Sam Low
I really had no idea what to expect as I approached the Chilmark Community Center a little after 7 p.m. on Saturday night, but I hoped it would be like days of old when — as teenagers — we would make the long trek from down-Island to square-dance or listen to folksingers like Jesse Benton or David Gude. I was not disappointed.
Her name was Maile Malama Kamehameha. It was a long moniker and it pretty well summed her up. Maile is a kind of Hawaiian vine used as a ceremonial lei and worn mostly by men — she loved ceremonies and always gravitated to male “two-legs” (as she called human beings). Malama means “to take care of,” and that was her goal in life, which she did perfectly. Kamehameha is the name of Hawaii’s first king, the chief who united all the islands, which suggests her strength in adversity.
Last week, I had a visit from old friends John and Michelle Mackin who live in Greensboro, Vt. John is a carpenter and we spent three days together restoring two large bureaus in my home, me painting the drawers and John redoing the countertops. As John worked, I immediately noticed a sound I hear often when carpenters toil over their labor — a soft, tuneless whistling.
“What the hell?” I thought, “makes carpenters so happy to be using their tools?”
The angry red swath on the NOAA map shows Earl’s path northward. As I write this, on Wednesday, it’s not clear what he intends — but already I can sense something in the air. The calm, sticky weather we’ve been having for the last few days is heavy with portent. Signs lurk in the quiet all around. Where are the songbirds? Even geese flying overhead seem to be hurrying to shelter. My imagination is pictured with memories of other hurricanes.
“Come in Walter, come in now!”
I can’t wait for Edgartown Hardware to move out of downtown. For three generations my family and I have shopped there. You can’t beat the service and friendly attitude. But in the last 10 years or so we’ve taken our business elsewhere. The traffic. All those people from away shopping for T-shirts and baubles. Who can find a parking place?
It was a perfect New York art storm — Kandinsky, the Bauhaus, Monet, Georgia O’Keeffe, Hockney and Richard Serra — for starters. And it was all happening as winter gales descended on the rock, a good time to get away.
My cousin Lanny McDowell and I fought our way through Wednesday’s snowstorm, passing three jackknifed trucks and at least two cars nosed into snow banks (one of them a state police patrol vehicle) to arrive in late afternoon. Two days wasn’t nearly enough. What follows is a sample.