Early summer fog blew across the moors at Wasque Reservation last Saturday morning, a soft blanket of dampness settling over tiny, salt-blasted wildflowers. All was quiet. A short distance away was the place where fishermen once stood famously shoulder to shoulder, casting deep into the rip tides for blues. But few fishermen come to this spot anymore. What was once a wide sandy beach is now a sheer cliff in a land that has been under assault by a relentless ocean for the past six years.

I want to take a couple of moments before we go on with the service and share with you some current thoughts of mine, after so many years of so many thoughts on the subject of marriage which received a lot of press in most parts of the country this last week. As most of you know, this ruling on DOMA affects Michael and me at a very deep and personal level.

With great sadness today I learned that my good friend and supporter through all my years as an energy advocate, Randy Udall, has died. He was hiking on a trail in Wyoming and had been expected home about a week ago. They found him yesterday, lying on his side on the trail. Randy loved the outdoors, often hiked and I remember him once telling me about hiking in the snow and making a cave in the snow in which to sleep. For an Easterner, that was hard for me to fathom.

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.