HOLLY NADLER
508-693-3880
Because New Englanders are both clever and crazy, we’ve come up with ways to nudge spring along more quickly, at least in our own minds. One method is to coax friends in warm places to come home sooner than they’d planned (not that this ever works).
Recently I e-mailed my pal from Chilmark, artist Dawn Greeley, who’s been painting and soaking up rays in Palm Springs, asking if she’d be back by April 1, as originally promised. Well no, it turns out. She’s picking up her mother in Connecticut, then swinging south to D.C. to view the cherry blossoms. Cherry blossoms! Here all we get are some teensy chartreuse crocusses poking out of the ground — they’re up to what? Three inches now?
I also touched base with Oak Bluffs buddy Everett Whorton, who’s been lollygagging all winter in a little red-neck town on the west coast of Florida. No, he’s not heading back any sooner than necessary, he replied. There’s a fishing derby down yonder and he was pretty confident a Yankee knows his way around a rod better than anyone else, meaning his chances were good for snagging the thousand dollar prize for biggest fish.
My ex-husband, Marty, warmly ensconced in Coral Gables, isn’t planning to return before May! You’d think I’d won custody of the Vineyard in winter.
The thing is, there’s nothing we can offer these far-flung Islanders. Are we going to tell them the weather’s better? Because that would be a stretch and, if we lied, they could always look up the real Fahrenheit degrees on the Internet. Speaking of the weather, there’s a ploy we New Englanders trick out to convince ourselves spring is on the way: We pile on two or three fewer layers of clothes when we venture outdoors. For me that means one set of tights rather than two, one long-sleeved shirt rather than three, all of it topped off with a winter coat, of course, but loafers rather than boots and, hey, since it’s spring, why bother with gloves and knit cap? Those of us who under-dress in this manner, once we step over the threshold, encounter a still-wintry wind slicing through our coat, up our legs, and down our neck like a spitty kiss from a Nordic god.
Finally, to convince ourselves that spring has sprung, we look for those above-mentioned bits of flora. Well, I ask you, how pathetic is it that, while we’re still shivering in a frozen landscape surrounded by a gelid sea, that we go into rhapsodies over tiny spikes of crocusses and snow drops? Yes, the daffodils are popping out of green houses, but if their arrival were left to Mother Nature and Her parsimonious devices, do you think we’d be seeing those yellow blossoms anytime before late May?
This is fun: This Saturday, March 29, between 8 and 9 p.m. the whole nation will be celebrating a Lights Out event. The purpose is to raise awareness of energy conservation, but who’s to say we can’t also have a merry time walking beaches with flashlights or eating dinner by candlelight? (The latter has all sorts of advantages, such as the opportunity to forego beautifying that mac and cheese with a sprig of parsley.)
Speaking of parsley or any other healthy food choice, at the Oak Bluffs library on Saturday, April 5, at 3 p.m., health counselor Ramona Black will provide a free lecture about the ill-health effects of sugar in the diet. Nutritious snacks and recipes will be on offer. For more information, call 508-693-9433.
Principal Carlin Hart of the O.B. School would like to remind registered voters to turn out for the town meeting of April 8, 7 p.m. at the high school performing arts center. The annual town and school budgets will be discussed (courteously, as always), with all sorts of vital issues that you’ll want to weigh in on.
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