Kite-boarding on Anthier's

Felix Baumgartner's scheduled twenty-mile-high leap to Earth from the edge of our stratosphere today was cancelled due to high winds at the Roswell, New Mexico launch site, but our own Anthier's Pond was filled with leaping, soaring, and flying kite-boarders this afternoon, all enjoying the high winds of a passing No'theaster, and what a grand sight it was.

This old surfer - tired of waiting for waves, not being able to get into Squibby until after 5pm, along with increasingly more frequent shark reports - has fantasies about giving kite surfing a go. I did see a girl out there today, so maybe it's not that crazy an idea. Okay, so she was probably not a grandmother. I can dream, though, right?

(full set, here)

Birds on a Rail

Big Bridge, October 4, 2012. The summer's teenaged jumpers and divers have been replaced by resident pigeons who are probably glad to have the railing back to themselves.

Gay Head Long Exposures

The time and tide were just right this evening for trying out some long exposures up in Gay Head. It was foggy and mystical and desolate - exactly what I had hoped for.

Wet Wednesday

Birds, a Boat, and a Boy

A bird I saw a couple of days in a row last week but didn't have my camera with me (a Great White Heron - never leave home without a camera! - which I managed to track down yesterday), plus a few incidental birds; a boat whose lines I happen to like; and a boy - well, just because I needed another B and I happened to have had a boy handy, fresh from this morning's dirt pile.

Tomorrow I start on the Cs.



The Great White Heron, also known as the The Great Egret.


Cormorants





A happy reminder of my scalloping/early married/young motherhood days.


One of my boys, pausing - mid-dirt-filled-shovel - to watch a helicopter fly by.

Dot West

As part of my move back home I've been sorting through the archives and came across a little story I wrote about Dot West, a piece that appeared in the February 19, 2004 edition of the Martha's Vineyard Times.





Dorothy Mae Gazaille West is an Edgartown farm girl. Born on Edgartown's Great Plains, on the shores of Edgartown Great Pond, the second-youngest of Joseph and Mary Gazaille's seven children, Dorothy West grew up in a world of fields and ponds and open land where neighbors in every direction, from the Vincents to the Salvadors to the Wallers to the Pradas, were farmers who knew each other and were quick to help each other out. The years of Dottie West's childhood were years of no car, no electricity, and a hand pump in the kitchen; a large family pitching together to raise all of their own food, in the days when an evening's entertainment consisted of a conversation around the dinner table.

Dottie West, who reached the venerable age of eighty on January 2, is a handsome woman. Her face reveals a life well-lived; a life of hard work and of losses; a life of determination and independence, and much joy. Dottie's conversation is freely filled with laughter, and her blue-hazel eyes twinkle - with mischief, with wisdom, and with life.

"I was born in the Square Rigger, the Old Wilson place, where the town landing is now. They moved the house [to the Triangle, its present location]. Mrs. Salvador delivered me. She stopped by to visit and my mother was in labor. I was born before old Doc Nevin [William] got there. I lived there until I was four, then we moved across the street to Meetinghouse Way. Growing up, my father was very strict. We had no car, and we had to be in the house for dinner - or else. At night, dad read out of the Bible and said the Rosary, and we discussed the day. If we wanted to go to town, we either walked or took a horse and buggy. Dad did a little of everything - he was a gardener and a plumber, and we grew our own vegetables, cut our own wood, and had our own animals; we were up at 4:30 to milk the cows. We had a hand pump in the kitchen and a well with a bucket outside. Mother made bread and butter and hung the laundry on the line - there were no Pampers in those days.

"Growing up on a farm is the best teacher in the world; it teaches responsibility and dependability. We kids all worked on the farm. It was during the depression, we would pick blueberries and strawberries - we had to pick ten quarts a day. If we wanted spending money we could pick more.

"It was a different world. It was all open space, and there was no such thing as 'no hunting or fishing;' you could go anywhere, we had free run of everything. If you were putting hay in the barn your neighbor was there to help you. We had big barn dances, lots of square dancing. My father was a fantastic caller and my mother was a fantastic dancer. It's different out here now [Dottie still lives in the neighborhood, on the ten acres she bought when she was nineteen years old, West Acres, where she and her late husband, Bob, raised their five children], I'm rubbing elbows with the elite, with David Letterman."

On January 10, in honor of her birthday, Dottie's children, Wayne; Nanette Lynch; Ronnie; and Cindy Sequiera hired a hall - the American Legion Hall in Edgartown; a band - the Ray Band; and invited friends from near and far to what was originally planned as a surprise party.

"Who told me?" Dottie's eyes twinkle, she laughs her deep, infections laugh, and says, "I'm not telling. I'll never tell. I went and had my hair done, and Donna [Honig] said, 'Who told you?' I danced every dance. My legs were so sore the next morning I couldn't move. I love to dance. It was a fantastic party. I wasn't counting, but Nanette says there were around 150, from all over; from New York, New Hampshire, Maine, Connecticut, California, Canada, New Bedford.

"What keeps me going? Being active, driving the taxi [her son Wayne's Stagecoach Taxi]. In the summer, it's seven days a week; early morning runs, tours. It's a fantastic job - believe me - meeting different people like President Clinton and Walter Cronkite - now there's a gentleman. I'll keep driving as long as I'm able. I have my health and a wonderful family. I thing it's wonderful to be eighty and healthy and alert. My advice is to stay active; once you give up you don't live."

Almost nine years later, closing in on 89 years with ten grandchildren, ten great-grandchildren, and number eleven on the way, Dot is as cheerful and chipper as ever, and is still pushing her "stay active" mantra. She told me today, "I walk 3-4 miles a day. You gotta keep moving. A body in motion stays in motion, a body at rest stays at rest."

Amen, Dottie.

Beach Road, Wednesday Morning

I had just enough time on my way to Oak Bluffs this morning to catch this lone shellfisherman, quahogging in the rain.