Birds play games. Of course they do. At Sepiessa Point a cluster of black birds moves about the air like a school of fish. They change direction as one and shapeshift at will; a jellyfish, horse’s head, grandma Jane, the patterns becoming lighter and darker depending on the density of the flock.

A smaller cluster of birds hovers at the treetops edge. The groups merge and then disappear beneath the horizon line, the whoosh of their exit the only sound on an otherwise still afternoon.

The quiet lead up to Christmas on the Island was shattered this week with the revelations that gross mismanagement had led to allegations of fraud at the Edgartown wastewater treatment plant. A criminal complaint has been issued against an Edgartown septic hauler, who admitted to police that he took advantage of a system that was extremely lax, with little or no oversight or checks on how much the haulers were actually dumping at the plant.

From Dorothy Cottle Poole’s Christmas at Sea:

In 1831, the Nile out of New Bedford, Capt. James Townsend, was in the South Atlantic off Patagonia. His logbook entry for Christmas Day reads

I work at the food pantry as a volunteer. I now get it about the hardship on Island that justifies support for the food pantry.

When I had a tunnel permit bumper sticker on my car, I said it eliminated waiting in the standby line for the steamship.