The heavy snow and high winds brought down trees, and telephone and power lines, making safety a priority. The driveway was filled with the branches of holly trees, andromeda, pepper bush, and blueberry, bent and buried under snow the consistency and weight of wet cement.
Thank you, Jennelle Gadowski, Ilona Matell, Sharon Brown, and Jennie Gadowski for opening a warming center at the West Tisbury library. The opportunity to have conversations to think through the list of problems and resources while enjoying a remarkably delicious warmed-in-the-microwave, Island-grown meal, and recharging my cellphone and chainsaw batteries was invaluable. Keeping the wood stove going to prevent pipes from freezing. A dog was too short to manage the walk through the snow, and too big for me to carry the distance.
It was beautiful, and the exercise was wonderful.
Thank you to all who worked to open the roads and paths. Thank you to Randy Ben David for his tractor with plow, and to Mark Clements and his team for clearing trees that fell across the driveway and on power lines. Thank you to Jarret Brissette and his crew for having equipment that moved on treads over the snow, and sent out sturdy legs like something you would find on the moon, and a bucket the electrician rides up to fix and attach power lines to the tops of the poles. Thank you to the linemen from Eversource who worked late, hiked through the snow to double-check that the line was clear, and turned on the power before 11 pm on Friday.
The Offerings of Music and Light at the Chilmark Community Church honored Warren Doty while he and his wife Nan listened via Zoom. Warren is at home, continuing with hospice.
Merrily Fenner, Danny Whiting, and Mark Maizer, remaining members of the Stragglers, opened with Buck Owen’s “Act Naturally,” Followed by Danny singing “Back Home Again,” and closing with “Gone at Last.”
Seán McMahon, a talented musician and songwriter we are lucky to have as music minister, has just released a new album, “Hymns and Homilies.” You can listen, download, and pay what you like, on bandcamp.com.
We were sorry Violet Stanwick wasn’t well, and wish her a complete and speedy recovery.
Adele Dreyer played Grieg’s “Notturno,” Op. 54 No. 4, “Skylark” by Hoagy Carmichael, and closed with “Over the Rainbow.”
Donald Nitchie brought us together with his poetry that so exquisitely captures Island life.
Warren picked “The Waltz of the Wind” as the opening for the Loon Lane Players (Jack Cushman, Warren Doty, Jack Cushman, Andy Goldman, and Chuck Hodgkinson). Warren’s daughter Laura joined on the flute. They closed with Warren’s favorite song, one Laura remembered he sang to her at bedtime, “Passing Through,” by Dick Blakeslee. The chorus says, “Passing through, passing through/ Sometimes happy, sometimes blue/ Glad that I ran into you/ Tell the people that you saw me passing through.”
We are a community with friends and family around the world, and the war in the Middle East caught us unaware, including travelers who were flying home from vacation with a connecting flight in Dubai and are stuck there. May peace come soon.
