Phyllis Meras
Cruising around
in the pre-Christmas sky
St. Nick and his reindeer always fly
Over the waters of Vineyard Sound,
Over the ocean where the waves pound,
Over the bluffs and the cliffs and the sand
Of Martha’s Vineyard, seeking to land
A year ago I was in Cuba. I have been reminded of my visit by a picture a fellow traveler has just sent showing me readying to puff a Cuban cigar. One puff was enough for me, but I defied U.S. Customs officials and buried another in the depths of my suitcase to bring into the country for a cigar-loving friend.
I sampled my cigar on a tobacco farm where the group I was traveling with stopped.
It has finally happened. The old-fashioned bridge over the Mill River Ford in North Tisbury is no longer an old-fashioned bridge. Until three weeks ago, it was as close in character as the Island ever has had to a covered bridge. It’s not covered of course, but through the years it has retained wooden railings to keep cars crossing from falling into the brook below.
I missed Angela Davis’s description last month of life on
Palestine’s West Bank when she was there on behalf of Jewish Voice for Peace. I did, however, read last week’s letters about her talk and Alan M. Dershowitz’s attack of her view of the inhumanity to West Bank residents. I add to the discussion now only because, just six months ago, I, too, was a visitor there.
I went there from Israel.
p> Summer Is. By M. Lesnikowski, 21 pages, Southern Lion Books, $20. Vineyard-born artist Molly Lesnikowski, who has written two earlier children's books, has turned her pen and paintbrush to the Island, at last.
“I was a pest to a lot of people when I first came to the Vineyard in 1967,” confessed Mark Snider, owner and managing director of Mattakeset Properties in Katama since 1983, of the Winnetu Oceanside Resort at Katama since 2000 and now of the Nantucket Hotel and Resort that opened June 29 across Nantucket Sound.
“But, remember,” he added with a touch of pride, “that I was only 10 and there was so much I wanted to learn from people here who had history to share.”