It’s just after five o’clock on a potholed stretch of the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway. I’m in the slow lane, moving along a concrete wall between the road and a back row of mostly dark apartments. Beyond those apartments are more apartments, a long line of giraffe-shaped cranes, and the very beginnings of a New York city morning.
Almost exactly a decade after my first trip, I’m back on the road to Martha’s Vineyard. Things are the same and things are different.

To Millie: Good-bye my friend

I know I’ll never see you again.

Our time together through all the years

Will take away my tears.

Good-bye my friend.

Last Friday after buying bird seed at SBS I went to my car and it wouldn’t start. Assuming the battery was dead, I returned inside and asked if I could use the phone to call AAA. Katrina Nevin, who works at SBS, asked what the problem was and offered her jumper cables to charge the battery.

At a wedding that I recently attended, the deejay explained to me that from his position behind the speakers it was hard for him to judge how loud the music was in front of the speakers. It is also distinctly possible that hearing impairment is an occupational hazard. Would it not be sensible for every deejay and every live band to have a decibel meter app on their smartphone?

The situation in Syria is indeed very troubling. I can understand why President Obama first hesitated to send even light weapons to aid the rebels against the Assad government’s cruel treatment of its own people. I am distressed that the president has changed his mind in this matter but perhaps it is not too late to apply one remedy that I have in mind.

I hope the giant utility poles springing up around the Island are not a fait accompli. It seems we are going to have to bury our power lines at some point anyway, so waiting may just be a false economy. (Can you imagine the poles growing by that much again some day?)

Camp Jabberwocky, a summer camp for children and adults with disabilities, is enthusiastically looking forward to celebrating its 60th anniversary this summer. The celebration will also give fellow campers and me the opportunity to thank the residents of Martha’s Vineyard for helping make camp possible. For the past six decades, your generous support has succeeded in allowing the camp to grow and flourish.

Middle Road wears an Island necklace in shades of gray. Allow the car behind you to pass and drive just slowly enough to glimpse it hiding behind a blur of trees and vines, or follow after it as it lends definition to the landscape on either side of the road from West Tisbury to Chilmark.

The clash between Island aesthetics and improved utilities has come to a head on the Vineyard over the last several weeks as new, larger utility poles started popping up on Vineyard roads.

Residents and town officials have criticized the new poles as unsightly and out of keeping with the Vineyard’s character, referring the project for review by the Martha’s Vineyard Commission. NStar, the utility company installing the poles, said this week that the poles are necessary to improve electric service and meet demand.

Workwise, Josh Scott is an ultra-marathoner. On a sunny, brisk spring morning, the arborist and owner of Beetlebung Tree Care walks around a spectacular 70-acre property on Squibnocket Pond with caretaker Tim Rich. Visually, they are quite a pair. Tim is tall, maybe six-six with a long, lumbering stride while Josh has the wiry build and nimble movements of a runner.