MV 2014 - Think Like a Fish, or, The Quest(s)

8/9

As it turns out, our (my) summer has been defined by fish, or at least, thinking about fish and thinking about how fish think.  We started by fly-fishing in Maine on Memorial Day weekend, where we learned about thinking like a fish, and we will end by watching that classic movie about fishing, Jaws, in which fish are thought about a little differently than nice trout in a river.  In between I’ve read Moby Dick – a very big think about a very big fish – and visited the New Bedford Whaling Museum and listened to a lot of nautical music and generally subjected my family to many discussions of fish.  And now we head to a place where we eat a lot of fish. 

Despite having a 12:15 reservation on the ferry for Vineyard Haven, we are waved on to the noon boat for Oak Bluffs.  Which turns out OK as it affords us an excellent view of Air Force One landing on the Cape and then about twenty minutes later, Marine One and Osprey escorts (the armored kind, not the ones that nest on platforms) buzzing overhead on their way to the island. 

We think arriving by water is way better than by air, but there is no accounting for taste. 

Still, this whole Oak Bluffs business totally throws us.  Who ever arrives at OB?  Not us!  Now we have to drive ALL THE WAY back to Vineyard Haven for lunch at the Net Result, which is a disruption to our routine, especially as we then have to go ALL THE WAY back to Edgartown for the house key. 

But it is possible that I have never had a better lobster roll than that one from the Net Result, so that helps right the ship. 

This year’s house is way up at the tippy top of Longview, and is pretty marvelous.  It is clear that it is a house with an addition built later, because there are lots of doors and halls and rooms in odd places.  But it is filled with windows, has a great kitchen, a big screened in porch, and pergola interwoven with fairy lights under which you can dine, which is probably where a lot of fairies actually live, per our resident expert on the fairy world.  The property is big, and private, and dotted with what Isabel would call “spots:” picturesque little places with chairs or benches, where you can sit and think or read or write letters (about fairies, natch).  We are all pretty pleased although Peter finds it ridiculous that these people can’t set up their television so that you need fewer than three remotes to watch anything.  And Bill is disappointed by the lack of puzzles. 

And one more thing.  What it is it with all the damn skylights in bedrooms here?  Every house we have ever rented on the Vineyard has skylights in the bedroom!  I have determined that this is why so many people rent their homes in the summer months here.  Because they have to go somewhere where they can sleep past 5 a.m.  When I build or acquire my Vineyard dream house, it will NOT HAVE SKYLIGHTS IN THE BEDROOMS.

Still it is very nice to sit on the half-circle screened-in porch in the early morning, listening to Chopin Nocturnes on that spiffy speaker Bill gave you, and thinking not very hard about anything except maybe what bird is that and why does Herman Melville call a whale a fish, and oh look, the mist is burning off and here comes the sun. 

8/10

Last night it hit me:  I am actually supposed to relax for more than a day, for the next twelve days, in fact. This presents me with a formidable challenge since the only relaxed setting that I seem to have is prone, tending towards sleep.  What’s Mom doing?  Relaxing.  Looks like she is napping.  Yes. 

Lambert’s Cove is better-than-Bali as always but pretty crowded today, what with it being a lovely day, and Sunday and all.  Highlights include several naps on my part and Izzy swam all the way out to the buoy with just a teeny assist from Petey the Fish. 

It is good to time your visit to MV with the full moon, since then you can do cool stuff like take a tour out to Cape Pogue lighthouse[1] or this year’s new adventure, a nighttime kayak at the Felix Neck Audubon preserve.  Felix Neck is midway between Edgartown and Oak Bluffs and has a reputation as the buggiest place on the island so we douse ourselves with OFF before heading out, and smell like summer camp.  We poked around Sengekontacket (sen-je-kon-TACK-it) Pond as the sun set and then the Super Moon rose, first pink, then orange, and then it was completely dark with just the moon and our little headlamps to guide the way.  Our guides Keeley and Devon delivered a short and unintentionally hilarious history of MV (there were Native Americans here and there still are, which is really cool, then Bartholomew Gosnold came and left the name, and then more Europeans, and that’s it), and better info on the birds and sea life of this tidal pond.  We saw Least Terns and American Oystercatchers and various kinds of crabs but the real highlight was the paddle into the salt marsh where we turned off our headlamps so we could see the little comb jellies as they shyly showed off their bioluminescence, like underwater fireflies – now you see them, now you don’t.  Peter netted quite a few, and we marveled at their phosphorescent glow.    

8/11

Good god, I haven’t mentioned Cronig’s.  Still there, still the same end-of-weekend empty shelves, except on Saturday?  I just love a leisurely shop at Cronig’s buying things like canned tuna and Stoned Wheat Thins.  I’m happy to report that our streak is unbroken:  three days, three visits. 

Is there anywhere on the Vineyard that you can’t hear a rooster in the morning?  If so, we haven’t found it yet.  Fortunately ours are far enough away to just be a pleasant early morning backdrop rather than an actual alarm clock.

We are pleased to report that, like our other favorite house here in the Lambert’s Cove area, there are a lot of bunnies on this property.  We startle them when we drive up in the dark and they turn tails-up and hop away.  And what is up with all the wild turkeys this year?  They stalk gloomily around our property and pretty much everywhere you go on this more wooded side of the island.  Are they the scourge of West Tisbury?  We don’t see them elsewhere on the Island.  We also note a preponderance of dead skunks around here.  We think that the turkeys are pushing them into the road in order to preserve poultry hegemony. 

