Promise keepers

Nobody loves the electric company. We usually only notice it when we pay the bill or, more acutely, when something goes wrong. The power is just supposed to flow.

Here on Martha's Vineyard, we get our electric from a company called Eversource. Some of our experiences with them have not been so good -- like the time they were upgrading the lines on a nearby road and blew out our power. Fortunately we only lost a bunch of surge protectors. Remember to use those surge protectors!

These days, Eversource is completing a much anticipated project to bring a high capacity cable from the Cape to the Island, ending use of diesel for electric generation. It's a big deal. 

After Donald Trump's attempted insurrection on January 6, 2021, a lot of big companies swore off contributing to members of Congress who voted against certifying the 2020 vote for Biden. Most of them have gone back on their promises.

But a few have held out. Judd Legum assembled an honor role of promise keepers that stuck to their word.  And Eversource was among them: 

On January 13, 2021, Eversource Energy, a large electricity provider in the Northeast, announced that it would not donate to any of the members of Congress who voted against certifying the 2020 election results. In a statement, Eversource’s Chief Communications Officer Jim Hunt said, “at Eversource, we were deeply disturbed by the intentional disruption of our democratic process and the violence that occurred at the Capitol last week.”

Eversource has kept its promise not to donate to any election deniers and has made few political contributions in general. NRG Energy, a competing electricity provider serving some of the same states as Eversource, also promised not to donate to any election deniers, but has since reneged.

Other promise keepers include AirBnB, Expedia, Nike, and Lyft.  Read all about the good guys!

Stay angry. It's good for your mental health.

The last week has been bad. ICE murdered Renee Nicole Good in Minneapolis. Donald Trump raided Venezuela on shifting pretexts and apparently has no coherent plan for the aftermath. Oh yeah, and he's threatening more mischief in Greenland.

We're ruled by a dangerous sociopath. Of course that's depressing and disorienting. It's a lot worse than simply being ruled by bad politicians who start stupid wars and funnel the product of our land and labor to rich people.

Garrett Graff offers a cogent description of what it does to us: 

... unfortunately some communities and populations have long had reasons to fear government in various forms or question the “protection” of the police, but never have Americans collectively experienced anything like the accumulation of mental weight we have in this last year.

All that weight is piled upon all that we also accumulated in 2020, from Covid to George Floyd to January 6th — the last, also disastrous year of another Trump presidency — and all that other mental weight we’ve accumulated that comes from the rising fear and collective understanding that because of GOP policies, far-right culture and media, and a nation that has lost its collective mind, you cannot count on being safe in the places where we should feel safest — synagogues, churches, schools, universities, offices, and more — and that when you kiss your children and send them to school, you can’t guarantee that they will come home at the end of the day.

That heaviness you feel, that drag on your mental health, that drain on your emotional energy and lethargy in the face of world events, like yesterday, is real. We are all carrying a lot of new weight in the era of Trumpism....

But, dammit, let's remember who we are. We're the descendants and successors of a gritty, fractious bunch of migrants who defied a king, overthrew an enslaving oligarchy, fought 19th and 20th century capitalists, fought Nazis, and inspired colonized people all over the world to dump their overlords. (Even to dump us, sometimes.) The Trumpian crew are greedy second-raters who want to steal for themselves what a great people built together.

Resistance to tyranny is what people in this country have done, over and over. And don't forget it.

These women and the flag waver at the top of the post came out today even though the main local demonstration of disgust, defiance and determination happened on Thursday here. The population is small in January; the Indivisible lead volunteer organizer had already put on one good sized rally in Vineyard Haven this week. 

But she exhorted any who wished to get in sync with so many taking a stand this Saturday across the country: "Old School - Just Show Up!"

Some folks did. 

Standing up against our aspiring king

At Five Corners intersection on Martha's Vineyard island in Massachusetts:

 

It was cold, but not that cold, and the sun shone a bit as year-round islanders stood in witness to a woman killed and a regime which steals from us all and murders because it thinks it may.

The island has had its own invasion by ICE.

The masked thugs were not popular. There are plenty of people here who've come from other countries to work. Many have made a life in this place -- legally or otherwise.

