Utility Lines

They've been up-grading the utility lines on Herring Creek Road, the lines that run out to what we used to call Edgartown's Great Plains. A few of the older townies still do call it by that name, but this area is mostly known as Katama these days. Suburbia is more like it.

The reason for the up-grade, of course, is the greatly increased population.

Oh, how far we have come.

I can remember being out at the Waller farmhouse, winter nights, early 1960's it must have been - those years when every teenager in town was friends with and an overnight guest of one Waller or another - looking out the kitchen window and not seeing a single light, just an empty blackness as far as the eye could see. There weren't as many trees in those days, either, so it was mostly wide-open space. About the only sound to be heard was the wind whistling through the bare-bones array of utility wires - telephone wires we called them - wires that fed electricity to the Waller Farm and over to the Wests and the Suttons; to Herring Creek Farm and beyond; to Tony Duart, Chauncy Maury, Ed Bannister, the Wilds and the Turners.

Well, that was then; this is now.

Autumn Sky

I love the sky, both day and night (and have you noticed Jupiter lately?). This week offered at least one day's worth of dramatic cumulus cloud effects - and, rather than drone on  (as someone once said, when asked to explain his poetry, "Do you want me to say it worse?"), I will let the pictures do the talking here.

Local Color, Election Day 2010

Perfect autumn weather on Election Day 2010 ensured a healthy turn-out of voters.





Mike McCormack's winning - as it would turn out - smile.




Ann Tyra, Jean Brennan, and Janet Sigler welcome and keep track of in-coming voters.



Decisions, decisions...


                         Take a good look - these colors will soon be a fond memory.

 
                                            Liz O'neill, sporting her own cozy autumn colors.
                         

                                                             Autumn still life.

Sue and Jerry in Ireland

There are three places in the world I'd love to visit (in alphabetical order): Ireland, Israel, and Italy (and it is totally random and coincidental that they all begin with the same letter,) so yeah, I'm green with envy that Sue Carroll and Jerry Grant recently spent a week in the first of my three choices.

Sue writes, "Reading our favorite newspaper [my competition] on the stone wall at Slea Head Farm which is the westernmost farm in Europe on the end of the Dingle Peninsula. Mollie is the dog - she wasn't interested in having her picture taken...In the background are the Blasket Islands. They were inhabited until 1953 by a small group of rugged souls who have left behind a wealth of written memoirs. So interesting. This is an area of Ireland where the Irish language is still spoken at home. Everyone is bilingual except for our three year-old neighbor. He hasn't started speaking English yet, but he wants to."

Coumeenole Cottage"This is the 200 year-old cottage we rented for the week - as they say in Ireland, 'Pre-famine.' The owners are from Massachusetts and rent it out by the week. Ryan's Daughter was made on the beach in front of the house right around the same time Jaws was being made here. There was a book in the house about the making of [Ryan's Daughter] - we could relate.  Many of the people from the Blasket Islands emigrated to the Springfield area - connections everywhere we look." Photos courtesy of Sue Carroll. 

Tuesday Walkabout, October 26, 2010

Davis Lane

It amazes me that I can walk the same basic route through town on any given day and come up with different views and different faces every time. I'm not interested in writing tomes these days - being in school for the past eight years pretty much knocked the long essay out of me - for a while, anyway - but I am realizing, having recently lamented my not beginning this project years ago, that the images I capture today - Edgartown's scenery, architecture, and people - are the makings of tomorrow's history.

The goal of Edgartown News, ultimately, is to turn the mundane into the extraordinary; to celebrate the everyday moments - the people and the views that I take for granted.

...and let's not complete this thought, especially in these trying times.

Fishermen's Pier





The beginning of what is to come.



Timeless




Joe Robichau - a most interesting individual with whom it is always a pleasure to pass the time of day.




The fleet is in.










The harbor is all his now, but I'll bet he would gladly exchange solitude and sovereignty for being fed sandwich and ice cream cone crumbs all day long by the summer crowds.




Does this classic blue Wagoneer say anything other than "Sherm Burnham?"



The tools of Steve Ewing's trade, at rest.
















I suspect that this little catboat is named after Oscar Pease who for many years fished out of a similar, but wooden, catboat - most likely built by Manuel Swartz - named Vanity.




Eddie Gentle, about to head out to set moorings with Eddie, Jr.



"Young" Sandy Fisher. Well, that's what we used to call him, to differentiate from his father, but he also has a son named Sandy (technically, Francis Fisher IV), so I guess that makes this Sandy "Middle" Sandy. Here, he is preparing bait for his conch traps. (Sandy the elder, here.)




Sandy's and his mate's doings have attracted a crowd (Mike Jackson and Marty Kelly), with its attendant fish talk, jokes, and news of the day.




North Water Street Lanterns.










Bailey and Joan Norton's home. This may be the only house on North Water Street that is occupied year-round.




I have heard that in North Water Street's hay-day, back in the whaling days - 100 years ago or so - these houses were filled with captains' families, that it was a thriving year-round neighborhood with laundry hanging on clotheslines and children playing (stick-ball or kick-the-can, or whatever they did back then) in the streets.




The days of balmy air and roses are surely numbered.
















Edgartown's war and veterans' monuments. The trees in the background give a hint of the spectacular fall display you'll find all around town - more vibrant than usual this year, I think; a subject worthy of its own post, I do believe, but alas, this probably all will have changed by the time I return.

Autumn Rose

October 24, 2010

Thirty-three years ago today, also a Sunday, as I recall, my mother walked in the door of the house where my husband and three year-old son and I were living at the time, and where I happened to be in the early stages of labor for my second child, with two late-blooming pink roses she had picked from the bush next door. One was a full, round bloom, the other, branching from the same stem, was a tiny bud. She handed the small bouquet to me and said, "The big one is for you - big and round - and the bud is for the little girl you'll give birth to today." This was well before the days of being able to know the gender of your unborn child, so it was a guess on her part, but indeed, my mother's intuition was correct (proving again that mother is always right), as later that evening, in the upstairs bedroom of the house at #25 School Street, my daughter was born.

When Maria was growing up, I would return to that same rose bush on her birthday and pick a pink rose for her birthday table. She's been gone from home for many years now, and we haven't lived in that house since that one winter, but I still find my way to the rose bush on School Street every year on or near October 24th, and there's always at least one pink rose blooming.

In retrospect, it would have been entirely logical to name our autumn baby girl Autumn Rose, but I've always liked the biblical names. There are many Marys and Maries in our line, and I love the name Maria. Maria is not only a beautiful sounding name ("Say it loud and there's music playing..."), but is also a nod to the Italian side of the family. I would learn many years later that my great grandmother Sara Boylston, the woman after whom I was named, had a mother named Maria. I love this symmetry - especially since it was by accident -  that Sara's mother's name was Maria, and now a few generations later, Maria's mother's name is Sara.

Maria has a brand new birthday twin, by the way, born this morning to Brook Olson and Clinton Fisher: a baby girl, Isabella. Congratulations to Brook and Clinton, and to Grandma Madeline Fisher who says that everyone is doing well and that Isabella is "definitely a cutie." 

I think a pink rose is in order.

#25 School Street, The Holmes Coffin House