The wavy beach today did NOT live up to its name, 1-2 swells are hardly jumpable although they picked up a bit toward the end of the day.  Bill and Peter and Izzy hike down the beach to jump on the famed Tide Ride, the water pouring out of the cut between Tisbury Great Pond and the ocean.  Izzy claims to have ridden it seven times, and maybe even got a teeny jelly sting.  That girl is earning character points left and right.  I alternate between snoozing, reading, and gazing mindlessly out to sea.  And listening to the incessant chatter of the lady in the group next to us, about every detail of her son’s life and school.  No wonder her son is very far away down the beach.  Still, even without waves, the wavy beach is spectacular.  Bill thinks he may have seen a whale spout on the horizon today.  We are all about whales on this trip, see below for why. 

Peter would like me to report on what we’re reading, so here goes:

Peter:  How Not to be Wrong, by Jordan Ellenberg.  He actually finished this yesterday and claims not to have learned anything he didn’t already know. 

Isabel:  Bunheads by Sophie Flack.  This is about ballet dancers, and it is her first foray into young adult fiction.  She really liked it.  Flack studied at Boston Ballet, so that is exciting.   Now she’s on to Small Steps which is the sequel to Holes which is about boys digging holes at a juvi camp. 

Bill:  despite a solid discussion (mostly by me) about which le Carré novel to bring (Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy was the final choice), Bill is reading instead Will in the World by Stephen Greenblatt.  Bill really likes Stephen’s work, but I think TTSS is a way better vacation read.

Lisa:  As noted, Moby Dick.  In some ways, this is the perfect Vineyard read – a great salty yarn, with even some Vineyarder characters, and you can go see whaling paraphernalia at the Museum if you need some material culture to deepen your immersion in this watery world.  Bill has read MD, and Peter just this spring, but Izzy is pretty much sick of hearing us talking about whales.  I think I dreamt about them night before last. 

Last night we were held up briefly by the presidential motorcade, as we came up out of Menemsha.  That’s exciting.  But other than pictures and articles in the local papers, we haven’t heard a peep from those Obamas.

8/12

When the wind blows around here, as it is now, it becomes clear that we are actually staying in some kind of faerie temple, with the many wind chimes twinkling away.  It is not at all unpleasant, and one Arcosanti-like bell on the front porch sounds quietly like the buoys out in the sound. 

Our day at Lambert’s Cove was pleasantly augmented by a steady stream of Londons, who meandered down to join us.  Will and the Whale were quickly cast aside in favor of pleasant conversation. 

There are four main categories of people that you see at the beach:

Families with toddlers.  They come with tents and the parents get no rest, no rest at all, until dad takes the toddler for a walk, and mom collapses.

Giant groups.  These are either large groups of young adults, or extended families.  Each person has a chair, which they set up in a great semi-circle, near the water, so the space behind them is useless.  They have vast coolers, filled with sandwiches, and 18 boogies boards, and sometimes that bean-bag-toss game that seems to require a giant wooden case.  A subset of these groups drinks heavily, but they all talk and talk and talk.

Readers.  These may be solitary or up to about four.  They always have chairs, and look pretty self-sufficient.  We Laskins are readers, but when we run into Londons we morph into a giant group, albeit without all the gear. 

Yoga Man.  More on him below. 

Tonight’s swordfish was so good that I think I am done with swordfish for the summer.  None will top that.  And he’d been harpooned!  How fitting. 

Shockingly, we broke our Cronig’s-visits streak today.  We are getting soft.

8/13

Today the ocean winds did blow, and the stormy seas did indeed roll, so we four Laskins went skipping to the Harlem Fine Arts Fair at the high school, as well as to Oak Bluffs in search of a puzzle.  In a rare lapse, this house has NO PUZZLES.  (Note to self:  check the lease before departure to make sure there are puzzles.)  Bill will settle for nothing less than 1000 pieces, which makes sense, of course, since he and his minion (Isabel) are world-class puzzlers and will be done with this charming lighthouse scene in about two days. 

I thought the art fair was small and didn’t love much of the work there but it passed an hour pleasantly enough.

But the raging seas at OB were pretty thrilling, and now we understand why they must divert all ferries to Vineyard Haven in conditions like this. The downside is that when the ferries are diverted, so are all the cars, so VH was one colossal traffic jam, abetted perhaps by Hilary Clinton’s book-signing in town that day.  We turned tail after stocking up on chowder fixings at the Net Result, and headed home for an afternoon of napping and puzzling. 

I have finally achieved my dream of making Larsen’s chowder on a stormy day on the island.  See, I am thinking about fish in all forms. 

And I must note that for the moment I have put aside the quest for the White Whale.  God I am so sick of Ahab and his obsession with that leviathan, and also of Ishmael and his incessant yammering about madness and fish.

8/14

This morning, except for the damp and dripping, it is like yesterday’s storm never was.  The rooster is crowing in the perfectly clear early morning light, and our vacation ship has righted itself. 

Here are some things that happen every year:

1.       I wake up one morning early in the trip with a swollen lower lip, a la Angelina Jolie, but because of sunburn not genetics or plumpers.  Therein ends the comparison with Angelina Jolie.

