We were treated to a beautiful Easter Sunday after another wet, windy, chilly week. Still, every day brings the appearance of another sign of spring unfolding. The three garden centers in town were filled with all the colorful pots of pansies and bulbs one could desire. They made perfect Easter gifts, or were bought to ornament one’s own porch steps.
There were egg hunts everywhere. Mike showed me pictures he took of the reportedly 3,000 candy-filled plastic eggs strewn across the field outside the firehouse; they were gone in seconds, gathered by a crowd of eager children. It’s always a jolly occasion, even though it doesn’t last very long. The anticipation, which lasts longer than the hunt itself, is part of the fun.
I came across an article about Serendipity Books in Chelsea, Mich. The store was moving from one location to another a block away, and moved all of the books by a human chain of approximately 300 friends and patrons. It reminded me of moving the library contents from Music Street to the newly built library we use today. I looked up the town report I wrote that year, 1993:
“Jan. 9 was the day of the long-awaited move to the new library building on State Road behind Howes House. In under three hours, a group of volunteers, coordinated by Mark Mazur and Dan Prowten, were able to move the entire contents of the Music Street building plus the additional books stored in the Town Hall. The librarians had encouraged patrons to sign out lots of books before the move, and return them after the library reopened. The shelves were color-coded by section (fiction, biography, reference, arts, etc.) then packed into correspondingly color-coded boxes, loaded into trucks, driven across the street and carried into the new building. It was a very efficient system.”
The human chain part of the story was the group of us who moved the boxes from the library out to trucks parked along Music Street, then reversed at the other end. It is a wonderful memory of how we did things together. The report continued with a reopening of the library celebration on Jan. 23, with speeches by select board chair Cindy Mitchell, library board chairman Robert Potts, and architect Ben Moore, followed by a party hosted by the Friends.
Paul Karasik will be at Edgartown Books this Saturday, April 26, from noon to 2 pm, to sign copies of his recently published graphic adaptation of Paul Auster’s “The New York Trilogy.” Take a look at an interview with Paul on Comics Grinder on YouTube.
Linda Vadasz and I took a walk at Sepiessa on one sunny, not too windy morning last week. There was a wide enough beach to walk across when we got to the Point. Linda spied an osprey’s head sticking up in the nest atop a pole just past the boat launch. We watched for awhile, wondering how many eggs she was sitting on.
The world awoke Monday morning to news that Pope Francis died. He was a man of kindness, compassion, and humility, who cared for all humanity and for the earth we share. I thought of him as the embodiment of a man of God. He will be missed at this time when goodness and decency are most needed.
If you have any West Tisbury Town Column suggestions, email Hermine Hull, hermine.hull@gmail.com.