As this summer departs, I am remembering summers long past, during the 1940s and ‘50s, that were so different from today’s Vineyard summers.

Clearly, I have a propensity for islands.

I recently returned from travels abroad — the first since the onset of Covid.

Clearly, this isn’t a book to curl up with at bedtime or for beach reading.

Spring, of course, arrived last week. In West Tisbury, daffodils heralded it by blooming in Ann Burt’s yard.

It was some years ago now, in 2012 after the outbreak of war in Syria, that a friend and I were in Gaziantep and Sanliurfa, Turkey.

Rushing to catch a boat the other day, I failed to stop to pick up a newspaper to read on the way to Woods Hole.

’Twas Christmas Eve and Santa Claus was readying for his trip around the world by reindeer sleigh — not elegant cruise ship.

I liked turning 90 a year and a half ago. I was given a party overlooking Chilmark Pond by friend Mary Jane Pease.

The death of former Soviet Union leader Mikhail Gorbachev took me back to my travels to several Eastern European countries that he helped liberate from Communist rule.