2.      I buy too much stuff at the West Tis Farmer’s Market.

3.      We see our beloved former daycare teacher Kathy Poehler, a.k.a. the island’s purveyor of fine weed. 

4.      Speaking of weed, there is a high-water mark of it in my bathing suit by the end of a beach day.

5.      I am reminded, while walking the path to Long Point beach or Moshup, that I need more bayberry in my life.

6.      We will watch Star Trek (the creation myth with young Spock and Kirk and the gang) at some point, and I will cry a little when baby Kirk is born in the shuttle.

 

Here is something that is different this year:  Chilmark Chocolates is closed the ENTIRE TIME WE ARE HERE.  This is a family tragedy for us.  How are we to survive without our annual allotment of Moshup Macs and Menemsha Sunsets?  We shake our fists at the shuttered shop as we drive by.  Enchanted Chocolates from Oak Bluffs is a mediocre substitute.

Moshup was our beach of choice today, and a fine choice it was, if a little windy and very seaweedy in the water (see above).  Bill rides out on his bike, while the rest of us take the car.  The cliffs are as beautiful as ever, although we find the beach rockier than usual, but that is just because we arrive at high tide.  These south-facing beaches took a real beating this past winter, and this extra rockiness may be the result of that.  Moshup always feels crowded, given the relative narrowness of the strand.  This is a families and giant groups kind of beach, not many readers. 

Dinner at the impossibly lovely Beach Plum Inn for me and Bill tonight, while the kiddies enjoyed the hospitality of the London clan.  The BPI is very expensive, fairly simple, and all farm-to-table-y, mason jar drinking glasses and so forth.  But gosh, the setting sun over Menemsha does somehow make your severely simple tuna crudo taste even better, and it certainly does wonders for everyone’s complexion.   

I am contemplating entering a pie in the Fair this year.  There are many moving parts in this decision – I have to find the recipe (didn’t bring it), figure out how to print it out, probably make new crust (I brought some with me, but it has some whole wheat flour and who knows how that will go), can’t use my perfect Norske Nook pie tin (you have to leave the pie there and that tin is going to my grave with me), have to go to Oak Bluffs or Edgartown for the bourbon, AND I’m working with an unfamiliar oven.  But I’m being encouraged to work through these issues and it doesn’t cost anything to enter.

8/15

We finally found some good wave action at South Beach today, although the wind was so brisk that it deterred one from jumping in at first.  As did an epic nap after a really short and effortless bike ride, but you know, all that sun is just exhausting.  The waves at South Beach are scary because they break right on shore, and the beach is steep, so you are quickly in deeper than you might expect.  Big Momma wasn’t really in the house, but she might have been on the verandah.  And you have to ask Bill about his new rule regarding Taking Care of Business, I just cannot bring myself to explain it here.

One sees lots of Giant Groups (see above) at South Beach, but a new beach-going type that we’ve seen this year is Yoga Man.  There are actually two versions of Yoga Man.  The first appeared on Lambert’s Cove and then we saw him again at Moshup (same guy, it’s just not that big an island).  This type is the True Believer, earnestly performing sun salutations and frolicking alone on the sand and in the surf.  He is fit, but nothing special, and his hair is too long to look good.  Yoga Man Two, on the other hand, is in it to win it – extremely buff, almost hairless except for his perfect ponytail, doing headstands and other poses designed to show off his very cut bod.  This Yoga Man practices because he thinks it will get him chicks.  Or dudes, or whatever, but our part of South Beach is just not getting him any action today so he moves on. 

You never see women doing yoga on the beach, at least not during primetime.  This may be related to the Seinfeldian concept of good naked and bad naked.

We are pleased to note that Grace Church has really streamlined the lobster roll operation.  Between call-in orders, two cashiers, and opening an hour earlier, there was no line when we got there at 5:30.  Although we created a short one by taking so long to decide between apple, blueberry, strawberry-rhubarb, pecan, key lime, lemon meringue, chocolate cream, banana cream, and coconut cream (although who would want THAT) pie.  We are also delighted to report that Mrs. Dinosaur’s skeleton is still there in the play yard, and looking pretty good for a gal her age, given that she’s made out of wood and chicken wire.[2]

Turns out that it doesn’t need to be dark and stormy to drink a Dark and Stormy, they taste pretty good on a sunny evening too. 

8/16

If I don’t play any music here in the early morning, in addition to the occasional rooster, I can hear Isabel singing to herself and her loveys in her room. 

The book selection is ranging far and wide.  Bill continues with Will, Peter has long since left How Not to be Wrong behind (but continues to talk about it) for some fantasy.  Izzy is a reading machine, powering her way through Small Steps, and now reading all at once a Dear America book about a Cherokee Indian, one of the three Babysitters Club volumes that she brought, and number four in her beloved Warriors series, which is an incredibly complex epic about feral cats.  You have to be nine and very determined to keep track of the warring clans, but she is up to the task.

And I’m still enjoying my break from Moby Dick.   I’ll go back but in the meantime have finished an Andrea Camillieri and am powering through The Bedlam Detective which interested parties may read about sometime on Crime Pays.  The White Whale will again ensnare me but for the moment, I am more comforted by lunatics in 1912 England than I am by the lunatics on the Pequod.

We have added a new flick to the vacation movie lineup:  Master and Commander, the film adaptation of several Patrick O’Brien novels.  It is fittingly nautical, although a bit bloody for Isabel’s taste.  I show off my vast knowledge of the O’Brien oeuvre by telling everyone what is happening. 

