeps coming back to, so many decades later as dusk settles and two small rabbits nibble distractedly upon the lawn. The boys stand shoulder to shoulder, the older two smiling, the youngest filled with a look of quizzical contentment as he holds his brothers’ hands.

Memory does not fill the gap of what happened next, nor are there any more images to consult. But sitting on the porch so many years later, he fears the moment was fleeting and that immediately afterwards the older two ran off to the water, leaving the youngest behind to fend for himself. He stands and tries to shake the image from his mind but cannot.

The seven chickens came in the mail a few months ago as tiny chicks peeping away in a cardboard box. A little girl picked them up, naming each one from Cloud to Maybelle Rose, Sheersha, Frog and the others.

They lived in the kitchen in a tiny corner pen she built out of window screens, cardboard and duct tape. Her father watched from the other side of the room, marveling at her maternal instincts. Later, when the chicks grew big enough to fly out of the pen they were moved outside to a coop. The little girl greeted them each morning, letting them out to enjoy the day, and saying goodnight each evening as she escorted them safely home.

All was well until the little girl went away to camp for a week and her father was instructed on how to take care of them, in particular the need to get them in by dark before the raccoons began to prowl. He nodded and smiled but as the days progressed the pressure began to mount. The dark was filled with danger, it was as if he were living in a vampire movie. The chickens seemed to have no clue, scattering when he called them, Cloud leading the way, mocking his warnings of nightfall and the doom it would bring. He wished there were antidotes, a cross to hang around their little necks, garlic to put in their crowns, holy water. But there was nothing. It took him hours to wrangle them, but he persevered.

Then one late afternoon he gave up and went for a drive. When the sun set his heart fell. He raced home in the diminished dusk, the need for headlights filling him with dread. He parked and ran to the backyard, tripping over a root in the deep dark, scraping his face on a tree branch, cursing his stupidity and wondering how he would ever face his daughter again. He called out as he ran, hoping to scare whatever ring-tailed evil lurked in the shadows. The coop door was wide open. He paused before looking inside, breathing heavily, fearing the worst. But all seven chickens were safe, having tucked themselves in for the night upon their roosts.

Cloud gave him a look, or was it a smile, as he fell to the ground in relief.

He took a walk, feeling rather dejected and not really wanting to change that — sometimes a funk can feel so fine. After a few blocks, walking with his head down, he came upon a line drawn with chalk on the sidewalk. Every few feet or so it changed color — blue, red, pink, green, yellow — and added another arrow pointing onward. And then the line abruptly ended.

He continued on his way and in a bit encountered another line of colored chalk with arrows pointing in the opposite direction. Having some time on his hands he turned and followed these arrows, and when he reached the other line, he turned around again. After doing this several times, walking back and forth and getting nowhere, but feeling much better, he was transported back in time to a day he set out walking with 43 nuns on a street in New York city.

At the time he was a nun’s assistant, it was the 1990s when this sort of thing made sense. They were out practicing meditative walking. The point was to step as slowly as possible, to mindfully move but go nowhere really. It was just him, 43 nuns, and a growing crowd of onlookers. That day changed his life, although, like most things, he had no clue at the time.

Walking now along the lines of colored chalk he wondered where all those nuns were today and if they ever thought about him.

He was born surprised, fingers splayed out like jazz hands, face contorted and yelling. He was not a sleeper, unless it rained hard. Thunder helped too. So did a recording of windshield wipers beating a rhythm in the rain.

He liked order and understanding. Before he could talk he could communicate with over 50 signs. He looked like a pint-sized third base coach flapping his hands and rubbing his body as he relayed his wishes and thank-yous.

He learned to talk, walk, read and eventually sleep soundly and late. And then one day, today, he became a teenager, which made his father cry out in wonder, just as much as the day he was born.

The Notebook pauses for a moment to acknowledge its print brothers and sisters. Today is the annual issue that goes out to all the mailboxes all over the Island. It is a huge undertaking that involves the entire staff. Printing the special book section began on Tuesday. Three more sections followed. The entire process was not wrapped up until the wee hours of Thursday night.

Passersby walking home from the bars and restaurants in town stopped to watch and chat. A nine-year old girl folded newspapers, smearing dark lines of ink under her eyes so that she looked like a football player gone rogue from the huddle. Interns stood shoulder to shoulder, some brought pets, others brought pizza.

And through it all Jeremy Smith and Karl Klein, the head pressmen, kept cool heads and steady hands while adjusting, tweaking and massaging the old Goss Community Press to perfection. Bravo team!

We hope you enjoy the fruits of so many labors.

Found in the Gazette print room — a small green purse holding a bottle of holy water and a wooden stake. At first no one claimed ownership and it sat idly by, hanging on a chair and swinging in the wind as people passed by. As a result, for several nights in a row vampires roamed the Island with impunity.

Then, on Monday, the purse was reclaimed by a young girl of about nine years old or so. She looked like just another kid coming in from the beach, a towel thrown over her shoulder, a few freckles on her cheeks. But as she walked away, one hand on the stake, the other on the holy water, it became clear once again that people are always more complicated than at first they seem.