New Englanders know BS when a would-be tyrant tries to feed it to them. ICE shot that woman in Minnesota because they thought they could.

These folks have a proud tradition to uphold. 

Tough people around here ...

 

Along the Egdartown-Vineyard Haven Road here on Martha's Vineyard Island, it's hard to miss this opinionated household.

 

Whoever lives here is not taking it.

And they have specific ideas about what to do about it. 

 

Busy today, but I thought the blog could do with some of the local color. 

A call for accountability from ICE and from ourselves

Martha's Vineyard island lies off the coast of Massachusetts. Reached only by ferry boat or small plane, it can seem a world apart from the agonies of the mainland. It is not. 

It has long been a landing spot for successive waves of migrants, hardy people willing to work. Early English settlers here pushed the native Wampanoags to the margins of the island, where they were often joined by previously enslaved people of African descent. Seamen and whalers from around the world came in the 18th and 19th century; the East Coast Black bourgeoisie populated the vacation town of Oak Bluffs. At present, about 20 percent of the year-round population are referred to by others as "the Brazilians" -- working class, relative newcomers from the Azores and continental Brazil itself whose industry keeps much of the life of the island going.

ICE sails away with some of its captives in a summer raid.

That mixed migrant population has put a target on the island for ICE under the Trump regime. 

When we are on Martha's Vineyard, we attend Grace Church (Episcopal) in the town of Vineyard Haven. The priest of this friendly parish shared a message this week in an island newspaper about the nightmare the Trump's anti-migrant crusade is inflicting on this place. 

Time to hold ICE accountable for its actions 

by the Rev. Stephen Harding 

As a priest ordained in the Episcopal Church, I am bound by the vows I made at my diaconal and priestly ordinations and by our Baptismal Covenant. When I was sworn in as a chaplain for the New York City Fire Department, I took an oath to support and uphold the Constitution of the United States, the Constitution of the State of New York, and the Charter of the City of New York. As a citizen of the United States, in addition to the rights provided by the Constitution, part of my obligation is to support and defend the Constitution.

When I served as director of pastoral care at NYU Langone Medical Center in Manhattan, my department and I were expected to comply with the medical center’s policies. We were directed and expected to report any unethical practice, or anything that might involve wrongdoing. The policy explicitly stated that if we saw something being done that was wrong and kept silent, our silence made us complicit in the wrong.

I believe that once Donald Trump is no longer president of the United States, and there has been time for reflection and the restoration of the rule of law, the actions of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents and their enablers will prove to be among the more shameful moments of our country’s history. ...

... ICE has made itself judge, jury, and enforcer, with no transparent oversight or accountability. By wearing masks, refusing to identify themselves, and detaining individuals without charging them, ICE agents are indistinguishable from masked vigilantes, and jeopardize the safety of the public and themselves. 

... If the elected, appointed, and other government officials cannot keep their oath to protect, support, and defend the Constitution of the United States, then they, too, are acting dishonorably, and are complicit in ICE’s actions.

I remain convinced that the people of the U.S. are fundamentally decent, compassionate, and generous. The tactics, actions, and insolence of masked ICE agents demean themselves, disrespect our dignity as human beings, and diminish us as a nation. ...

If ICE and other Trump officials should be held accountable, the rest of us can't turn away from our own responsibilities in the times. What can we do to care for and protect strangers in our midst? What can we do to replace government leaders who are doing wrong?

The people who count and those who don't

Here we are spending a season on Martha's Vineyard island off Massachusetts and the question inevitably arises as we see old friends: "how's Alan Dershowitz holding up?" This is a small place, especially in winter, and our decidedly not-oligarchic-class friends regularly encounter the famous TV-lawyer and defender of the likes of OJ Simpson and his more recent buddy, Jeffrey Epstein.

Dershowitz is infamous around here for being angry that his chummy attachments to such criminals make him an Undesirable himself. He rages at social exclusion. He's been known to get into a loud public beef at the summer farmer's market, for example. 

