Several weeks ago, at American Legion Hall 257 in Vineyard Haven, we honored two World War II warriors who had died.

Prior to the publishing of my Yiddish and Jive book, it seemed I spent every hour of the day at my computer dealing with and solving all sorts of last-minute problems related to my book being published.

When I was teaching in New York city, a fellow teacher told me a story about how his father, an Urban League officer, traveled in the South.

The temperature outside was a frigid 12 degrees with a foot of snow on the ground. At Featherstone Center for the Arts, inside the Pebbles, 20 of us played our ukuleles and other instruments loudly, smiling and carrying on.

What seems like eons ago when I was a tyke, my maternal grandmother schlepped (Yiddish to drag or pull) me from our home in Brooklyn to the Catskills.

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.