Domestic Disturbances: I just can’t do it
Last summer everybody and their brother worked diligently on how to plant, harvest, and preserve their own vegetables because we thought the end of the world was knocking on our door. I got as...
Handyman? Wait, what?
Something strange happened to me after March 13, 2020. I went through this transformation from scared to get within earshot of a circular saw to Mr. Do-It-Yourself.
It all started rather innocently.
On one particular day...
Domestic Disturbances: Me and my garden
Everyone knows about the early panic buying at the beginning of COVID-19: the toilet paper, the yeast, the flour, the butter, but I just read that the horticulture industry experienced a surge in demand...
Domestic Disturbances: The chicken chronicles
A couple of summers ago, a crow with one white wing feather showed up in our yard. It was always by itself, and I figured it was an outcast because it looked different. I...
Is Dan Aykroyd attracting UFOs to Martha’s Vineyard?
Picture two aliens in a spacecraft. For seven gravity-free nanoseconds, they’ve glimpsed nothing but black ocean, then lights! Civilization! Their GPS tells them, “You’re closing in on Martha’s Vineyard. You are advised to hold...
Domestic Disturbances: Haulout
I don’t think there is a commonly observed annual moment when one takes a whole week to make a personal assessment. There ought to be.
There may be cursory moments when one looks around at...
Local couple in do-or-die battle with avian pests
The 2018 Goose Season is well underway, and for many Islanders that means nothing less than open warfare. For those Vineyarders living near water, the images are all too familiar: sharp-beaked, long-necked, birdlike creatures...
Domestic Disturbances: The Amsterdam Cowboy
They say it takes a village to raise a child. Well, it takes a village plus a lot of summer residents to raise a barn, especially a barn the size of the new West...
Domestic Disturbances: What to do about those to-do lists?
One of those extra-long yellow Post-it notes sits on the desk next to my keyboard. It’s been there for years. It’s curling up. The ink has faded. The stickum isn’t sticky anymore. Nothing on...
Domestic Disturbances: Life with three cats
“We may have just made a huge mistake, getting three of them.” Those were the first words my husband Hal said when he called to tell me he’d arrived home with our long-awaited kittens....
Domestic Disturbances: Seasonal transition disorder
At yoga class a few weeks ago, there were a bunch of new people. I found out later they were returnees from last year, but I didn’t know them. I’d only been going regularly...
Domestic Disturbances: Success at last, sort of
Davy Crockett and I hunted together many Saturday afternoons when I was a kid. The King of the Wild Frontier and I went after bear. Two or three of them would feed his family...
Domestic Disturbances: I’m tired of being self sufficient
When I was little, I always wondered why I was born into a family that had enough to eat, rather than into a starving family. I certainly got the message that others did not...
Domestic Disturbances: Our lives, in prime time
Remember “The Vineyard”? The “reality” show where a bunch of impossibly attractive Aryan-looking young people spent the summer together in typical luxury employer-provided housing, worked at a fictional yacht club, engaged in serial hooking-up,...
Domestic Disturbances: Empty Nest
Excerpted from “Home Bird: Four Seasons on Martha’s Vineyard,” published by Vineyard Stories.
Today I spotted a bird’s nest in a thicket of briar on the edge of our field. Somehow it had become dislodged...
Domestic Disturbances: Impermanence and the End of Summer
The fish are jumping at Cape Pogue Pond, breaking the surface of the still water for a quick glimpse of the world above, where I lay on a short stretch of sandy beach, soaking...
Domestic Disturbances: On Tree Therapy
What is Tree Therapy?
Tree Therapy is a powerful non-prescription curative used to:
Reduce the risk of feeling old associated with aging.
Treat the indefinable sense that something is just not right.
Put joy back...
Domestic Disturbances: About all those winter resolutions …
The off-season is a great time to follow through with all those plans you promised yourself you’d tackle one day. But if you didn’t get around to as many of those winter projects as...
When Richard Limber moved (his entire house)
Fifteen years ago, artist and carpenter Richard Limber couldn’t believe his good fortune. He’d found a couple on East Chop with a house they wished to be rid of, a house that could be...
Domestic Disturbances: Drama at Chappy Point
On a quiet fall day as I rode my bike onto the ferry heading back home to Chappaquiddick, the deckhand said, “Walk your bike.” Not meaning to, I gave a little snorting laugh because,...