Edgartown's Old Marine Railway

Not used much anymore, apparently.

Timeless Yet Different

I'm still on a bit of a gray/black and white jag, inspired by my mother's poem, I guess, and egged on by the fact that her birthday was a couple of days ago (November 18).

More from one of my favorite haunts, the Reading Room (locals have been wondering for years, whatever do they read in that place?), also including one of my favorite Edgartonians, Steve Ewing; these from a recent gray and drizzly November day.

I think I gravitate to the harbor because it links me to the days of yore - the days of whale ships and sea commerce. There's something somewhat timeless about these harbor scenes, I believe. Timeless, yet a different configuration of boats, people, activities, and sky and sea conditions is to be found every time I venture down there, giving Edgartown Harbor - seemingly bleak to the casual or one-time observer at this time of year, I am sure - a particular dynamism and life.

Song for the Old Year

A poem by Alison Boylston Piazza

The year is beginning to turn gray;

Gray sky, gray sea -

Clinging, like the old bird's nest in the apple tree

To one last day

Of hope that this is not really all

There is of sun and warm breezes

Before earth freezes

And white silence starts to fall.

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.