A call came in from a man missing the Vineyard. He couldn’t visit this year and wanted to hear a voice from the Island. He asked about the wind and the night sky, about the height of the privet hedges and the smell of the salt air. He asked about the dinghies in the harbor rocking in the quiet before dawn, and the gulls dropping shellfish on the hard asphalt.

He asked about grandparents walking toddlers to the ocean’s edge for the first time, and couples holding hands on porches, park benches and in silhouettes at the far end of jetties. He asked about time disappearing beneath the waves and sadness nibbling away at beach towels lying beneath the pure blue sky.

When asked in return why he couldn’t visit this year, the first time in over seven decades, he said he was still getting used to a new life. His wife died this winter, he said, and the Vineyard without her would be too much for his heart to carry.

At the end of the call he took a deep breath and said thank you, the day feels a bit brighter than it did a few moments ago.

The Notebook sometimes wonders what the heart looks like, not the actual organ, it has seen pictures, but the feelings it carries. It also wonders from time to time which feeling holds the key to its true self.

On Saturday, while weeping with the rain at the injustices done here, there and everywhere it came to the realization that perhaps sadness is the most direct route to the core. If only it were otherwise. Joy and happiness and a job well done are so much more fun. But they seem to miss the bullseye head on. And anger, that fierce predator roaming the edges of nowhere, misses by a wide mark.

But sadness, that quiet kid sitting alone in the corner of the heart, so often feels the fullest, especially when embraced with open arms. Perhaps it has something to do with the weight of it all, this feeling of gravity descending upon one’s shoulders. Or maybe it all comes down to the simple act of wiping at our communal tears, which stops us in our tracks, at least for a moment, and helps us see everything so much more clearly.

In the heat of the day a Monarch butterfly landed on a crowded sidewalk. It seemed like a dangerous thing to do, but evidently this butterfly knew its business. Passersby parted the way and stopped to marvel at the slight, colorful creature enjoying the noonday sun. Its wings folded in and out like silent applause as it held the stage and no one in the crowd shoved or shouted, honked or harassed.

And then, just as suddenly, the butterfly flew away, leaving in its wake a sort of mystified silence that for some echoed louder than any voice ever could.

On Monday afternoon, rabbits swarmed the Jaws bridge, doing high dives and backflips into a blood red sea, while a group of ospreys put on tophats and capes to sing show tunes on the jetty. In town, trees sprouted legs and walked among us while skunks kicked back drinking pitchers of beer at empty sidewalk tables. Strange things do happen during an eclipse.

Although much of the above did not occur, the sight in the sky was very cool. So were the groups of strangers forming impromptu friendships amid circles of wonder around the Island and country. Special glasses were passed around, reactions from oh, baby to holy mackerel rang through the streets and everyone seemed so happy.

So three cheers and more for the eclipse. Whether seen in totality or partiality the experience was full; both the view in the sky and the joyful camaraderie on the ground.

Earlier this summer, in the deep rugby scrum of early August, a little girl asked her father to take her to Back Door Donuts. It was late and dark but sugar called. He said only if the line wasn’t too long. But it was very, very long.

As he prepared to disappoint his daughter he heard a voice from the shadows. “Hey mister, want some donuts?” He turned and saw two young kids holding several large brown paper bags. “We’ve got five different kinds to choose from, just went through the line.”

“What will it cost?” he asked. “One dollar extra per donut,” came the reply from the shadows.

Donut scalpers, the man thought. Simply amazing. He made the deal, yelling to friends driving by to join him. “We are here almost every night,” the kids said in parting.

This past weekend, when his daughter asked again for a trip to Back Door Donuts, he said of course. He walked up to the very, very long line like a man so sure of himself and his vaunted place in the world. But no voice came from the shadows on this night, the kids having moved on to other ventures or returned to their real lives off-Island.

He waited for over an hour in the line, holding a fond memory of mid-summer in one hand and the speedy end to it in the other.

On the Vineyard he was a summer dink; back home he was merely absent all summer long. He still remembers returning home at the end of one summer and his best friend, upon seeing him, running across the street and into his arms. He liked that about summers, being away and being missed.

He remembers the trees and bushes all down his childhood street, how they seemed to wave him home when his father turned down their road in late August. Fighting in the backseat stopped as everyone looked out their windows, trying to take in everything, from the large Sycamore tree which served as home base for games of tag, to the neighbor’s dog wagging its tail at him.

His bedroom was a momentary stop on the way out into the neighborhood. He traveled by bike, holding off on seeing friends again until he felt he had reclaimed his space, avenue by avenue, sidewalk by sidewalk. He remembers every crack and anthill and blade of grass, or at least it seems that way through the magic of memory. He also remembers every friend, their siblings and perhaps their parents most of all. After all, so many helped raise him; he understands that now.

Many have moved on, as he has, but he knows the light still lingers across his backyard in late August as it always had, and the scent of an old neighborhood never changes. Nor do the feelings tucked deeply inside which burst forth from time to time reminding him of the small boy he once was, and how much he misses him.

When they were kids they watched each other from near and far, but never let their feelings be known. As young adults, they sat side-by-side at a bar for one evening each year, treasuring that day for the other 364. This went on for nearly a decade.

