MARGARET KNIGHT
508-627-8894
This is the time of spring when cars parked at my house turn yellow and white. The yellow is because of the oak pollen. The oak trees near the parking area have started leafing out, and their pollen makes a fine yellow coating on any horizontal surface.
The white is from the robins who nest in the woodshed. The male robin likes to look at himself in the side mirror, and he leaves a white dribble down the side of the car where he perches. He really admires himself, too — you can tell by the wide swath of white droppings under both mirrors. I watched from the kitchen window one morning and saw him hopping around in front of the mirror. Then he made a couple of swoops chasing his mate, trying to get her to pay attention to him. She wasn’t interested and flew off into the bushes, so he went back to gazing at himself in the mirror.
On Saturday, May 16, from 7 to 9 a.m. the C.I.A. will again sponsor Chappy Haz Mat. You can leave off your hazardous materials at Terry Forde’s truck which will be located in the community center parking lot. You can bring used motor oil ($1 per gallon), stale gasoline and other fuels, oil paints, various chemicals — for example, pesticides and herbicides — and batteries. Please bring your materials in boxes for ease of unloading at the refuse facility. Flammables should be secured in metal or plastic containers.
Our Edgartown Public Library won five awards for excellence in the Massachusetts Library Association’s annual public relations contest. The Edgartown library took honorable mention prizes for its monthly newsletter and for its Web site, competing against scores of libraries, including some of the larger institutions in the Commonwealth. Best of all, the library took first-place honors in the state in two categories: best logo and best public programming. The logo design is the image of the arched Carnegie Library window. The winning public program is Edgartown 101, the six-week civic literacy series hosted at the library in January and February.
At the end of the awards ceremony on Thursday, May 7, the MLA announced one more honor, the PR for Pennies Award, to be given to the library whose outreach to the community accomplished the most at the least cost. The winner was our library!
Last week’s potluck at the community center was a festive event, with more than three tables full of people, including The Trustees of Reservation’s new Chappy superintendent David Babson, his wife, Annelei, and their son and daughter, Chappaquiddickers back from their winter habitations, and others down for an early weekend. Gabby McElhinney-Wilbur baked a beautifully decorated chocolate cake for all to enjoy.
The next potluck will be on Wednesday, May 20th starting at 6 p.m. Hosting the dinner will be Will and Sue Geresy. There are two more potlucks — the first and third Wednesdays of June — and then they stop for the summer, when lots of other events take place at the community center, including ice cream socials, the concert series, the Friday foreign films series, lobster roll dinners, and much more.
The community center and the events that take place there are open to anyone on Chappaquiddick — you don’t have to be a subscriber, except to sign up for sailing or tennis classes. The community center is run entirely on your donations.
Save the date of Saturday, August 9, for the Talents of Chappy Auction. The auction, which takes place every few years, is a major fund-raiser for the community center. It’s a lot of fun, and features Trip Barnes as auctioneer. Jo-Ann Tilghman and Sue Phinney are heading up the auction committee, and they’re still looking for donations of items or services. You can e-mail Jo-Ann at tilghmanjb@aol.com or call her at 508-627-7669 if you have anything to donate.
Jo-Ann and Tom are two of the snowbirds who have returned to Chappy recently. Jo-Ann said how much she enjoyed seeing spring in reverse as they drove north from Florida. From North Carolina on, the landscape became progressively less and less green and springlike. Now they get to experience spring all over again. The early beach plum’s showy white blossoms have opened this week, and new little lily pads have started rising to the surface on Brine’s Pond — you can see them partially unfurled down below.
Every week, town looks more and more like summer with the sidewalks full of people — relatively speaking. Mary MacGregor, who was here at her house for a couple of weeks this spring, mentioned how much she’d been enjoying the Chappaquiddick recollections book. When we were talking about all the people around now, it reminded her of a line at the end of Donald Vose’s remembrances. He was talking about some interesting Chappaquiddick “characters” and how, with the island being small, they were more likely to stand out. He then said, “I remember one person said to another down here, ‘You have such interesting characters.’ And another said, ‘But they all leave at Labor Day.’”
The ferry’s summer schedule will start this year on Friday, May 22, at which time the ferry will run straight through until midnight.
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