Anand Giridharadas' oped, How the Elite Behave When No One Is Watching: Inside the Epstein Emails [gift link] seems to me both insightful and incisive about why elites and their hangers-on like Dershowitz feel injured when called to account. On this island, the rest of us get a close up glimpse on occasion, especially of the ones who are Democrats. A lot of people know what they are seeing; this place is full of smart New Englanders. (And yes, still feel they have to look to Democrats for something better.)

... People are right to sense that, as the [so far released Epstein] emails lay bare, there is a highly private merito-aristocracy at the intersection of government and business, lobbying, philanthropy, start-ups, academia, science, high finance and media that all too often takes care of its own more than the common good. They are right to resent that there are infinite second chances for members of this group even as so many Americans are deprived of first chances. They are right that their pleas often go unheard, whether they are being evicted, gouged, foreclosed on, A.I.-obsolesced — or, yes, raped. 

... The emails, in my view, together sketch a devastating epistolary portrait of how our social order functions, and for whom. Saying that isn’t extreme. The way this elite operates is.

The idea of an Epstein class is helpful because one can be misled by the range of people to whom Mr. Epstein ingratiated himself. Republicans. Democrats. Businesspeople. Diplomats. Philanthropists. Healers. Professors. Royals. Superlawyers. A person he emailed at one moment was often at war with the ideas of another correspondent — a Lawrence Summers to a Steve Bannon, a Deepak Chopra to a scientist skeptical of all spirituality, a Peter Thiel to a Noam Chomsky. This diversity masked a deeper solidarity.

... If this neoliberal-era power elite remains poorly understood, it may be because it is not just a financial elite or an educated elite, a noblesse-oblige elite, a political elite or a narrative-making elite; it straddles all of these, lucratively and persuaded of its own good intentions. If it’s a jet set, it’s a carbon-offset-private-jet set. After all, flying commercial won’t get you from your Davos breakfast on empowering African girls with credit cards to your crypto-for-good dinner in Aspen. ...

Many of the Epstein emails begin with a seemingly banal rite that, the more I read, took on greater meaning: the whereabouts update and inquiry. In the Epstein class, emails often begin and end with pings of echolocation. “Just got to New York — love to meet, brainstorm,” the banker Robert Kuhn wrote to Mr. Epstein. “i’m in wed, fri. edelman?” Mr. Epstein wrote to the billionaire Thomas Pritzker (it is unclear if he meant a person, corporation or convening). To Lawrence Krauss, a physicist in Arizona: “noam is going to tucson on the 7th. will you be around.” Mr. Chopra wrote to say he would be in New York, first speaking, then going “for silence.” Gino Yu, a game developer, announced travel plans involving Tulum, Davos and the D.L.D. (Digital Life Design) conference — an Epstein-class hat trick.

Landings and takeoffs, comings and goings, speaking engagements and silent retreats — members of this group relentlessly track one another’s passages through J.F.K., L.H.R., N.R.T. and airports you’ve never even heard of. Whereabouts are the pheromones of this elite. ...

Giridharadas is brutal, revealing the moral emptiness of the Epstein class. 

...the emails depict a group whose highest commitment is to their own permanence in the class that decides things. When principles conflict with staying in the network, the network wins. ... These are permanent survivors who will profit when things are going this way and then profit again when they turn. ... 

Generally, you can’t read other people’s emails. Powerful people have private servers, I.T. staffs, lawyers. When you get a rare glimpse into how they actually think and view the world, what they actually are after, heed Maya Angelou: Believe them.

American democracy today is in a dangerous place. The Epstein emails are a kind of prequel to the present. This is what these powerful people, in this mesh of institutions and communities, were thinking and doing — taking care of one another instead of the general welfare — before it got really bad.

This era has seen a surge in belief in conspiracy theories, including about Mr. Epstein, because of an underlying intuition people have that is, in fact, correct: The country often seems to be run not for the benefit of most of us. ...

Jeffrey Epstein's immediate victims are not alone in being treated like disposable trash by this set. We all are.

Posting may (or may not) be sporadic over Thanksgiving week as family assembles. I expect further outrages in this time when many look away. 

