Living on an island is a new experience for me, as is living in a small town. Maybe that’s why my adjustment to full time life here in West Tisbury (population 2612) on the island of Martha’s Vineyard, a mere forty-five minutes off the Massachusetts coast, is taking a while. It’s not because of the inability to satisfy a whim, such as getting in my car and driving into Boston to see a decent movie; living on an island, I have to make sure I have a car reservation on the ferry first and then be willing to drive an hour-and-a-half (if the traffic is light) each way. No, it’s not the inability to live spontaneously. I’ve become accustomed to calling the Steamship Authority a week before I want to leave the island. Nor is it the high prices here. I can usually avoid paying $2.50 a gallon for gas by filling up when I’m off-Island. My wife visits Costco just about every trip to the mainland, so our food costs are reasonable.
And, it’s not for lack of contact with the rest of the world. We now get NPR without static and fadeouts. CNN fans can get their daily fix. The NY Times, Boston Globe and Wall Street Journal can be delivered to your mailbox daily. My laptop lets me communicate with friends and relatives around the world. Stock market quotes are available instantly via the Internet. Of course, in summer it seems that a good part of the rest of the world comes to visit us. Yet, judicious scheduling of my trips to the store, bank and post office keeps me out of most traffic jams.
It’s not boredom, either. There is a fair amount of intellectual and aesthetic stimulation in the winter as well as the summer. The Vineyard Playhouse operates year-round. The Sinfonietta and Community Chorus give rousing winter as well as summer performances. The Bunch of Grapes book store has author’s talks every Friday, summer and winter. The Senior Centers offer a wide variety of attractions, including trips to Symphony Hall. And, I’ve only scratched the surface.
So, what’s the problem? Well, if one judges by what appears in the two local newspapers, particularly the letters to the editors, then no public official here and elsewhere ever does anything right. I swear if God were a public official here on the island someone would find fault with his actions and, of course, let the island know about it by sending his thoughts to both local papers and, if the opportunity arises, speaking at a public meeting, more and more of which are shown on the local television channels. I find the level of this venting, this need to criticize, this nay saying disconcerting, to say the least.
It doesn’t seem to matter what the issue is - a new golf course, another gas station, the entrance to the library, a sick horse, mopeds, the Steamship Authority, our relationship with Nantucket, wind turbines, house sizes, affordable housing, stop lights, the Martha’s Vineyard Commission, where buses stop, the size of signs, the salaries of public employees, piping plovers – someone wants to tell you where and how someone else screwed up.
This need to vent is exacerbated by what appears to be the condoning of conflicts of interest. At least that’s what many of the newer “wash ashores” (i.e., not native Islanders) see when they look at town boards of which town employees are influential members, planning and zoning boards having developers as members, high paying town positions filled by relatives of town officials, etc.
The venting seems to increase in winter. Whether this is due to people not having the time or energy in the tourist season to register their opinions or issues coming to the fore when the summer visitors have left, I’m not sure. But in winter it’s not surprising to see 10 – 20 issue-oriented letters in each newspaper each week; this with a year-round population of 15,000. If this same rate were maintained in Boston, for example, the Globe would print 1000 and more letters per week.
Of course, every other city and town in America has disputes and disagreements. But, at least in the places I have lived, they are not as frequent nor is the level of participation by ordinary citizens as high as it is here. ….AHA! Reread that last sentence. Note the phrase “level of participation by ordinary citizens”. It’s high! People here are not apathetic, they care. Isn’t that – caring about your town – what voters in a representative democracy are supposed to be? True, there may be overkill here on the Vineyard, but too much participation is better than too little. I just wish they would lower the volume.
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