If you listen to the local radio station, as we do, every time you get in the car, you will find that you hear, every day, some Grateful Dead, various Taylors (Vineyard, not Swift), Carly Simon, and Little Feet.  Every day.  Also, since they changed signals, there are points on the island where you can no longer get the music you’ve been listening to, and classical music starts playing spontaneously, interspersed with bursts of the regular WMVY programming.  This happens just as you get to Gay Head, and to Menemsha.  Then, as you return down-Island, the classical music goes away, and back comes the regular playlist.

We had two shopping expeditions today (well, three if you count Cronig’s but that was the same as always), which each offered a particular slice of Vineyard life.  First was the West Tisbury Farmer’s Market, a favorite cash sink of mine.  And apparently everyone else’s these days, too, as it was packed with all the people who love a farmer’s market, or an egg roll, or to spend a lot of money, or just to wander around greeting friends and family in a vaguely self-congratulatory way.  Because in this respect, the WTFM really is all that and a bag of (homemade) chips, and everyone who gets to go to it is fortunate indeed.  The (relatively few) farm stands really do have spectacular produce, the baked goods really are excellent (we favor Orange Peel Bakery), you can get blueberry lassi from Mermaid Farm, outstanding cheese from the painfully tasteful Grey Barn, and good local meat from the cheerfully inept Farm Institute.  There are vendors selling impossibly picturesque bouquets of farm-grown flowers, and pies and jams and honeys and soap and pesto and little felt hedgehogs and local salt.  After careful consideration, we decide that the Fancy Potato Lady’s potatoes are better (and slightly cheaper) than the Grumpy Potato Guy’s (although his rose potatoes were very beautiful in our clam roast tonight).  (Oh, and Grumpy Potato Guy’s Grumpy Potato Wife was there this year!)  Morning Glory is the only farm with corn, and what spectacular corn it is, haven’t had better all summer.  We are disconcerted to see no trace of Ethel and her superlative jams this year, but love that Ghost Farm delivers their tomatoes in a hearse. 

I like to spread my custom around a farmer’s market, so must wander its entire length and then return before I start buying.  This has the unintended effect of driving me slightly mad however, by the crowd in general, and by the people who stop in the middle of the throng because they are old (they haven’t stopped they are just shuffling) or they have toddlers in tow or their dog has become entangled with someone else’s legs or because they are just saying hello.  (I first typed help there, a cry from the soul?)  Everyone is tan and wearing a lot of linen or preppily-faded cotton and there are some stunning diamond rings.  It is an excess of affluence that can make you a little uncomfortable if you stop to think about it.  Unlike, oh, say, the Central Square Farmer’s Market, there are probably not a lot of people using food stamps to pay for anything here. 

But I cannot leave the WTFM without a nod to its great institution, the Egg Roll Lady.  The Lady herself served me mine today, which so thrilled me that I spontaneously ordered an iced Vietnamese coffee as well just to prolong the experience.  (I’m not an iced coffee fan, but that is seriously awesome – cold and creamy and coffee-y and sweet.  mmm.)  There is ALWAYS a line at the Egg Roll Lady, and it is a patient and cheerful line because we all know that we’re going to get some good Vietnamese treat at the end – whether the signature fried roll, or the intriguing-looking cold rolls, or the abstemious tofu dish that some cyclists ordered.  I’ve said it before but it bears repeating: an egg roll at the WTFM is the breakfast of champions. 

Another regular shopping experience for us is to drive down to Menemsha to buy fish for dinner.  This is one of the fishing ports on the island, and I’m pretty sure that I’ve written about it before.  To get dinner, you usually need to take two people:  one to wait in line at Larsen’s for your fish (you could go to Poole’s, two doors down, where there is never a line, but we don’t know anybody who does that), and one to circle in the car in the unlikely event that a parking space opens up.  But Bill risked it solo today, and since it was a little windy and overcast, had no trouble with the parking part.  He was slightly thrilled to have walked into a not-officially-but-might-as-well-have-been secured area because POTUS was clearly somewhere nearby – the town cops were out, State Troopers too, Dutcher Dock was crawling with Secret Service men with guns strapped to their thighs, and there were two of those Coast Guard craft that look like armed Zodiacs right in the harbor.  Bill says the local Chilmark polizei were a bit doughy in comparison to their Federal counterparts.  The whole place looked like an open-carry rally, we’re told.  Depends on your definition of good guys with guns, I guess.  Bill got our clams without incident.

Apparently someone named Maureen from Cleveland has Nancy London’s old cell number, as we learned when I tried to group-text all of those London sisters.  Maureen thinks we sound nice, and would like to come to the beach with us.  We think she sounds like she is stuck in a cubicle in Cleveland and feel sorry for ol’ Maureen.

8/17

I’ve made the crust, and will turn in the Entry Form today.  There is no going back after that. 

I’m having my usual Vineyard angst, torn between wanting to cook up all of this wonderful food for a lot of people and not wanting to be alone in the kitchen while everyone else is lying around playing cards or watching movies or doing puzzles.  And I hate having shopping dictate other people’s day.  But it is nice to have good things to eat, and it is super fun to gather them and make a feast.  Sometimes I am so done in by this dilemma that I just have to take a nap instead. 

