Martha's Vineyard Quotes

I basked in you; I loved you, helplessly, with a boundless tongue-tied love. And death doesn't prevent me from loving you. Besides, in my opinion you aren't dead. (I know dead people, and you are not dead.)

I want to go to Martha’s Vineyard. I have an aunt named Martha. And an uncle by that name. Neither one is related to me.

It's one thing to develop a nostalgia for home while you're boozing with Yankee writers in Martha's Vineyard or being chased by the bulls in Pamplona. It's something else to go home and visit with the folks in Reed's drugstore on the square and actually listen to them. The reason you can't go home again is not because the down-home folks are mad at you--they're not, don't flatter yourself, they couldn't care less--but because once you're in orbit and you return to Reed's drugstore on the square, you can stand no more than fifteen minutes of the conversation before you head for the woods, head for the liquor store, or head back to Martha's Vineyard, where at least you can put a tolerable and saving distance between you and home. Home may be where the heart is but it's no place to spend Wednesday afternoon.

Because you live to love and love to live/ And because of what your heardrum will give/ Now we might love to live and live to love.

EPITAPH Now I'm not the brightest knife in the drawer, but I know a couple things about this life: poverty silence, impermanence discipline and mystery The world is not illusory, we are From crimson thread to toe tag If you are not disturbed there is something seriously wrong with you, I'm sorry And I know who I am I'll be a voice coming from nowhere, inside-- be glad for me.

P.S." I close my eyes and see a seagull in the desert, high, against unbearably blue sky. There is hope in the past. I’m writing to you all the time, I am writing with both hands, day and night.

... because commonsensically speaking, a room full of good books had to better for your health than a room with no books in it at all.

Proof of Your existence? There is nothing but.

Sing out and say something, my hearties. Roar and pull, my thunderbolts! Beach me, beach me on their black backs, boys; only do that for me, and I'll sign over to you my Martha's Vineyard plantation, boys; including wife and children, boys.

The Poem" It was like getting a love letter from a tree Eyes closed forever to find you– There is a life which if I could have it I would have chosen for myself from the beginning

The body of water between Martha’s Vineyard and Nantucket is the Muskeget Channel. “I

This poem serves to remind That food, it tends to spoil Leave it in your memory Not in the fridge, in foil.

Sag Harbor, Cold Spring Harbor, Mystic, New Bedford, Nantucket, Cape Cod, Martha’s Vineyard.

You gave me in secret one thing to perceive, the tall blue starry strangeness of being here at all.

He had the idea to start his goatscaping business after hearing a piece on NPR about using goats to clear brush on golf courses.

Feed your soul with silence. That's where dreams are born.

A private plane sits on a runway in Martha’s Vineyard, forward stairs deployed.

That insane asshole is dead I drowned him and he’s not coming back. Look he has a new life a new name now which no one knows except the one who gave it.

Your words are spirit and life. Only say one and he will be healed.

Once upon a time .... I want to have a little house with sunlight on the floor, A chimney with a rosy hearth and lilacs by the door. (Nancy Bird Turner)

The difference between victims and survivors is whether you’re found in time. We cannot swim while the other sinks. I imagine the lonely and wild out there bobbing on the waves. Waiting to be washed ashore or dragged out by the tide. Names unknown, dreams forgotten.

Martha’s Vineyard had fossil deposits one million centuries old. The northern reach of Cape Cod, however, on which my house sat, the land I inhabited—that long curving spit of shrub and dune that curves in upon itself in a spiral at the tip of the Cape—had only been formed by wind and sea over the last ten thousand years. That cannot amount to more than a night of geological time. Perhaps this is why Provincetown is so beautiful. Conceived at night (for one would swear it was created in the course of one dark storm) its sand flats still glistened in the dawn with the moist primeval innocence of land exposing itself to the sun for the first time. Decade after decade, artists came to paint the light of Provincetown, and comparisons were made to the lagoons of Venice and the marshes of Holland, but then the summer ended and most of the painters left, and the long dingy undergarment of the gray New England winter, gray as the spirit of my mood, came down to visit. One remembered then that the land was only ten thousand years old, and one’s ghosts had no roots. We did not have old Martha’s Vineyard’s fossil remains to subdue each spirit, no, there was nothing to domicile our specters who careened with the wind down the two long streets of our town which curved together around the bay like two spinsters on their promenade to church.   NORMAN MAILER, from Tough Guys Don’t Dance

What came to mind was a line from a Salinger story, something about how every man has at least one place that at some point turns into a girl. She’d written a paper on what that one line meant, and still, she hadn’t understood until she happened upon this surfer on Martha’s Vineyard. Perhaps, for every woman, there is at least one place that at some point turns into a boy.

My dad could go to work, he could get raises, he could be thanked for his contributions, he got a pay-check for his labor, but that didn't happen for moms. The best they could hope for would be a crayon valentine or a squashed, limp dandelion flower offered up from the damp hand of their wide-eyed and innocent child. Which wasn't nothing. In all my days I'd never considered anything to be more important than home. In a chaotic world, it was sanctuary; it was where love grew.

