Town Column : Aquinnah
By Molly Purves
Published: October 15, 2009
All right, this time it's really over. If it hasn't closed yet, but it will by the end of the week. The Chilmark Store, The Aquinnah Shop, Chilmark Tavern, and Beach Plum Inn will all be closed after this weekend. There are a few exceptions as I noted last week, but basically this is it.
It's time to start those fall and winter projects, clean out your closet, work on those photo albums, fix the things you haven't been able to get to, make a quilt, and cook a lot. Or you could go hunting. Deer season just started, and for those of us who look at deer as Lyme disease or a car accident waiting to happen, now is our time. Go get 'em. After the hunt we can all meet up at Menemsha Café, which I found out will be open until the 10th of January.
The library will be opening sometime in late October or early November; no official date has been set yet.
Congratulations to Donald and Tilda Mitchell who celebrated 57 years of marriage on the eighth of October. Wow. That's very impressive. I haven't even known my parents that long.
Sometime Aquinnah/ Chilmark resident Mary McConneloug just took second place at a mountain bike race in Rhode Island.
I spent Columbus Day weekend working at the Vineyard Playhouse on two staged readings of "The Laramie Project," a play set in the small town Laramie, Wyo., and written after the brutal murder of Matthew Shepard. Monday night was a special presentation of "The Epilogue," Laramie ten years later, that more than 150 theaters around the country participated in simultaneously.
The Island support for these pieces was incredible and it was great to be a part of such an honest piece that really looks at life in a small town and what is beneath the surface of it. It made me think of our small town, not just Aquinnah, but the Island as a whole. How we relate to each other, how we take care of each other, how we cope with loss, and how we handle disagreements with each other - what we hold on to and what we let go of. For myself, I know I can spend too much time focusing on ways in which I am different from the people around me. More money, less money, born here, here a long time, nicer house than me, no house, etc. The surface things are so distracting. Maybe that will be my winter project: letting go of the things that make me feel separate from those around me. And no, that does not mean I'm giving up my house.