It took many individual moments to cross that emotional wall — an inept burglar and the funeral of two dear friends most of all. But then again, the merging of two people into one couple is so often a circuitous affair. On bended knee with a bread tie for a ring their future together began.

Ten months later the bread tie was turned into something more lasting. That moment was sixteen years ago today, when they walked down the aisle together because they didn’t want to ever be apart again, not even for one moment at the altar.

A father watches his teenage son dance at a wedding. Sometimes he is by himself, other times with a group, dancing to music that is new to him but very old and familiar to everyone else.

The father looks around at so many old friends, their years together surpassing the ones apart. And yet lately the absences grow longer. A friend joins him, and gestures to the crowd. The sum of my true self is an impossible equation without all of these intersections, he says.

The father agrees readily. Then he looks back at the dance floor, where his son is now dancing with the two grooms, a pair of brave and beautiful souls. He wants to remember this moment forever, an essential addition to his son’s own journey, now filled with more possibility than ever. He is sure of it.

On Thursday the Gazette newsroom was overflowing with an additional 60 or so reporters. The Oak Bluffs School fifth grade class visited, bringing with them their very own newspaper. The students wrote stories about reading buddies, new lockers ("very exciting"), the day the fire alarm went off three times ("extremely annoying and time consuming") and how to achieve a Growth Mindset ("a way to think positively"). There is also artwork, comics and some wonderful photography — in all, a job very well done.

After a tour of the building, the young journalists quizzed the editor on all sorts of subjects, including whether the police were aware the Gazette had a police scanner. They also pitched a lot of stories, at first only tangentially about themselves: a certain violin concert coming up, the school play which was right around the corner, their sports teams.

Then one young girl raised her hand and got to the point: “How about you do a story on us?” she asked. The rest of the class agreed this was a fine idea. And somewhere, in the back of the room, the Notebook was listening and also agreed.

Keep writing kids, and asking questions. And come back soon to brighten our day again.

While at his desk, a man receives a call from an old friend. It had been a long time. The call came collect, with a taped recording that started: an inmate from such and such correctional facility is calling you.

The man took the call.

We have been having a grammar argument in here, the old friend said. It’s regarding the word lowlife, when used as a noun. One word, two words or a hyphen?

You can’t be serious? I am, there’s a bet. What’s on the line? Two soups. It’s the only thing that tastes good in here.

One word is the preferred usage, the man said. After that the conversation wandered, from catching up, to the day-to-day. It was surprisingly normal given the circumstances. The friend said he had been writing a lot lately and gave his first reading to some fellow inmates, just before lights out.

How did it go? It went well. They said I better keep writing. It can be a rough group so that’s some great motivation.

After the call, the man went for a walk, looking out into the distance of time to see his friend better, the two of them sitting in a tree as young boys and wondering what they would do that afternoon and for the rest of their lives. He has no recollection what they said at the time, but here they were, both writing, facing deadlines and missing each other so very much.

Two friends met up just after dawn Saturday to go dip netting for bay scallops in a remote corner of Chappaquiddick. Conditions were not ideal; it was barely daylight and the shoreline was shrouded in pea-soup fog. But the tide was low and the scallops were waiting in thick beds of eel grass.
There was equipment failure (quickly repaired). A handful of opportunistic gulls swooped and cried. Time went away and a troubled world felt distant. Soon sun began to burn through the fog, the tide was flooding in and the bushel basket was heavy with scallops.
Much later there would be shucking to do, cold beer to drink — and for dinner, the freshest fat scallops sizzled a hot pan.
And the question to ponder: Are Cape Pogue scallops really the sweetest of them all?
The friends decided more research was needed. They made a date to go out again soon.

Sometimes it is essential to stop and watch two squirrels play tag up in the trees, soaring from branch to branch, their tails waving madly like two cleaning brushes in love.

Sometimes it is essential to stop and watch a chicken scratching in the dirt, gobbling up inchworms and earwigs, a fat wriggling grub with a side of slug.

It is essential because later, in the deep dark of night, you will think of your young daughter and decide to turn away from whatever non-essential thing you are doing, and choose to sit by her bedside and watch her dream. And when her dream turns sour and she cries out in fright, you will be there to place your hand on her forehead and whisper in her ear that you are there and always will be there, all because earlier that day you paused to watch a pair of squirrels and a regal looking chicken go about their seemingly unimportant days.

He watched a single bird soar across the sky, flapping its wings every so often, but mostly gliding in the air. He watched a group of sailboats play checkers on the horizon, and two men fly-fishing on the jetty, one nearly losing his balance but recovering and arcing his line perfectly into the channel.

He watched an older woman power walking along the bike path, a kayaker fighting the current and a man being pulled down the beach by his two large dogs.

Then he turned and watched himself, sitting there quietly, barely moving, and thought, no this is not the way it is supposed to be. And so he stood up, walked to the edge of the ocean, took off his boots, his jacket and shirt, his jeans and his socks and plunged into the chilly, late-October water, swimming deeply until the beating of his heart matched the rhythm of the waves. And only then did it occur to him to wonder who, if anyone, was watching him.