Then there’s the angst that comes from doing nothing, which is of course what one is supposed to do on vacation but which also presents all kinds of concerns.  It is a beautiful day and we are just sitting around the house!  What if we miss the best beach day?  What if there is terrible traffic in Edgartown?  What if I don’t get all those groceries and things I need before Tuesday?  WHAT IF I MISS DOING SOMETHING THAT I AM SUPPOSED TO DO ON VACATION?  No wonder I have anxiety dreams here.

This is also about the time in the vacation when I start contemplating the option of just moving here permanently.  I don’t see why it wouldn’t work.  Bill can telecommute, and visit the office easily if necessary.  Getting him to Cambridge from the Vineyard has to be cheaper than getting Big Daddy to Cambridge from Ohio.  And I could get a job working for the Museum or something.  Bill pooh-poohs the idea but I think if I keep working on him, I can wear him down.  Like the cliffs at Aquinnah he will show his true colors eventually and agree with me that we should move here. 

The guy who mows the lawn here is playing Hook in Peter Pan this afternoon. 

It SAID it was going to be cloudy and rainy today so we went to Edgartown.  On the way, we dropped off my entry form for the Fair. 

A regular rainy-day stop for us is the Martha’s Vineyard Museum, where we check to see how some of our old MV friends are doing.  Izzy tried on colonial clothes, we stooped around the Cooke House and commented as usual on its slope-iness, marveled at the Fresnel lens, sighed over the tragic fate of the City of Columbus (wrecked on the Devil’s Bridge off Gay Head in 1884, 103 souls lost), admired the interns’ choices of objects to exhibit, looked at a lot of old pictures and stuff, and were basically the only people there since it turned out to be sunnier than expected.  Still, we would feel incomplete were we not annually reminded about Priscilla Pearls[3] and the Secession Movement.[4]  This year I may make good on my annual threat and actually join the Martha’s Vineyard Museum. 

I always feel like I need to buy things in Edgartown, like beautiful clothing and nautically-themed housewares.  Of course, last year I bought two tops here and one of them was the one I was wearing when I fell and broke my ankle so look at how that turned out.  I stand firm today and we manage to get out of Edgartown without spending any money (on anything other than lunch anyway).  We do spend a pleasant lunch hour watching the Chappy Ferries chug back and forth, while all manner of sea-going craft ply the channel in between their regular crossings. 

Dinner tonight at the ArtCliff Diner truck, which is parked outside the (closed) ArtCliff Diner, one of the cheaper and tastier options on the Island.  Izzy and Peter try to explain Casablanca to us, which we watched this afternoon, as they understand it.  You know, it is a pretty complicated story if you don’t know about Vichy France, which has not, so far, been in the Cambridge public schools curriculum. 

Years ago, Bill and I happened upon Built on Stilts, a local dance festival that takes place in the beautiful eight-sided Union Chapel in Oak Bluffs.  Now it spans two weekends, eight nights, and showcases Vineyard dancers large and small, young and old, modern and um, experimental.  We head over tonight, over Peter’s not-very-strenuous objections.  The building opens at 7:30 with a mesmerizing drum circle, which ends up with all the dancers warming up together in a great buildup of energy.  Izzy, needless to say, is entranced from the get-go.  While the kid acts are charming crowd-pleasers (and good, actually), some of the big-girl numbers are just terrific.  The second half ends with a beautiful solo to a Marvin Gaye song and then a spectacular number of six young women dancing in pants with Chinese calligraphy on them, and using scrolls and long wraps of painted fabric and kind of Asian music but with a fast drum under it all.  I can’t really explain it but it was so well-danced and enormously engaging and we all just loved it. 

Another piece I really can’t explain was “Doorways,” choreographed and performed by one Lyfty Sirena.  It did not have musical accompaniment, or maybe it did, since I did briefly hear a piano but it was mostly silent except that Lyfty also made some noises once in a while.  It does help to learn from the program that, in addition to being a “lifelong dancer, choreographer, and performance artist,” Lyfty is also “lead dancer and choreographer for the neo-electronic goth-dream band and art collective LESHPHINXX.”  Her program bio also invites you to call now to book tree-hugging trance journeys.

Most of B.O.S. was a little more accessible than ol’ Lyfty, in fact some of our party even participated.  I would never have gotten up at the call for volunteers but Izzy wanted to, and only if someone would go with her, so in a fit of madness that can only have been brought on by too much time in the sun, up I went with our Koala.  The leader of this piece, Roberta Kirn, led us in a Circlesong, “a vocal rhythm circle, an improvised song form developed by Bobby McFerrin layering rhythm, melody and harmony” which she learned at a recent workshop with the famed vocalist himself.  Circlesong is more or less this:  everyone stands in, yes, a circle, and she gives us a phrase to sing, fairly low:  DUM-dee, DUM-dee, which the second dum higher than the first.  After a while, she started giving different sections of the circle different phrases, all around the circle, in complimentary rhythms, and as each section learned theirs, it added in.  Then when we were all going, she sang over us for a bit.  Then she stopped, and we kept going more quietly, then we each stopped in turn until only the poor guys who had been doing DUM-dee, DUM-dee the whole time were left.  It was kind of charmed and a bit thrilling and I feel that Izzy and I have duly earned our Everybody Dance! Built-On-Stilts t-shirts. 

The B.O.S. crowd is a lot more local than the WTFM. 