Friday deer blogging

 

This inquisitive youngster was attracted by seeds fallen from the bird feeders. The animal showed little distress that I was watching close by. That's too bad, since it's hunting season -- though this spot is too close to a house for hunting to be legal. Eventually what appeared to be the mother rounded up and led away her offspring.

Warmer winters: afflicted by ticks

Winter ain't what it used to on Martha's Vineyard island off Massachusetts. Our warming world means fewer truly cold days. And islanders connect those warmer days with an increasing infestation with disease bearing ticks, both long present Lyme disease carriers and the new Lone Star variety that brings the Alpha-gal allergy syndrome. 

An islander created this chart showing the frequency of freezing winter temperatures:

Click to enlarge.

With all the recent posts about the tick population on the island, and a body of entomology research indicating that warmer winter temperatures lead to less seasonal tick die off, I thought I would look at the trends in the number of cold days seen here each winter over the past few decades. This plot shows the number of days when the minimum temperature at MVY [airport] falls below various levels. Data are shown since 1970 and are from the official weather observing station at the airport. This shows that winters are not as cold as they used to be, with the number of days below freezing now about 15 fewer than 1970, and the number of days below 15F about half as many days as we saw back then.

The ticks are thriving on the rodents that carry them through the warmer winters. From the rats, they move on to the deer population in the spring. One consequence of the increasing tick population is that a great many of the hunters who used to thin the deer herd during hunting season have become allergic to meat following Lone Star tick bites -- leading to less hunting.

Ah, climate change. Can humans adjust?

Trump sh_t show comes to Martha's Vineyard

Last Tuesday, ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) descended on Martha's Vineyard island, the place Erudite Partner and I sporadically call home. (No, we weren't there.)

This island off Cape Cod is a complicated place. In winter a tough population of about 20,000 -- white New Englanders, members of the indigenous Wampanoag tribe, Black descendants of slavery, Brazilian/Azorean migrants, and so many others -- work to scratch out a living and prepare for the summer influx of 100,000 beach-seeking tourists. It's not an easy place, though it offers a residence to many well-off people, such the Obamas, to give one famous example.

It's no surprise that ICE assumed they could find some out-status migrants in the construction and hospitality workforce. In this, Martha's Vineyard is simply normal for contemporary America.

The MVTimes reports that the ICE raid did not seem particularly targeted. Agents stopped work vans seemingly randomly.

Thiago Alves, owner of Rhode Island–based L&R Electrical Services, said his workers were stopped by ICE on Tuesday morning on the Vineyard, but were sent on their way after they showed their paperwork. 

Alves said that agents were stopping all work trucks, and that his business did not appear to be singled out: “It’s nothing against us.” 

Local immigration advocates responded:

The immigrant community on the Island has been reeling from the recent detentions, many calling out of work. There have been reports of empty lumberyards and construction sites, as well as housecleaners calling out.

“Everybody is so scared,” said Meiroka Nunes, a community organizer from Brazil who has lived on the Island for more than two decades. She has heard from one Brazilian whose husband was detained on Tuesday, and whose wife has not been able to reach him.

Nunes said that she worries about the mental health of Island immigrants who fear they or their family members will be deported. She noted that it’s especially scary on the Vineyard, because there is nowhere to run.

Meanwhile, some Islanders pushed back during the raid:  

One West Tisbury resident personally confronted federal agents in the field, demanding answers while recording a video that has gone viral.

Charlie Giordano, 58, used his phone to document the presence of the federal agents arresting people — some of whom live and work among us — to stand up for what Giordano believes is right at a time when legitimate fear can paralyze some from speaking out. 

“I don’t care for injustice. I don’t care for bullies. I think words are who you want to be, and actions are who you are,” Giordano said in an interview with The MV Times. “Everyone says they would’ve stood up to the Nazis back in the day. This is your chance. We have to safeguard democracy and prevent tyranny.

• • •

As with so much of Trump regime immigration enforcement, ordinary Americans were horrified by the thuggish masks and get-ups worn by the immigration police. This is not what they expect of their cops who are also their neighbors.

