Opinion
What a grand holiday it has been for the Family-to-Family holiday distribution program. For nearly a decade, this volunteer-run operation has provided the ingredients for healthy holiday meals three times a year — Thanksgiving, Christmas, and in the spring — to families in need. This year, however, it looked like this young tradition might come to an end, because requests for help were up and contributions were down and we were out of money. As coordinator of the program, I was sadly contemplating how to gracefully shut it down.
Winter has always been my favorite season, so I was delighted when snow fell on Saturday just in time to welcome in the New Year. Admittedly, it wasn’t much of a snowfall, but enough to brighten the dead brown grass on fields and bejewel the trees for an hour or two that morning. It was wet snow, which meant soon there was ice underfoot, but fearing that with climate change there might not be another snowfall this winter, I went walking in it all the same. I took my usual, unadventurous route through the trees behind my house on Tiasquam Road in West Tisbury.
Back in the early years of the new millennium, Facebook was something we old, crunchy boomers only heard about dimly. It was some Internet something or other that had to do with lord knows what. It was as alien to us as love-ins, The Jefferson Airplane and peyote simmering on the stove were to our parents.
The first flood of invitations to join Facebook came as a big surprise to people of our generation. Why would we want or need this? And for those of us who had children, grown or not, we might have felt disposed to let them hold onto those things that are righteously theirs.
I really can’t stay. But baby, it’s cold outside! I’ve got to go 'way. But baby, it’s cold outside!
So goes Frank Loesser’s famous duet of fireplace seduction. But some New Englanders feel they really can’t stay and have to go ’way precisely because, baby, it’s cold outside.
The National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) of Cape Cod and The Islands is once again offering its Family to Family Education course, a free 12-week course all about the various mental illnesses including bipolar disorder, OCD, anxiety disorders, major depression and others. Medications, communication skills and self care are also covered. Taught by trained family member volunteers, weekly classes begin on Wednesday, Jan. 9 from 6:30 to 9 p.m. in Vineyard Haven and continue for 12 consecutive weeks through March 13. For additional information and to register, contact the NAMI CC&I office at 508-778-4277 or [email protected].
The end of the year is often an occasion for quiet time and contemplation, when many Islanders redirect their lives and energies to family gatherings either at home or away. But late December this year was far from tranquil for real estate brokers, attorneys, appraisers, land surveyors, bankers and other professionals who handle the many steps involved in the sale and transfer of real property. The market for real estate was hit by a sudden burst of activity, fueled by impending changes in the federal tax code.