We try for Back Door Donuts afterwards, but the line was so long it had wrapped around itself and Izzy was too tired.  Peter was mad, but we shall hope for another opportunity. 

8/18

The pie recipe has been sent to the UPS store in Vineyard Haven to be printed.  All that remains is to make the pie and deliver it. 

Puzzle update:  this is much harder than expected.  Bill is going to need a bigger puzzle team.

What is up with the wind this year?  For the past few days, every beach we’ve gone to has been buffeted by a cool and unrelenting westerly breeze.  It makes the prospect of going in the water daunting, yet once you (or others, you might stay in your chair finishing your book) are in, the water is quite delightful.  The wavy beach, again today, not so wavy.  The wavy beach is giant groups, and readers. 

Bill and Peter joined various Londons at a screening of Stanley Nelson’s documentary Freedom Summer over at the Tabernacle tonight, followed by a discussion with the filmmaker.  They said it was great.  Perhaps as good as the donuts afterward. 

Meanwhile, Izzy and I watched Neptune’s Daughter an Esther Williams confection in questionable taste on so many levels but plenty of glamorous outfits.  (An Island showing of an EW film is also an annual tradition, but just for the girls.)

You always know when the Obamas are going anywhere because you see Massachusetts State Troopers at every intersection, ready to jump in a stop traffic at the first sign of the motorcade.  We keep hearing that the O’s were here, or there, but we haven’t seen them yet, and except for one five-minute delay, haven’t been held up at all. 

8/19

We now have the printout of the recipe.  And a lot of food in the house, because the Londons are coming to dinner. 

But first, up-Island to Moshup which today is like the Caribbean – clear and shallow with the tide out, slow low rollers sparkling on the water.  No wind, just perfection. 

We love having the Londons to dinner.  I get to cook for a terrifically appreciative audience, and feel like I am part of a big jolly family which is delightful.  Bill always learns some good story about his mother’s family, and Peter and Izzy get to hang out with other people their age.  The family stories were a feature this year, as Bill’s cousin Barbara has been on a genealogical odyssey of late, inspired by a Greenman family reunion (Barbara’s mother Linda’s family).  Barbara is a bit obsessed and apparently spends her evening hours digging deep into that family’s history, which is actually great because then she regales us with stories about Londons and Manns and all kinds of colorful characters.  The most intriguing is the mysterious Solomon B. London, Tom’s grandfather (so, Bill’s and Barbara’s and everyone else’s great-grandfather).  Ol’ Solomon was persona non grata, He Who Must Not Be Named, dead to us, the black sheep of the London family.  There isn’t much about Solomon B. London in the public records, except that maybe he changed his name to Charles, and maybe he was in patent medicines.  But other than that it is like he never existed, except that he did and Barbara is determined to find out who he was and what happened to him.  She is not deterred by the paucity of sources, but ventures on, mining the deepest of Jewish genealogy resources, staring at her computer screen into the wee dark hours of the night, contacting other people named London, all in search of the shadowy no-goodnik.

Solomon B. London is Barbara Almario’s White Whale.  

Yes, I’m back to Moby Dick – I wasn’t going to leave it without finding out what happens!  I’m on the final day of the chase, I think, so I’m pretty sure someone isn’t going to make it to tomorrow. 

I think I’ve hit upon my forever-plan for moving to Martha’s Vineyard.  I’m going to buy Chilmark Chocolates, and not change a thing, not even the month-long vacation that they take in August.  (That’s actually perfect – who wants to work during this best month on the Island?)  Then I can be a woman of business.  Izzy wants to know if that means I’ll wear glamorous executive wear like Esther Williams does in Neptune’s Daughter, but I explain that there really isn’t much place for that here. 

8/20

The chase is done, the whale has won. 

And the pie is made and delivered.  I forgot to put the butter on the apples before the top crust, but I forget to do that half the time I make this pie so I don’t think it matters so much. 

LC was particularly beautiful today.  You’ll just have to be content with the pictures.  We catch and release many comb jellies and a crab tried to catch and release me!  The water is so clear and the bottom so clean here but we still can’t spot him at first.  Then we see some seaweed that is moving faster than the current and has a couple of claws sticking out.  It is the long, green, hair-like stuff, so this is basically a Troll-Doll crab. 

Something New Alert!  For the Laskins, anyway, not for Oak Bluffs, as this was the 145^th Illumination Night at Trinity Park, sponsored by the Martha’s Vineyard Camp Meeting Association.  Followers of these Vineyard vacation journals will already know about the impossibly quaint gingerbread-y cottages all arranged in a circle around the great Tabernacle and the enthusiastic Community Sing in said Tabernacle on Wednesday nights.[5]  On the third Wednesday in August, all the wee cottages hang out paper lanterns and a few ethereally beautiful antique silk ones, and somewhat inexplicably, Chinese-y parasols, and spiff themselves all up for the Grand Illumination. 

But before the lanterns, we sing.  First there is a band concert, by the excellent Vineyard Haven Band (founded 1848 or something like that and playing Illumination Night ever since).  A highlight is a cartoon medley that no one recognized at first until we started to have a yabba-dabba-doo time.  Then a pair of piano players play some four-handed tunes with great brio.  Much of the crowd hums along during the Toreador from “Carmen.”  Finally a dramatic piece is played while some stately older couples in Victorian garb promenade through the Tab, and at last, promptly at 8 p.m., it is time to sing. 