• • • 

The Martha's Vineyard raid set off a vigorous back and forth on island social media. The Trump regime does have defenders among the islanders, though these were swamped in the last election.

One writer offered a reminder to most all:

To all my island neighbors making sure our due process rights are protected—thank you.

To all my other neighbors who think due process doesn’t exist because of someone’s immigration status, I’d like to remind you: unless you’re a member of the Wampanoag Tribe, we’re all wash-ashores—I don’t care how many generations you’ve been here.

• • •

It was heartening to read the responses of the Reverend Stephen Harding, Rector at Grace Episcopal Church. as recorded in the MVTimes. This is our church on the island.

“We cannot be silent. If we are silent, we are complicit,” he said, noting that he was only speaking for himself and not others that signed [a religious leaders'] letter. He said that he was disturbed over how the federal agency conducted the arrests, particularly agents that covered their faces. “To do this, in this manner, is shameful. There is no honor. This masked, undercover stuff — they look like bums to me,” Harding said. “If you are going to pull someone out of their car to arrest them, have the integrity to show your face. There is no honor at all in being a bully.”

Harding also said that it didn’t appear that the agents had probable cause to make these arrests.

“It seems there is no probable cause except that they weren’t white,” Harding said. “The idea that anyone can be stopped, pulled over and detained. That is not good. I’m not a constitutional lawyer, but I don’t think that’s legal.”

 • • •

Attorney Jay Kuo has offered an insightful discussion of why Trump's minions wear those masks: 

Asked by CNN why officers have opted to use masks when detaining students, a DHS spokesman said this:

“When our heroic law enforcement officers conduct operations, they clearly identify themselves as police while wearing masks to protect themselves from being targeted by known and suspected terrorist sympathizers.”

In other words, they don‘t want to be doxxed.

Traditionally, agents have donned facial coverings only when the arrest is of some major kingpin or mob boss, where violent retaliation is a real danger. DHS has now taken that same logic and extended it to every official action, on the grounds that the “woke mob” will seek revenge.

 ... The sort of folks who affirmatively want to become ICE and CBP agents, especially under the leadership of ghouls like Stephen Miller and Tom Homan, are nowadays often not true patriots wishing to protect the country.

Far-right militia groups share one thing in common with the DHS agents who are fanning out to detain immigrants: They love to wear face coverings...

The reason fascist zealots don face coverings is so that they can continue to exist anonymously in civil society and not get “canceled” (for example, fired from their jobs or have their businesses boycotted) for their white nationalist hate.

Part of fighting back against the Trump fascists will be to outlaw masks on legitimate law enforcement officers except in very limited circumstances.

Traveling blog break

I don't think I can yet blame this on Donald Trump's meddling with the weather service (NOAA) or the FAA (air traffic control and airports). But nonetheless yesterday was such a miserable travel day from Martha's Vineyard to San Francisco that I need to take the weekend off from posting here.

Proud history here. Click to read.

It's easy to think of the Vineyard as a kind of precious retreat from American reality -- until reminded by experience that it is also a somewhat remote rock on the edge the Atlantic. And in the offseason, which is when we visit, the island is populated by incredibly tough, hard working folks who have to live off the short summer tourist season.

Our flight off island to Logan airport in Boston on a tiny regional airline, Cape Air, was cancelled at the last minute on Saturday; something about a torn up runway at the hub. So getting off the island suddenly turned into a marathon.

There was no way to catch our long flight home out of Boston. A lot of airline wrangling by Erudite Partner finally got us a different night reservation from Boston -- which would only work out if we could rush to a mid-afternoon ferry to Woods Hole, followed by an hour and a half bus trip. 

We managed all that and got seated around 9:30 EDT on a Jetblue cross country plane, only to sit for an hour and half on the runway, waiting for a bank of thunder storms somewhere on the route to clear. Finally got home at 2:30 PDT, grateful for pick up by insomniac house partner.

The Patriots who moved the story forward in the US Northeast

Message at Martha's Vineyard rally on April 19

Today is observed as a holiday in Massachusetts -- Patriots Day -- commemorating the battles at Lexington and Concord where revolting American colonials routed occupying imperial British troops in 1775.