Heather Hamacek began working at the Gazette fresh out of college, the ink on her diploma barely dry. She dived right into reporting on a Vineyard summer, swimming expertly through the town news, the hectic pace, and the placement of her desk, so close to a bear of a man who sang loudly throughout the day, especially when her copy was late. And she dived right into the hearts of her co-workers with her smile, smarts and sense of humor.

And then she broke their hearts.

After a little over two years on the job, today is Heather’s last day. And although it hurts to see her leave, most everyone understands her desire to move to New York city, to begin the next chapter of her wonderful life. Many at the Gazette are shedding tears and wishing her well. Others, however, are turning to denial. After all, it feels so much better to assign her a few more stories and make plans to see her again on Monday, at her desk where the light has shined so magically these past two years.

The Nancy Drew scarecrow was missing, her spot outside Summer Shades in Edgartown eerily empty on Monday morning. Nearby scarecrows, created by Martha’s Vineyard Public Charter School students in an annual literary-themed Halloween rite of passage, were questioned. Captain Underpants seemed an obvious suspect, after all he was parading around town in his underwear. But he had an alibi, a rendezvous with the Cookie Monster and Roger Rabbit. Not that those two characters necessarily added up to credible witnesses, but the Lorax confirmed their story and that was that.

Luna Lovegood outside the Gazette office suggested the case of Nancy Gone Missing had something to do with the wind, which blew heavily on Sunday night and Monday morning. Maybe Nancy did a Dorothy, sailing off in the turbulence for greener pastures, she giggled. The Wicked Witch of the West did not confirm or deny, but did wriggle her toes suggestively, the only parts of her body visible beneath a doghouse on Summer street.

The Wimpy Kid was questioned and his diary confiscated but nothing came of it, nor did a testy confrontation with Thing #1.

It was a true Halloween mystery, and hopes were high that the young sleuth would return today in time for trick-or-treating. And yet fears linger that she decided it was time to move on from a lifetime of never aging while traveling from clue to clue. Maybe she wanted to kick her feet up and get lazy instead of being a nonstop inspiration for decades of young girls. Or worse, maybe she decided to go bad girl with the Newt Scamander scarecrow stationed just up the block, and head off to parts unknown with a circus of magical creatures.

And who could blame her. After all, Halloween is about taking off old masks and trying on new ones, no matter how frightening change may seem to be. Good luck to you Nancy and all the other goblins, ghouls, scarecrows and superhero’s out there. May your dreams come true and your nightmares remain just figments of your fertile imaginations.

The water temperature in Edgartown Harbor dropped this week from 75 to 71. When asked why, the ocean said something about it being Labor Day weekend, even though no one in the sea celebrates the day. Which begs the question: who does celebrate this weekend, which above all else signals the end of another summer?

The answer: those who earn the bulk of their living during a Vineyard summer, shouldering long hours, multiple gigs and too much coffee.

But like the lowering of the water temperature, September brings with it a lowering of life lived at high speed on the Island. Smiles are more frequent, laughter too, as well as time — to savor or fritter away. So this weekend sit back and watch a brood of chickens scamper about the backyard, study a spider spinning an enormous web, or wave with a cheer and a tear to a ferry boat filled to the brim and heading off to a not so distant shore.

While back-to-school shopping in the city, a young Island girl asks her mother if they can wander down some dark alleys. Dusk has settled, and the mom shakes her head no. Dark alleys can be dangerous places, she says.

I know, the little girl says, that’s where vampires usually hang out. She shows her mother her wooden stake, whittled to a point by her older brother. The city needs me, she says.

Well I need you too, responds her mother, and besides Staples is about to close. You need a notebook and a backpack for school.

The little girl smiles. She really wants a new backpack; the city will have to fend for itself. She puts her stake in her back pocket, holds out her hand, and together the two walk hand-in-hand across the busy street into a brand new school year.

May everyone’s school year be filled with bravery, large leaps of imagination and some good old-fashioned hand holding when the road gets rough. And don’t forget to look both ways when crossing the street; cars can be just as dangerous as vampires.

A long time ago, while riding the subway with an older poet he had never heard of, a young man listened as the poet suggested the key to life was scheduling. He was in his 20s then and thought this sounded both bland and absurd. He left the subway feeling sorry for the poet and his scheduled life.

Recently, he saw the poet’s name in a headline. He had died and there were many tributes. The poet was revered for his work and his teaching, the man learned. And he had led anything but a scheduled life.

Decades had passed since that subway ride; the young man was older, grayer and crankier in the knees. And he too now thought the key to life was scheduling. But he kept this thought to himself and hoped it didn’t show.

Sixteen years ago they watched the towers fall — he from his office window uptown, she from downtown, falling to her knees on Sixth Avenue, holding out her arms as if to catch everyone and everything.

They were to be married in two weeks, at a church in Greenwich Village, not far from Ground Zero. All planning ceased as they grieved, the city filled with the smoke and smell, along with makeshift memorials and pictures of the missing stapled to any available piece of wood. They wondered if the wedding should go on at all.