This place is packed, packed!, and with the kind of people who know that when they play the national anthem, you sing it, you don’t stand around watching some slicked-up professional try to go all Whitney Houston.  Then it is right into the classics with “Little Tommy Tinker,” “In the Good Old Summertime,” “Amazing Grace,” and the perennial crowd pleasers, “My Hat, it has Three Corners” and of course “The Swiss Navy” among a few others.  Things are really heating up, but it does seem that our host-of-hosts Bob Kleesbie, in his red pants and MV-shaped belt-buckle is pushing the pace more than we recall from last year.  The baskets go around, those who have been attending for more than 50 years are recognized (there are quite a few) and we sing a long and lusty patriotic medley.  Then Bob says “Ladies and Gentlemen, the President – ”  and there is a burble in the audience, is it really him, are they really here? “ – of the Martha’s Vineyard Camp Meeting Association” and there is scattered chuckling as the duped among us realize that of course it is not that president. 

As you can tell, this event is laden with tradition, but one of the most delightful is the one in which the oldest resident present of the MVCMA gets to light the first lantern.  To do this, a dapper gent of 91 years young and his sparkly wife are escorted to the stage amid great cheering.  He tells us that he met his wife at the Inkwell, which is the beach basically across the street, and they’ve been coming here together every year since, and they just celebrated their 63^rd wedding anniversary.  They beam, we beam, you would have to be a real ogre to not enjoy this.  Then they light the lantern, and it is ceremoniously carried down the main aisle while the Tab lights go dark.  Soon, lanterns begin to glow on the houses around the circle, and the lanterns on the Tab go on and everyone cheers wildly and then presses out in a great mass to view the cottages bedecked in glowing orbs. 

It has to be noted that the crush here is about a million times worse than the WTFM, and it is kind of overwhelming.  I hear one hardy old dame tell another that it isn’t like it used to be, the crowd doesn’t know what to do, they are going the wrong way!  And, Bill notes that yet again, the crowd at this has a different complexion than that for, say, Freedom Summer. 

Still, the whole effect is pretty magical and makes for a very pleasant evening, especially if you can work it to dine at the Red Cat Kitchen beforehand, as we did.  That big-eye tuno crudo was kind of magical, too. 

They laid on extra staff at Back Door Donuts tonight, given the crowds, so we got our boulder-sized apple fritters in pretty good time.  Izzy opted for an abstemious plain old-fashioned, claiming that she doesn’t like sweets when she is tired. 

8/21

Finally, the wavy beach lives up to its name.  After a cloudy start, and low tide, and a not-quite-as-thrilling tide ride, we start to get some respectable jumpers.  Big Momma was even occasionally in the house.  We come home sandy and scratched and tired and happy.

At Long Point (the actual name of the wavy beach), you can see great swooping flights of swallows out here, and osprey, and those teeny little fellows who skitter about the high-water lines on stick legs.  You also see seals bobbing curiously up and down in the distance, and I think a crab may have grabbed me briefly.  One dark shape swam rather closer to shore, prompting the large family group next to us to claim it was a shark! 

After a day at the Wavy Beach, Isabel basically has dreadlocks which require about an entire bottle of detangler.

Peter has moved on to Computing the Universe, which is about quantum computing, and was written by a college chum of Barbara Almario’s.  Barbara and Bill have both made attempts on the book, without success.  Maybe Peter will be the one family member to finish it.  But will he actually understand it?   

And so the fair.  My pie does not fare so well, after all that.  I think it didn’t get judged because they didn’t get my entry or it wasn’t on a paper plate or something.  It occurs to me now that the effort to make and enter the pie has some of the qualities of Ahab’s quest – except that it ends better for me than it did for him.

Still, Isabel graduates to the big kid rides, and is thrilled to join Peter on the Gravitron, the Sizzler, and the Casino which is the only one that made them feel sick.  We dine on local pulled pork, see perfectly pink piglets and gamboling kids of the goat variety, a soulful ox, and listen to some bluegrass to round out the evening.  Don’t fall for the grilled corn schtick, however, because I am here to tell you that that corn, while nice and hot, did not get that way from sitting on a grill. 

Given all this excitement, is it so surprising that Bill has a dream in which he is the star kicker for Harvard and reads about himself in the Crimson but was simultaneously puzzled because IN the dream he had no memory or ever being on the Harvard football team.  This may be a roundabout way of internalizing his puzzling, which is achieving championship status even if my damn pie didn’t.

8/22

After a few false starts we spend this cloudy and cool day touring Trustees properties on Chappy.  We poke around Wasque Point (pron. WAY-skwee, honest, we have confirmed this via oral and written sources), which this year is actually open for swimming albeit grudgingly so.  They’d really rather you didn’t swim there, as the currents are strong and shifty, but it is not so dangerous that they prohibit it.  And we finally see The Breach up close, which is something.  The breach was created around the corner, so to speak, on Norton Point beach 2007, when that barrier beach that connects Chappaquidick Island with the rest of Martha’s Vineyard at Katama was breached during a storm.  Over the years, the breach shifts eastward, due to currents and winds and tides, and will close up in a few years, with some salty ponds, until a big enough storm comes along and the whole process starts over again.  Bill and Peter have a nice chat with some earnest Trustees of Reservations staffers who were collecting Sea-Beach Knotweed seeds (not yet endangered but “a plant of concern”), who explained that the whole cycle repeats every forty to sixty years or so.  If you want to learn more about the breach, follow the Chappy Ferry on Facebook because someone there is really into it and posts all kinds of fascinating before and after pictures.