The historian Heather Cox Richardson told their story, speaking in Boston's Old North Church at the 250 year celebration of American revolt.

... On Easter Sunday, after the secret watchers had noticed the troop movement, [Paul] Revere traveled to Lexington to visit [Patriot leaders Samuel] Adams and [John] Hancock. On the way home through Charlestown, he had told friends “that if the British went out by Water, we would shew two Lanthorns in the North Church Steeple; & if by Land, one, as a Signal.” Armed with that knowledge, messengers could avoid the troops and raise the alarm along the roads to Lexington and Concord.

The plan was dangerous. The Old North Church was Anglican, Church of England, and about a third of the people who worshipped there were Loyalists. General Thomas Gage himself worshiped there. But so did Revere’s childhood friend John Pulling Jr., who had become a wealthy sea captain and was a vestryman, responsible for the church’s finances. Like Revere, Pulling was a Son of Liberty. So was the church’s relatively poor caretaker, or sexton, Robert Newman. They would help.

Dr. Joseph Warren lived just up the hill from Revere. He was a Son of Liberty and a leader in the Massachusetts Provincial Congress. On the night of April 18, he dashed off a quick note to Revere urging him to set off for Lexington to warn Adams and Hancock that the troops were on the way. By the time Revere got Warren’s house, the doctor had already sent another man, William Dawes, to Lexington by way of Boston Neck. Warren told Revere the troops were leaving Boston by water. Revere left Warren’s house, found his friend John Pulling, and gave him the information that would enable him to raise the signal for those waiting in Charlestown. Then Revere rowed across the harbor to Charleston to ride to Lexington himself. The night was clear with a rising moon, and Revere muffled his oars and swung out of his way to avoid the British ship standing guard.

Back in Boston, Pulling made his way past the soldiers on the streets to find Newman. Newman lived in his family home, where the tightening economy after the British occupation had forced his mother to board British officers. Newman was waiting for Pulling, and quietly slipped out of the house to meet him.

The two men walked past the soldiers to the church. As caretaker, Newman had a key.

The two men crept through the dark church, climbed the stairs and then the ladders to the steeple holding lanterns—a tricky business, but one that a caretaker and a mariner could manage—very briefly flashed the lanterns they carried to send the signal, and then climbed back down.

Messengers in Charlestown saw the signal, but so did British soldiers. Legend has it that Newman escaped from the church by climbing out a window. He made his way back home, but since he was one of the few people in town who had keys to the church, soldiers arrested him the next day for participating in rebellious activities. He told them that he had given his keys to Pulling, who as a vestryman could give him orders. When soldiers went to find Pulling, he had skipped town, likely heading to Nantucket.

While Newman and Pulling made their way through the streets back to their homes, the race to beat the soldiers to Lexington and Concord was on. Dawes crossed the Boston Neck just before soldiers closed the city. Revere rowed to Charlestown, borrowed a horse, and headed out. Eluding waiting officers, he headed on the road through Medford and what is now Arlington. ...

Paul Revere was captured on the way and Dawes didn't make it to Concord either, but another man carried their message to the Massachusetts militias. Those militias were ready for the approaching British soldiers and harried the red-coated troops all the way back to Boston.

By that evening, more than three hundred British soldiers and colonists lay dead or wounded.

Richardson concluded:

Someone asked me once if the men who hung the lanterns in the tower knew what they were doing. She meant, did they know that by that act they would begin the steps to a war that would create a new nation and change the world.

The answer is no. None of us knows what the future will deliver.

Paul Revere didn’t wake up on the morning of April 18, 1775, and decide to change the world. That morning began like many of the other tense days of the past year, and there was little reason to think the next two days would end as they did. Like his neighbors, Revere simply offered what he could to the cause: engraving skills, information, knowledge of a church steeple, longstanding friendships that helped to create a network. And on April 18, he and his friends set out to protect the men who were leading the fight to establish a representative government.