As the days passed, they said yes; a proclamation of love was more essential then ever. After the vows, they threw open the doors of the church so anyone walking by could hear the music and see the dancing. They welcomed everyone to join the party, which they did in great numbers, from homeless squatters to neighborhood regulars and curious passersby.

When he closes his eyes he can still see that scene so vividly — family, friends and strangers all dancing together in a swirl of love and sadness. And when he opens his eyes, the tears fall heavily once again, just as they did looking out his office window, sixteen years ago.

On a trip up-Island to kayak, a man and his son park at Quitsa Pond and explore for a few hours. Upon return, after hoisting the boat back on the car roof, they notice a woman’s hat in their car’s passenger seat. It is a nice hat with a wide brim to keep the sun out, and a quietly fashionable trim. The parking lot is empty and at first there is no one to quiz about the mystery. Then they see a sailor just a bit offshore.

Yes, he says, there was a woman in your car, not too long ago. She needed more space to park her car, found your keys on the seat and moved your car a few feet to the right. I guess she left her hat.

The man places the hat in the car next to his, then checks his car again to make sure his wallet, also left on the seat, is intact. It is.

Later that evening, while tending to his backyard, the man ushers his chickens to bed amid complaints from them about the earlier coop curfew. The half-wild rabbit stops by and asks for a second carrot to warm her through the cooler nights, and a caterpillar rejoices in finding a quiet perch to morph into a cocoon.

Fall is still officially a week away, but unofficially its mood has settled in nicely around the Island.

He went fishing with three of his buddies, all brand new to being teenagers. They set out on a small inflatable boat with a motor, first in Menemsha harbor and then piloting out to Lobsterville. In his life, he had caught some scup and sea bass but nothing that could be called a game fish. He held a borrowed rod in his hand, fitted with a cranky reel and a rusty lure.

When the school of albies hit, his line took off like it had been pulled back on a crossbow and shot through the air. At least that is how he would describe it to his father later. And then nothing; the line went slack and he thought he had lost the fish. But it was still running, only this time back at the boat. Then it took a deep dive and the rod doubled over, the tip nearly touching the water.

He kept at it and eventually brought the albie in. It was 25 inches long, just big enough to make a weigh-in. But his more experienced friend said it would shrink on the way, out of the water, and so there was no point. He showed him how to release the fish nose first into the water so its gills would begin working right away and live to fight another day.

Derby fever hooks one more.

As political leaders roar and nature roars even louder, a mother tells a story about her teenage boy, new to reading the headlines of the day, asking if the world is going to be okay. The mother won’t lie to her son and tells him she worries about that too.

On another part of the Island, a woman gives a tour of her canning pantry. She points to a high shelf, above the pickled dilly beans and the newly made applesauce and cider, to several jars of water. They were created after Chernobyl, she says. The next row of water? Before Y2K. And the next row? For now.

She shrugs and says that her grandkids say they plan to drink the Chernobyl water at her funeral. Let’s hope we are all around for that, she adds.

On Sunday, the Gazette photography exhibit, Eyes of the Island, opened at Featherstone. It includes 11 photographers and over 150 photos that span decades, landscapes, news stories, Island icons. A walk through the Art Barn, where the exhibit hangs for the next month, is a tour of the Vineyard, traveling by time portal to different eras, people, places and even tragedies.

But this isn’t a review or an advertisement. That is not the Notebook's territory. Rather it is a mood that still lingers loudly the next day. A single image of the familiar — of a place or a person who is loved — hooks deeply into the heart. But so many images in one setting set the heart free to wander, not anchored to any one emotion and therefore growing exponentially along the way.

A lot of work went into the exhibit, from the photographers, of course, who took the pictures and have been such a visual lifeblood of the Gazette for so long. Behind the scenes, the work of many kicked into high gear. Thanks to all for a job and a journey so very well done.

While driving home from work, a man’s wandering thoughts were interrupted by seeing a Corvette coming the other way. This was not the classic muscle car, but a newer model, sleek and almost unobtrusive. It hugged the road low, and its familiar finish-line flags decorated the hood.

After the car passed, the man went back to his wandering thoughts. But then he was interrupted again by another Corvette, also coming from the other direction - same model type but a slightly different color.

Two Corvettes in a row on this tiny Island; interesting he thought while also shrugging it off as nothing truly out of the ordinary. Plus he had his wandering thoughts to get back to.

But then he saw another Corvette and another and another. In all he counted 15 Corvettes headed the other way, all the same model and all driven quietly as if to give the car a different reputation. Speed replaced by respectability, perhaps.

He thought about turning and following after the last Corvette went by, but at the same time he began to wonder about his powers of perception. Did he really just see a parade of Corvettes go by in the late afternoon fog?

In the end he decided not to investigate. After all, a parade of Subarus was headed his way. All seemed normal again.

On a long drive home to the Island a man turns to a classic rock station for company — a rare visit for him. He is pleasantly surprised to hear that Freebird does indeed still rock and that Pat Benatar had some serious vocal range. Ozzy Osbourne disappoints, he thinks, relying more on myth than actual depraved power. A Bryan Adams song lands with a lump in his throat and he shakes his head in mild embarrassment.