We also re-visit Mytoi, the Japanese garden that is another Trustees property, hard by the Dike Bridge.[6]  The garden was created in the 1950s by a Vineyard resident named Hugh Jones, who referred to the garden as his toy, and then Japan-ezed that into Mytoi.  It is a sweet refuge from the pitchpine and oak woods that cover so much of the Island.  We have a little biology lesson courtesy of a couple of snapping turtles who seem to be stacked one on top of the other and spinning in circles.  After a while, the top one swims away and the one on the bottom comes up for a very long breath.  Oh, sometimes they do that over food, says the volunteer in the gatehouse.  We think they are making little turtles but it is not turtle mating season and really, what do we know from snapping turtles?  (More than I did when I started this, and you can read about Vineyard snappers here.) 

Bill’s white whale on this trip has been his puzzle, but unlike Ahab he successfully vanquished this 1000 piece monster.  You can see a picture of it, but let me tell you that it was a lot harder than it looked, especially the last part of just plain blue sky, and Bill devoted a lot of time and back strain to it.  But finish it he did, just on our last day, and as it was mostly his effort we let him put in the final piece.  That’s our champion kicker. 

We haven’t watched a sunset from anywhere yet and tonight is our last chance so we spend a pleasant hour at Lambert’s Cove for a so-so sunset before returning home to a delicious eat-down-the-refrigerator dinner of scrambled eggs and Rice Krispies and smoked bluefish pate.   

Our tradition of watching Jaws on our last night takes on new significance this year, given the whole fish-quest-hunt-vengeance theme.  It turns out that Ahab = Quint!  Ahab chases the white whale, Quint chases the white shark.  Ahab loses his leg to the whale, Quint loses hundreds of shipmates to sharks.  Both consider their nemeses FISH (not food or friends or mammals).  They both talk to the fish, and think that they think like the fish, and both demand unquestioning fealty to this fishy quest from their crew.  They are also both mad as hatters, although Quint may also just be drunk.  Their obsessions cause both to meet their end at the fins of the destructive fish, so to speak, but Bill and I debate the semantics of the term man-eater as applied to these dastardly denizens of the deep.  I say that Moby Dick is not a man-eater, because while he causes death and dismemberment, he doesn’t actually eat his victims.  Whereas Jaws, as everyone knows thanks to Matt Hooper’s efforts to convince the mayor of Amity, is a perfect eating machine.  Jaws actually swallows Quint, where Moby Dick just drags Ahab under.  A fine, but important distinction.  Izzy says that in the book, Quint just drowns (she has been reading the film notes) but it worked better on film to have him eaten.  Totally.

8/23

Today is cloudy and a bit breezy.  Probably would have been a crappy beach day.  We’ve finished our puzzle and gone to the Museum and ridden the Flying Horses and been to the Farmer’s Market and can’t go to Chilmark Chocolates so who knows what we would have done.  Glumly, we accept the fact that is time to go home so we climb into our bursting-at-the-seams car and head for Vineyard Haven.

The K-9 explosive detection unit is waiting for the ferry, too.  Guess who is going home tomorrow. 

We are pleased to run into Izzy’s former teacher Judith and family in the ferry line, and have a nice chat, but before we know it, we are loaded on to the Governor and moving far too fast out of the harbor.  I hate leaving the Island, and watch it as long as I can. 

I’ve said before how much I love taking the ferry to vacation.  You can leave everything on the mainland and the Island just sits there waiting for you, kind of like Brigadoon only better because it never goes away. 

Two armed Coast Guard boats sped past us, heading back to the Island, maybe POTUS was going for a sail or something.  On a less serious note, there was a moon out at noon as we pulled into Wood’s Hole, not quite so super as that over Sengekontacket Pond but funnier, in a frat-house way. 

The new signal on WMVY, which as noted, doesn’t get to Menemsha or Aquinnah, inexplicably is with us all the way to the Bourne Bridge.  Over the Cape Cod canal, and then we’re really back on solid ground.

Upon re-reading, this journal feels a tad boring, because there are not many new and exciting adventures to report.  I guess that can happen if you go to the same place every year.  Should we stick a fork in it, is Martha’s Vineyard done for us?  I don’t think so.  We love it there, so to us, beach day after beach day, and swordfish and corn, and London family visiting, and Back Door Donuts, and Menemsha and Moshup and lobster rolls and puzzles and books and books and books will always be the stuff of which perfect summer vacations are made.

Only 11 months and two weeks until our next idyll, unless I can convince everyone that it would be best to spend the whole summer there in which case, only nine months!    

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[1] See MV 2012:  Our Island Renga

[2] See MV 2010:  The Worst Vacation Ever for more on Mrs. D.

[3] Back in the day, an enterprising local craftsman realized that you could extract the shiny stuff from herring scales and paint it on glass beads, and it looked a lot like pearls. 

[4] For more on the MV Secession Movement, which we wholeheartedly support except that it is ridiculously unrealistic, see MV 2013:  Happily the Same Old Same Old

[5] For our Community Sing baptism, see MV 2013:  Happily the Same Old Same Old

[6] For the Bridge, see MV 2009:  Barak’n the Vineyard.