Handing Off for Life

There will be burgers, pancakes and silly stunts — people wearing crazy hats, walking backwards, eating s’mores and collecting playing cards around the track of the Martha’s Vineyard Regional High School, hoping for a winning hand by lap five. It is the American Cancer Society’s Relay for Life, and the poker run lap is apt, for every day involves high stakes when you find yourself in the casino of cancer.

It doesn’t get any better — you just get used to it.”

Hearing this a couple of months after the death of my wife, Ella Tulin, was like a kick in the stomach, but over the succeeding year there were many occasions when this phrase was the only solid anchor in an emotional turmoil.

Going Places

From Gazette editions of June, 1936:

The season of 1936 has been coming in on a bicycle, and many observers have looked up, startled, to see it coming in on a bicycle built for two. An older generation had forgotten all about the tandem bicycle, and a younger generation has never heard of it. There is a pleasant surprise to see the two-seater skimming along the street, its two riders enjoying sensations which the human race was silly ever to have surrendered.

The other day, on a wet and chilly morning, I suggested to my daughter Pickle, recently turned three, that she wear a coat for going outside. Giving my children suggestions about what clothes to wear has been an ongoing battle for me ever since I became a parent. That at age eight I chose to wear the same green T-shirt every day for an entire summer mocks me from my past.

Greenlands is a 360-acre environmental gem located in the heart of our Island. Greenlands was purchased by the town of West Tisbury to protect the crown of our Island’s sensitive sole-source aquifer as a future source of public water supply. Since its creation in 1982, parts of this critically important Island asset have been systematically transformed into an elaborate motorcross bike track.

BANISH BIGOTRY

Editors, Vineyard Gazette:

I was dismayed to read about the anti-immigrant blog that is spreading poison about our Brazilian Islanders. I hope our Brazilian immigrants know that you are most welcome on Martha’s Vineyard. All of you whom I have met are hardworking, honest people, who are also warm and easy to talk to. It has been a pleasure to get to know you, and I believe the vast majority of Islanders feel the same.