The station was supposed to lead to the past to help him to take a break from the present. But it doesn’t work. His thoughts are still anchored in a dive diner where at a far corner table three brothers eat breakfast and chew on difficult matters. They all wear some gray hair now, do not see each other very often, and have come together to talk about hard times.

But then the man smiles, remembering how much laughter was also present among the cheese omelets and rye toast. It was as if they were kids again, sitting at the breakfast table before school, when life was simple, or so they thought at the time.

AC/DC comes on the radio. The band is still perfect. He lets the song take him backwards, to locker room psyche-ups before big matches, and forwards, to a place of hope he almost forgot existed.

Down lonely roads, crisp brown leaves impersonate tumbleweeds as they scuttle from side to side and back again. On the beaches, gulls roam with impunity, soaring low or walking daintily at the water’s edge. With no sandwiches to filch or crackers to mooch, they barely make a sound. Only the waves roar anymore, it seems, as the lions of summer are long gone.

A seal bobbing in the waves watches the scene, including a man quietly making marks in a notebook. For a moment it is as if the seal is also taking notes for a larger audience. If so, what would it say about this gray afternoon to help seals from near and far begin their day. Perhaps it too would embrace a mood of color and quiet, or it might make note of how the noise of nature appears so much louder in the absence of people.

The seal stares wide-eyed for a moment longer then disappears without a sound beneath a curling wave. A moment later the man walks back the way he came, leaving the beach to two gulls who stand side by side on the sand, watching and waiting in the deep gray of another November day.

As cold weather rolls in and the fireplace beckons he thinks about a poem by William Butler Yeats. Many years ago he was asked to read the poem during an audition. He was much too young then to read it with any real understanding. The role went elsewhere.

He wonders if he is old enough now. Perhaps, but not that it matters. The role he will play this evening, of a man sitting by the fire dreaming of the past, will go to no other.

When you are old and gray and full of sleep, and nodding by the fire, take down this book, and slowly read, and dream of the soft look, your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep. 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. And bending down beside the glowing bars, murmur, a little sadly, how love fled, and paced upon the mountains overhead, and hid his face amid a crowd of stars. -William Butler Yeats

Seated on the floor, a mother is surrounded by wrapping paper, scissors, a glue gun, tiny hand-held gifts, some bows and six toilet paper rolls. The holidays are not on her mind, however. She is going on a trip and her young daughter is afraid. The danger is not real, but the anxiety of a little girl missing her mommy is.

The mother is crafting a pyramid of sorts, made out of the toilet paper rolls. Inside each cardboard roll, one for each day she will be gone, is a small gift and a note of encouragement. The rolls are then wrapped in ribbons and closed on both sides by gluing small circles of gift paper. Each morning the girl will open one, a burst of her mother’s love to start the day.

The father standing on the sidelines is amazed and thankful for the undertaking. It will be a long week, he is sure of it. But he is already looking forward to the next morning and seeing the look on their daughter’s face, when she reads the first note and finds her small keepsake. Her smile will pierce his heart just as his wife’s is doing right now.

A chipmunk races from beneath the deck out across the yard, nearly flying among the fallen leaves. He disappears into the woods, but returns in a few moments, mouth now chubby with acorns. These journeys continue, back and forth, balancing the need to gather food for winter against the dangers of open field running. The sky is filled with feathers and furry. A black cat lives next door. Other villains await in the shadows. A chipmunk is food for thought for so many.

But sitting center stage on the lawn is a small gray rabbit nibbling on clover with apparent impunity. Fleet of foot and carrying some extra pounds give it some breathing room, evidently. But its friend — white and orange and nearly tame — is nowhere to be seen. Not today or for many weeks. The yard is lonely without the other bunny, called Alex by some, Honey by others, Tabitha, Zeke or Cousin Burpy by a few more. She is the neighborhood’s bunny, gentle and fond of scratches behind the ears before heading off again into the woods.

The chipmunk makes another dash across the yard, startling the gray bunny, so that both decide to disappear to some safe place. And then the yard is completely empty, save the scattering of leaves, and the memory of carrots being eaten daintily by an orange and white rabbit with many names.

As Thanksgiving approaches he gives thanks for little girls who have dreams where for punishment they are sent back to preschool. He gives thanks for turning left instead of right one day and ending up in a coffee shop and running into old friends. The conversation roams from health care seen through the worried eyes of a pediatrician, to the genius of Joyce and the melancholy humor of Dostoyevsky.

He gives thanks for cold winds that slap him awake, the quiet kindness of clouds, and the moody orange of a crackling fire. He gives thanks for 92 year olds, still curious as toddlers, and for watching two men share a cup of tea while reminiscing about the old days. He gives thanks for a full heart that occasionally thumps its way up through his throat filling him with such joy he cannot speak.

He gives thanks for all of it, the hard, the beautiful and the hurt, and the ability to finally say it out loud.

The Gazette sends out condolences to the Lovewell family after the death of John S. Lovewell, who died at the age of 96 on Saturday. John is the father of Mark Lovewell, the Gazette photographer, along with sons Robert, Frank, Jack, and daughter Deborah. After a long career as an engineer, John served the town of Edgartown for 30 years as both a wastewater commissioner and water commissioner, a position he held for 24 years.