The work of Newman and Pulling to light the lanterns exactly 250 years ago tonight sounds even less heroic. They agreed to cross through town to light two lanterns in a church steeple. It sounds like such a very little thing to do, and yet by doing it, they risked imprisonment or even death. It was such a little thing…but it was everything. And what they did, as with so many of the little steps that lead to profound change, was largely forgotten until Henry Wadsworth Longfellow used their story to inspire a later generation to work to stop tyranny in his own time.

What Newman and Pulling did was simply to honor their friendships and their principles and to do the next right thing, even if it risked their lives, even if no one ever knew. And that is all anyone can do as we work to preserve the concept of human self-determination. In that heroic struggle, most of us will be lost to history, but we will, nonetheless, move the story forward, even if just a little bit.

And once in a great while, someone will light a lantern—or even two—that will shine forth for democratic principles that are under siege, and set the world ablaze.

No place here for any monarch

The legal observation of Patriots Day -- commemorating American colonists' rejection of British rule at skirmishes at Lexington and Concord, Mass. -- isn't until Monday. But folks protesting Donald Trump's assault on our freedoms and Constitution were out in force Saturday on Martha's Vineyard.

Islanders seem just as allergic to kings now as they were then. 

That would refer to laws they made themselves through a democratic process, not some edict (like the Stamp Act) from a distant king and his parliament.

There are still feisty folks on this island outpost.

Anxiety on the Island

Martha's Vineyard Island seems intent on accepting a state designation as a "Seasonal Community" in the hope of winning help from Massachusetts with providing more housing to the people who live and work here. The population booms about seven fold in the summer, then recedes for the winter.

It's easy to think of this remote bucolic place as just a summer playground, but for the year-round residents, it's simply home. And for this community, the horrors the Trump regime is inflicting on the nation are all too close by. A couple of mental health professionals spelled some of this out in the Martha Vineyard Times. (Yes, we have two little local newspapers!) Charles Silberstein and Laura Roosevelt explain: 

The immigrant community, estimated at 20 percent of the Island’s year-round population, is currently particularly prone to fear and sadness. Many of those I’ve spoken with are U.S. citizens, and still feel relatively safe. But almost all have family and friends who are undocumented and experiencing terror.

Recent rumors that ICE raids on the Island were imminent prompted many immigrants to stay home from work and school; many didn’t show up for appointments at Community Services and doctor’s offices, and generally kept off of the roads. I was told about a child who was so frightened that she stayed up most of the night crying.

One immigrant, a professional who arrived here just after 9/11 in 2001, told me that it was even more frightening then than it is today. ICE set up roadblocks, and if a person were caught, there was a likelihood of being sent immediately to an immigration center. Just seeing a police car or even an animal control vehicle could send his fellow immigrants into a state of panic.

After 14 years in limbo, he is now a citizen. He reminds himself and frightened members of the immigrant community that none of us know what the future will bring. He believes that immigrants need to decide either to return to a country where they feel more comfortable, or just learn to live with the threat without letting it dominate their lives. Living in a constant state of fear he says, is annihilation.

He shared a Portuguese saying with me: “We kill a lion today, and we tie up the bear to worry about tomorrow.” In other words, every day has its own problems, and we don’t need to add to them by worrying about tomorrow. ...

The island has long been a place that absorbed immigrant workers; locals knew what to do when Florida Governor Ron DeSantis flew a planeload of confused Venezuelans here in a political stunt in 2022. 

Silberstein and Roosevelt offer ideas for how to get by in the current terrifying moment: 

Many Americans are grieving the loss of the country as they knew it, and the collective ideals held in common with fellow Americans. ... [Some concrete suggestions] ...

• Take a deep breath, and then run toward the monster that has no teeth. Or, as the Rev. Cathlin Baker, minister of the First Congregational Church of West Tisbury, has advised congregants, “Do the good that is yours to do.” 

• Spend time with kids and pets. Connect with friends, and accept that you are unable to impact a crisis alone. 

• Remember that throughout human history, governments and political movements come and go. Nothing is permanent. Work on accepting that the future is always uncertain.

• If you are an immigrant, know that much of what you hear may be bluster or misinformation. Consider talking with an immigration lawyer who can gum up the deportation process if need be. Know your legal rights.

