Commentary
A self-described beginning birder for almost 25 years finds the annual Christmas Bird Count a journey of discovery this year.
It’s not that I’m risk averse — I prefer predictability. I appreciate a pleasant sameness in my daily routine. Blissful in the calm, I can get things done.
Traveling to Martha’s Vineyard in the 1930s one had to go to New Bedford where The New England Steamship Company provided ferry service. The trip to the Vineyard cost $1 and took two hours. Taking a car cost $5 to $8. A trip to Nantucket cost $2.20 and took about four hours. To fly to the Vineyard, summers only, the flight from New Bedford to the Vineyard cost $5.50. Sightseeing busses were available in both ports, and “hard surfaced roads encircled [the] islands.”
On September 14, 1778 British Major-General Grey left Vineyard Haven after raiding the area.
It was just after Christmas a few winters ago, the family still visiting and the kitchen still in holiday mode with tins of cookies and jars of homemade jellies tied with bright ribbons, when I noticed what looked like a piece of black rice on our white windowsill. On closer inspection, I found it to be mouse droppings. I was determined to take care of the matter, while at the same time show respect for the preciousness of life in that mouse.
My son Dan was sick for 16 years and in those 16 years he got to know me as a human not just as his mom. From his hospital bed perch he spent a lot of time watching me running, doing, planning, phoning and he’d say with that grin of his, slow down, turbo.
I went to a funeral last Saturday. Four days before Christmas, the weather was unseasonably mild. This funeral was at the United Methodist Church in the Camp Ground. Karen Berube had died of complications from metastatic breast cancer; she was 63 and fought her illness valiantly and cheerfully until the very last days of her life.