In December of 2014 Mark wrote an essay about his father, who at the time was 93 years old. “Dad is my significant other,” Mark wrote. “Our kids, his five and my two, are grown. Our wives have moved on — Dad has been married more times than me. He also outnumbers me in dogs. He has walked and cared for four. I had one. All of them are in doggy heaven. As predictable as our lives together have become day to day, I have to say life overall has its unexpected treasures. There was not a thread of evidence in our earliest years together, when I was his prodigal son, that we’d become such good pals. I think this is a bigger gift to me than to him.”

On Sunday, Mark was back out in the community, covering an assignment and singing to the patients at Windemere, which he does every Sunday. “I’m out doing what I love,” he said.

On a long holiday weekend, the Notebook likes to return to its mentors, those writers whose words shaped the course of its life. There are many, but this weekend Joyce comes to mind, in particular Dubliners, which Philip Weinstein will teach on Wednesday night. Each year the Notebook re-reads The Dead, the final story in the collection, to once again visit with the shades, passing from one world to the next. But then another story called, Araby, in particular the opening paragraph.

North Richmond Street, being blind, was a quiet street except at the hour when the Christian Brothers’ School set the boys free. An uninhabited house of two storeys stood at the blind end, detached from its neighbours in a square ground. The other houses of the street, conscious of decent lives within them, gazed at one another with brown imperturbable faces.

Have a wonderful weekend, may it be filled with words and stories of all kinds.

Those early mornings with his father were more an armed walk in the woods than hunting, the man remembers as a December chill works its way down to his toes. He drifts back in time to when a flock of quail burst out of a clearing. He held only a walking stick then, too young for a gun. He raised it in the air, following the birds and whispering bang, bang.

His father continued to hold his gun down, toward the ground, watching and whispering aren’t they beautiful.

Everyone was young then, the man thinks, as he walks along a path with his own son now, both wearing orange hats and carrying walking sticks. He does not carry a gun; does not need it as his pastime is hunting ghosts. December is a good month for this, the holiday season conjuring up all manner of ancestors. The wave at him from up ahead, as does his father, appearing again as a young man.

Isn’t it beautiful, the man whispers. His son nods, a bit of facial hair beginning to show on his upper lip. In this dream of youth only he looks older.

A feline ghost story crossed the threshold at the animal shelter recently. A lobsterman brought in a cat that he found prowling about and looking lonely. The shelter advertised the cat, with a photo, which caught the eye of a grieving pet owner. She marveled at how much it looked like her cat, but that was impossible as her cat died a few months ago, run over by a car and buried in the backyard. And yet the likeness was uncanny. But sorrow can do that, conjure ghosts from around every corner or lobster pot.

The lost cat had a microchip, and so, on a whim, they decided to see if it was a match. It was. But this could not be true, unless the cat had climbed out of its grave to walk again among the living.

In the end, a more matter-of-fact explanation made itself known. The owner’s cat had gone missing and so when a similar cat was found run over, it was assumed to be the same one and given a proper burial. The story ends with a tearful reunion of owner and resurrected cat. But what of the grave, now the final resting place of an anonymous furry soul? It is still out there, holding forth in the quiet of night and bustle of day, a testament to those lost and those found of every persuasion.

In the streets candy canes sway in time with the wind, a giant snowman waves hello from a front yard and a Christmas tree floats in the middle of a pond. Dusk may fall a bit past four, but the holiday lights make nightfall more appealing.

Mornings stand on their own two feet, as per usual, aglow at sunrise for early risers, roosters and insomniacs. No clapping there though; save that for summer nights. Mornings are better met with solitary whispers than communal howls of admiration. A cup of coffee in front of the Christmas tree is near perfection, especially when sipped before any other creature in the house stirs.

But what of afternoons, those stretches of time that are neither beginnings or ending? There is so much to be done then, but every once in awhile resist the urge to be busy. Look instead to the dog napping, the cat sitting vigil by the window, chickens scratching in the leaves and the birds coming and going at the feeder; all of them unaware of any seasonal rush approaching. In case of holiday overload do as they do.

At the office co-workers can sometimes be seen as the sum of their role. Here at the Gazette we have writers, editors, photographers, advertisers, web and graphics specialists, pressmen, the list is long and varied. There is of course crossover but everyone has a specialty, like at any office. But since the Vineyard is a small town, there is a chance, every once in awhile, to see someone in a different role, shining on stage even. Such was the case this weekend.

Staff photographer Mark Lovewell participated in the Minnesingers holiday concerts. He wore a black, leather vest, carried a harmonica around his neck and a guitar in his hands. He picked and strummed, and sang like a troubadour of old. All of the performers were magnificent, from the high schoolers to the range of adult guest musicians. But there was something special about seeing a co-worker up there in the lights digging deeply into Silent Night, giving a holiday favorite new life and depth, and being cheered on by the crowd.

The Notebook wonders what other talents lurk out there among the desks, in this office and every office, and vows to remember once again how everyone is always so much more than they appear.

