Commentary
So is Vineyard Haven now the Taos of the East? I knew two years ago there was something very special about what lured us to permanent living in Vineyard Haven, but who knew it would be nationally noted?
Our Chamber of Commerce announced on April 3 that Vineyard Haven was named one of America’s best small town art places for 2013. In fact, it’s in the top 12.
When courage comes knocking
Open the door
Although your mind screams
how can it be And your heart cries why me?
Two years ago my wife and I moved from Pensacola, Fla. to Oklahoma avenue in Vineyard Haven. One afternoon as I was riding my bicycle around the state forest, close to the Vineyard Youth Tennis club, I saw a big red rooster standing in the middle of the path. Having grown up in rural South Carolina I notice animals and have been doing animal rescue for years. The rooster was a magnificent sight, standing tall with his chest out. His feathers, full of incredible colors, sparkled in the sunlight.
Every time I went bicycling in that area I saw the rooster.
This morning going through the 20 mile-per-hour zone in front of my town’s grade school I watched the little kids walking along the sidewalk with their enormous backpacks. Little kids, first graders; what on earth is in those bags? And the older kids look like they are setting out on a serious trek, and they are just going to school. Maybe it is full of sports equipment; it can’t all be books. There were a few kids with bikes; besides the packs on their backs there was a bag fixed over their back fender. It looked stuffed too. (It must be sneakers).
Vineyard roots run strong and deep and I never have imagined calling anywhere else on earth home. I grew up on the Island, but plenty of people grow up plenty of places. They move, they call other cities, other towns their own. What has always rooted me to Martha’s Vineyard is what roots so many people here — a community with a heart much larger than the Island’s 100 square miles would suggest.
The valley of the Mill Brook is only as wide as the shadow of a cloud.
But many memories have settled here. From Waskosim’s Rock I see
the leaves along the frost bottom have changed. Reflecting in the string
of ponds along North Road, they blow through another sky, below
other clouds — leaves and the likeness of past leaves. One February,
I walked along the brook listening to it murmuring under the ice.
It is still snowing in my mind. That day that winter, the flakes falling