MARGARET KNIGHT
508-627-8894
After such a mild winter, I guess we can’t expect spring to be warmer than usual, too. As we were heading into April with the weather still cold and windy, I made up this Vineyard joke: What’s the difference between February and April? The answer: February has more letters.
There actually are signs of spring if you look closely. The wild honeysuckle bushes along the roads are covered with little leaves, and daffodils are starting to bloom in warmer spots. You can hear osprey calling again and on the weekend you can see groups of people milling about, for example on the deck on top of the town wharf.
The birds at my bird feeder are getting feisty. I always think of chickadees as happy-go-lucky birds but I saw a couple of them tussling with each other in a swooping battle that lasted surprisingly long. Below the feeder a mourning dove followed another around pecking its head — maybe it’s spring fever.
Hatsy Potter wrote that she and her mother, Edo, heard what they figured must be a saw-whet owl. They’d never heard anything like it before: it sounded like the back-up beep signal for a big commercial truck, and went on and on.
Hatsy said, “The volume is astonishing considering how tiny the saw-whet is, smaller than a screech owl. The owl ‘beeped’ or ‘too, tooed’ (as Peterson described it) at some distance on either side of the new screech owl box,” built by Dick Knight. Edo had noticed a starling inspecting the box and saw how quickly it exited, as if someone had already set up housekeeping. Sometime they hope to catch the owl standing in its doorway in the late afternoon sun.
Chappaquiddick was well represented at the candidates evening sponsored by the League of Women Voters, both at the candidates’ table and in the audience. Bob Fynbo debated for selectman, and Roger Becker for a planning board seat. Pat Rose is also running for library trustee. When the debates finished before the 9 p.m. ferry, Capt. Bob started the ferry up early to give all the grateful Chappaquiddickers a ride home.
Annual town meeting is next Tuesday at 7 p.m. at the Whaling Church. The annual town election is Thursday from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. downstairs in the Baylies Room.
The clean-up from the puff-back is finally finished at the library. After the air quality is approved, fire alarms and drop ceiling installed, the upstairs will be open to the public. The carpet and a few other things need to be done in the children’s area downstairs. These tasks and the move back from the town hall will take time, though, so it may still be a while before the general public is allowed in. The staff certainly has made the best of the situation all these months; I’m sure they’ll be glad to be back at work in the “large print edition” of the library.
Meanwhile, the library has instituted the “Mr. Goudie, You Are Absolutely Wrong Essay Contest,” in response to a remarkable rant by Doug (VB) Goudie, the commentator on Boston’s Fox 25 Morning News, posted on the station’s Web site. Mr. Goudie talks about the recession in regard to state library funds, and does an amazing job belittling Edgartown and its citizenry. You can see the clip by going to the library Web site, edgartownlibrary.org, and throughout April, you can send along your comments — “from formal essays to good one-liners.” Some of the best essays and comments will be shared at a party, date to be announced, when the library building reopens.
Last week I mentioned Gabrielle McElhinney Wilbur’s new pet sitting business on Chappy, but I had the wrong telephone number. The correct number is 508-939-8524.
Brad Fligor, Peter Wells, and the town police and fire chiefs attended a selectmen’s meeting earlier this week at the request of the selectmen who wanted to commend them for their actions during the recent emergency when the car went off the ferry. They talked about how well things turned out considering the circumstances.
It’s hard to imagine the situation ever happening again even if nothing changed, but especially hard with Peter, who is the most safety-conscious person I know (with all the ferry drivers coming in second), on the job replacing, tightening up, and improving every aspect of the ferry he can think of.
Peter recently met with the Coast Guard to look at plans for the new ferry he expects to build in the fall, which will be a replica of the On Time III, with no big changes in design. He also took all the propellers he had inherited from Roy over to Scandia Propeller in Fairhaven to be checked out. The propellers seemed to be good-sized blades when Peter was loading them in his truck, but he said, when he got there, “I realized mine were just toys — some you couldn’t even pick up.” He ordered bigger props for the On Time III: five 32-inch blades which will replace the three 34-inch blades in use now. The original blades from the On Time II were three 26-inch blades. Times, and the current, have changed.
The man at Scandia asked Peter whether the new ferry would be called the On Time IV. When Peter told him it would be named the City of Chappaquiddick, after the first ferry built by Skip Bettencourt’s father, the man then asked: “Would that make you the mayor?”
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