The goodbyes to seasonal friends feel as if they are starting to snowball. This first summer without our father felt like an embrace. Fall is filled with beginnings and endings. I savor visiting with dear ones, and feel that peculiar combination of aching for more time together and savoring the time we have. My grandmother always closed special visits by holding your hand, looking in your eyes, and saying, “We’ve had this time.” Remembering it is impossible to hold onto moonlight helps me drink in these moments with loved ones. I am sad, and eager to drop into the stretches of uninterrupted drafting and thought-sorting time it takes me to write. Wishing Susanne Cronin, Catha Day Carlson, and Virginia Stone and their families a good winter, and looking forward to catching up next summer.
There is another star in my sky. We’ve lost another bright light. Carol Loud, with her sister by her side, died peacefully Thursday evening, Oct. 5. She was a dancer, piano teacher, and an organist. Until last year, the Chilmark Community Church was blessed to have her as music director and organist. Carol was a gentle and strong artistic soul who embraced us with her presence and music. She loved to dance. Carol studied dance at NYU, taught dance in California, and at the age of 76, in 2010, was a principal in a performance at the Yard.
Due to the rainy forecast, the Oct. 7 memorial gathering for Richard (“Rich”) Dewitt was moved from Abel’s Hill to the Chilmark Community Church, and everyone got the message. The parking lot was filled. Our continued prayers for the family.
The CROP Hunger Walk team from the Chilmark Community Church is ready, and would love to see you cheering us along the three-mile course from St Augustine’s Church to the drawbridge and back. The start is Sunday, Oct. 15, at 1:30 pm. Twenty-five percent of the funds raised stay on the Island, benefiting the Island Food Pantry and the Vineyard Committee on Hunger and their services here. The remaining funds will be used by Church World Service in the U.S. and globally for emergency food supplies, agricultural training, livestock, wells and pumps, farm seeds, and farm equipment.
The Chilmark Community Church ran out of pizza last week, and promises to have plenty this Tuesday. I encourage you to arrive early for the 6 pm Tuesday for Pizza Nights at the Chilmark Church. They will set up more tables and chairs. I love how these meals are followed by rollicking games of Bananagrams.
Chilmark library hosts a virtual author talk with Guinevere Turner on Wednesday, Oct. 18, at 6 PM, for her memoir, “When the World Didn’t End: A Memoir.” Turner is an acclaimed screenwriter and director. She has written such films as “American Psycho,” “The Notorious Bettie Page,” and most recently, “Charlie Says.” She also wrote and starred in the 1994 film “Go Fish,” and was a writer and actor on Showtime’s “The L Word.” An essay she wrote for the New Yorker was the inspiration for her memoir, “When the World Didn’t End.” It vividly recalls her unconventional upbringing in the Lyman Family. She was not raised by her mother, Bess, but by other group members, who homeschooled her and the other community children. The isolated, hierarchical Lyman commune was led by charismatic “Lord” Mel Lyman, who preached about the dangers of everyone outside their community. He, alongside “Queen” Jessie Benton, reigned over a network of compounds in Kansas, Los Angeles, San Francisco, New York, Boston, and Martha’s Vineyard. With the knowledge of an impending apocalypse in January 1975, the Lyman followers were instructed that the global population of “World People” would be extinguished, and only their group would ascend in a spaceship to live on Venus. Slowly, Turner comes to understand the depth of the Lyman Family’s deception. Her journey away from the cult and toward a successful screenwriting career is stirring and inspiring. Email tthorpe@clamsnet.org for the Zoom invite.
If you have any Chilmark Town Column suggestions, email Claire Ganz, cganz@live.com.