The first Island snowfall fell on Thursday night, a quiet intruder masked in white. A young girl rejoiced, running out in her pajamas before breakfast was served, turning her face to the sky and declaring it perfect. But her chickens took a dim view of their first snow, having been born in the spring. Freezing temperatures had been bad enough, but now this, they clucked from inside the coop, refusing to step onto this foreign land.

The girl tried coaxing them: “It’s the same ground, only white instead of green,” she said, bending down to beak level to prove her sincerity. But the chickens weren’t buying it. After all, to complain about the sky falling is part of their narrative. So is being chicken.

Finally, one brave poultry soul hopped on a rock, then slipped and landed in a drift of snow. She survived but did not rejoice. To reward the effort the young girl scooped her up, brought her into the house and gave her a slice of banana while soothing her tail feathers, the way she did not so long ago when hope and cold weather seemed an impossible dream.

A regular summer visitor decided he needed the Vineyard in winter. He only had a day to spare, but the quantity of his visit did not worry him. He needed to be at sea, to connect by being unconnected, if only for a short time. He arrived in the evening after a day of travel and tucked himself away in a church. He looked around, at the choir loft, the pews, the altar, all empty now yet in his head filled with the voices of summer. He sat at the piano to compose; what, he was not sure. But he played as if his life depended on it.

Outside in the evening’s gloom, a man walked by, saw the light and stepped closer until he could hear the piano being played. He stood beneath the window with his eyes closed and head bowed. He listened as if his life depended on it.

While looking through the holiday books, he comes across one dated and signed, the year of his son’s birth. A grandparent’s gift, placed under the tree that first Christmas.

He looks across the room at his son, still a child but looking more and more like a man. The father remembers unwrapping the book and reading it to his son, who promptly ripped the first page in half. The tape used to repair it has darkened with age, the book’s corners show the wear and tear of teething and the cover bears the scars of a Sharpie scribbling.

He looks at his son, now standing at the tree, tall enough this year to place the angel on top. The father tries to remember how it felt to be both young and old at the same time, on the cusp of everything. He can’t, not in its entirety, but looking at his son he is granted a gift; a glimpse once again of who he was when the enormity of life came calling. He calls his son over and together they sit on the couch, turning the pages of a book that has always been with them and always will be.

It is just a small moment, midway through the movie The Post, but it rings loudly for the observant. Tom Hanks plays Ben Bradlee, the editor of the Washington Post, and he and his editors are looking at a copy of The New York Times, the cover of which carries the first story about the leaked Pentagon Papers.

“Scotty Reston threatened to publish it in the Vineyard Gazette if The New York Times didn’t publish the story,” one of the editors says.

The line in the movie is confirmed in James (Scotty) Reston’s memoir, Deadline. “I said I was for printing everything, that if we didn’t somebody else would, and if nobody else did, I would print them myself in our little family weekly, the Vineyard Gazette,” the former owner of the Gazette wrote, referring to being part of the decision making process at The New York Times.

Which brings up the question, would Gazette editor Henry Beetle Hough have published the Pentagon Papers, given the threat of imprisonment at the time, along with his preference for only reporting on Island matters? Mr. Hough is not at liberty to speak presently, but the consensus at the office is unanimous that he would have — the country editor was never one to shy away from a good fight — but under a small, one-column headline. He liked to keep things understated, after all.

Directory

Sections

Towns

Notebook Archive - 2017

Directory

Sections

Towns

Notebook Archive - 2017

Tuesday, January 3

Friday, January 6

Tuesday, January 10

Friday, January 13

Tuesday, January 17

Friday, January 20

Tuesday, January 24

Tuesday, January 31

Tuesday, January 31

Friday, February 3

Tuesday, February 7

Friday, February 10

Tuesday, February 14

Friday, February 17

Tuesday, February 21

Friday, February 24

Tuesday, February 28

Friday, March 3

Tuesday, March 7

Friday, March 10

Tuesday, March 14

Friday, March 17

Tuesday, March 21

Friday, March 24

Tuesday, March 28

Friday, March 31

Tuesday, April 4

Friday, April 7

Tuesday, April 11

Friday, April 14

Tuesday, April 18

Friday, April 21

Tuesday, April 25

Friday, April 28

Tuesday, May 2

Tuesday, May 9

Wednesday, May 10

Friday, May 12

Tuesday, May 16

Friday, May 19

Tuesday, May 23

Friday, May 26

Tuesday, May 30

Friday, June 2

Friday, June 9

Tuesday, June 6

Tuesday, June 13

Friday, June 16

Tuesday, June 20

Friday, June 23

Tuesday, June 27

Friday, June 30

Tuesday, July 4

Friday, July 7

Tuesday, July 11

Friday, July 14

Tuesday, July 18

Friday, July 21

Tuesday, July 25

Friday, July 28

Tuesday, August 1

Friday, August 4

Tuesday, August 8

Friday, August 11

Tuesday, August 15

Friday, August 18

Tuesday, August 22

Friday, August 25

Tuesday, August 29

Friday, October 6

Friday, October 13

Friday, October 20

Tuesday, October 3

Tuesday, October 10

Tuesday, October 17

Tuesday, October 24