Mum and I have recovered from a terrible cold with awful bouts of what she calls catarrh, pronounced like guitar or the country Qatar. I think it is a much better word for phlegm.
Thank you to Michael Greenberg and Hannah de Keijzer for sending me photos and the following email: We “were in Menemsha for the week, and we saw a brown pelican in the harbor! I was very surprised to see it this late in the year, and we managed to get a few nice photos of it. Marshall and a few others had seen it, but I was delighted to catch it looking so thoroughly itself.”
Last Saturday, Lucy Patterson Cox’s family transformed the Ag Hall into a place with plenty of areas for conversation and connection. Along with a guestbook, there was a rotary phone where you could leave a recorded message. I find guestbooks intimidating. It takes time for written words to sort themselves after I’ve been immersed in conversation and listening with my heart. Lucy’s sunshine filled the hall. She warmed and softened our sorrows, and reminded us to continue to cast human sunshine on one another as we build our resilience and weather the storms that come with life.
Toni Morrison wrote in her essay “No Place for Self-Pity, No Room for Fear,” published in the Nation, April 2015, under the section titled “Radical Futures,” “I know the world is bruised and bleeding, and though it is important not to ignore its pain, it is also critical to refuse to succumb to its malevolence. Like failure, chaos contains information that can lead to knowledge — even wisdom.”
A few weeks ago, Mum and I went to hear Denys Wortman talk about his father, Denys Sr., at the M.V. Museum. Including Mum, there were three or so people in the audience who remembered him. Denys’ father lived from 1887 to 1958. He was an artist in Chilmark with Tom Benton, and a syndicated editorial cartoonist who captured the resilience of places and their people. It was a treat to see photographs of his early paintings and drawings of familiar places, and recognize friends in faces of their ancestors.
I am becoming more aware of the passing of time, the passing of generations, and the importance of connection. I want to leave you with the same words Denys Jr. read at the end of his talk — words that Denys Wortman Sr. wrote at the end of a collection of his work
“So now I’m sitting here in the twilight and I’m peeking out of the window watching a young fella across the way who is a newcomer to this community. He must be an awful nice fella, because he’s been here around a couple of months, and he hasn’t spoken to us yet, but I remember how I felt when I was new here, and so I think he feels sorta lonely, and a little strange in his new surroundings, and he’s peeking back at me. Makes me think — maybe I’d better go over and borrow something off of him and get acquainted.
“I’ve been watching him so long now that a funny feeling comes over me that maybe that young fella over there is really me a long time ago. And I remember how then there used to be an old fella who used to watch over me, and now I am not sure if then I knew that someday that old fella would turn out to be me now.
“This idea that he is me and I am him, and now is then and then is now, is sort of as if somehow Time had got turned inside out, and all of the people I ever knew and all of the times I ever knew them had become just one thing which I call me-all-of-the-time. It’s a pleasant sort of a feeling, while it lasts, that seems to make the world a little more compact and friendly.
“… Here we are … sitting in the Present, enjoying the Past, looking into a Future … hoping we’ll be seeing you again when Then catches up with Now.”
If you have any Chilmark Town Column suggestions, email Claire Ganz, cganz@live.com.