We're all in this for the long haul.

Friday critter blogging

 

A mother and fawn wandered in last night to check out the bird feeder. I doubt the few fallen seeds did much for them, but small green shoots are breaking through on the woodland carpet. It won't be hunting season until next November. For the moment, their only predators are cars.

Thanks to Erudite Partner for the photo.

In which the roadside dispenses advice

 

I have no idea who is posting these Burma-Shave reminiscent displays of signs on a country road.

 

Nor do I know quite what to make of them.

 

They are succinct. But meaningful?

Clearly though, meant to encourage. Perhaps someone is recovering from an illness? We can use all we can get of laughter as winter settles in, locally and nationally.

It's Election Day in Tisbury

One thing I've noticed about Martha's Vineyard island, and the Commonwealth of Massachusetts generally, is that they go in for a lot of voting. Popular, participatory democracy is alive and well around here. I don't know if they'll have a big turnout, but the residents of the town of Tisbury are having their say today.

At Tisbury special town meeting on Dec. 17, voters approved a $4.4-million borrowing request to renovate and maintain the Vineyard Haven library. The next critical step in the process requires voters to approve the spending request at a special town election on Jan. 7. 

... Previously, the library board of trustees created a nonprofit organization, which raised $1.6 million for an addition to the library, but during construction, the older portions of the building continued to deteriorate. According to trustees, there are major issues with roofing, plumbing, heating, air conditioning, and overall integrity of the building, and those issues have continued to grow.

“We raised $1.6 million to build an addition that is paid for, but in the process, the building continues to deteriorate. We need to replace the roofs so we can put solar on it, replace the bathrooms, fix ceiling water leaks, and the exterior is rotting,” said Arch Smith, chair of the board of trustees. “In short, we have water coming in from the roof, and water coming in from the ground, and we don’t want it in the building.” 

If approved at the Jan. 7 special town election, bids for the construction project will be sent out to all possible contractors by late February, Smith said. -- MV Times

This island has wonderful libraries, though apparently the one in Vineyard Haven needs a lot of work.

I'll update here when we learn whether the voters are willing to go for these improvements and these costs to themselves.

January 8 update: The voters have spoken. "Tisbury voters on Tuesday approved a $4.8 million funding request that will be used for the addition and repair of Vineyard Haven Public Library. The ballot question passed by a vote of 305 to 130."

It's winter on the Vineyard

What was coming was clear late last night.

And indeed, by morning the white stuff was everywhere.

Ganesh looks almost comfy under a light covering of the white stuff.

I think this day is for staying inside and watching football.

Saturday scenes

So the human went out for a walk. It's shotgun deer hunting season, so I'm wearing my bright colors and sticking to the road sides. So what do I see?

 

A little further down the road ...

 

Yet further ...

 

Here's the last ...

 

Burma Shave! for anyone old enough to remember that sort of highway advertising. I remember squealing with delight on car trips with my parents on encountering those ads. 

 

I have no idea what someone on the Vineyard has against chickens. Did someone attempt to make a chicken an indoor pet?

Seasonal reflection

Seasons are a bit of a shock to coastal Californians. We are not accustomed to wide temperature swings.

But here we are this frosty morning.in Massachusetts. And the land is its beautiful self. This is the ten-day deer shooting season, so it is not a time to wander woodland trails. There are hunters out there.

Empty woods roads have their own beauty and seem safe enough for walking. Pretty much the only traffic is pickup trucks bearing construction workers, building and maintaining the summer homes off these roads. It's prime season for that work. 

Here in Chilmark, we're warm and toasty, thanks to the climate-sparing heat pump we installed during the last visits. Over Thanksgiving weekend, energetic relatives replaced the sprawling woodpile with a snug and practical shed. We'll be grateful as we stoke the wood stove.

I settle in to ponder and delight in this season of apocalyptic anticipation, this Advent in which hope and fear jostle each other, this year and every year.

Don't ask me

Someone left this offering in a sheltered spot alongside the trail. There's more than a bit of magic in the Vineyard woods at this season. 

I'll be back here after the holiday.