Subect: Sigh. Okay. Since we're on the subject... Q. What is the Tsar of Russia's favorite fish? A. Tsardines, of course. Q. What does the son of a Ukranian newscaster and a U.S. congressman eat for Thanksgiving dinner on an island off the coast of Massachusetts? A.? -Ella Subect: TG A. Republicans. Nah.I'm sure we'll have all the traditional stuff: turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes. I'm hoping for apple pie. Our hosts have a cook who takes requests, but the island is kinda limited as far as shopping goes. The seven of us will probably spend the morning on a boat, then have a civilized chow-down. I predict Pictionary. I will win. You? -Alex Subect: Re. TG Alex, I will be having my turkey (there ill be one, but it will be somewhat lost among the pumpkin fettuccine, sausage-stuffed artichokes, garlic with green beans, and at least four lasagnas, not to mention the sweet potato cannoli and chocolate ricotta pie) with at least forty members of my close family, most of whom will spend the entire meal screaming at each other. Some will actually be fighting, probably over football. I am hoping to be seated with the adults. It's not a sure thing. What's Martha's Vineyard like? I hear it's gorgeous. I hear it's favored by presidential types, past and present. -Ella Subject: Can I Have TG with You? Please??? There's a 6a.m. flight off the island. I can be back in Philadelphia by noon. I've never had Thanksgiving with more than four or five other people. Only child of two only children. My grandmother usually hosts dinner at the Hunt Club. She doesn't like turkey. Last year we had Scottish salmon. I like salmon,but... The Vineyard is pretty great. The house we're staying in is in Chilmark, which, if you weren't so woefully ignorant of defunct television, is the birthplace of Fox Mulder. I can see the Menemsha fishing fleet out my window. Ever heard of Menemsha Blues? I should bring you a T-shirt. Everyone has Black Dogs; I prefer a good fish on the chest. (Q. What do you call a fish with no eyes? A. Fish.) We went out on a boat this afternoon and actually saw a humpback whale. See pics below. That fuzzy gray lump in the bumpy gray water is a fin. A photographer I am not. Apparently, they're usually gone by now, heading for the Caribbean. It's way too cold to swim, but amazing in the summer. I swear I got bumped by a sea turtle here last July 4, but no one believes me. Any chance of saving me a cannoli? -A

had spent more than a year writing a second draft of his book during the hours he wasn’t at one of his jobs. He worked late at night in a small room we’d converted to a study at the rear of our apartment—a crowded, book-strewn bunker I referred to lovingly as the Hole. I’d sometimes go in, stepping over his piles of paper to sit on the ottoman in front of his chair while he worked, trying to lasso him with a joke and a smile, to tease him back from whatever far-off fields he’d been galloping through. He was good-humored about my intrusions, but only if I didn’t stay too long. Barack, I’ve come to understand, is the sort of person who needs a hole, a closed-off little warren where he can read and write undisturbed. It’s like a hatch that opens directly onto the spacious skies of his brain. Time spent there seems to fuel him. In deference to this, we’ve managed to create some version of a hole inside every home we’ve ever lived in—any quiet corner or alcove will do. To this day, when we arrive at a rental house in Hawaii or on Martha’s Vineyard, Barack goes off looking for an empty room that can serve as the vacation hole. There, he can flip between the six or seven books he’s reading simultaneously and toss his newspapers on the floor. For him, the Hole is a kind of sacred high place, where insights are birthed and clarity comes to visit. For me, it’s an off-putting and disorderly mess. One requirement has always been that the Hole, wherever it is, have a door

No more Boston! This comes on the heels of Ocasio-Cortez’s claim that Miami’s days are numbered: apparently that city is projected to be underwater in “a few years.” And Astra Taylor warns that the flooding of coastal cities and even inland towns and farms may force people to “escape to New Zealand, to the moon, or to Mars.”12 But here’s an anomaly. The Obamas recently acquired property in Martha’s Vineyard for nearly $12 million.13 Very interesting! The property, purchased from the owner of the Boston Celtics, doesn’t merely have ocean views; it sits right on the Atlantic Ocean. The Obamas know about the literature on disappearing coastlines. Obama himself has repeatedly warned of rising sea levels engulfing coastal properties. And presumably everyone who lives on the coasts has access to this literature and has heard these dire warnings.

My parents said I should come out to their place in the Hamptons,” she says. She has to clarify because they also have a place in Martha’s Vineyard and one on the Carolina coast.

Leeda looked straight out of Martha’s Vineyard---all perfect cheekbones and alabaster skin with a smattering of sun-induced freckles and clothes that were totally season-appropriate. Even loose and sloppy like she was today, she looked like the kind of loose and sloppy you saw in People magazine when they caught a celebrity all tired and mussed up at the airport. Birdie, on the other hand, was curved and rosy and Renoir soft. She looked like the milk-fed farm girl that she was. The two were second cousins but nothing alike. Leeda was straight up and down, and Birdie was as gentle and easy as the rain. Leeda had grown up wearing mostly white and exceeding everyone as the glossiest, the smilingest, and the most southern of the southern belles in Bridgewater. Birdie had grown up with dirt under her fingernails, homeschooled on the orchard, her feet planted in the earth. Before Judge Miller Abbott sentenced Murphy to time on the orchard picking peaches that summer, Murphy had pegged Leeda for uptight and Birdie for weak. But their time together---picking peaches, sweating in the dorms at night, cooling off in the lake---had been like living the fable of her life. The lesson being that when you think you know more than you do, you end up looking like an idiot.

Mr. Thomas Mayhew obtained a grant of Martha’s Vineyard, and went to live there in 1642, where he was the chief ruler of the English inhabitants, and his son Thomas was their minister. And about 1646 he began to preach to the Indians on the island; and to promote the cause, his father informed them, that by an order from the crown of England he was to govern the English who should inhabit there; that his royal master had power far above the Indian monarchs, but that as he was great and powerful, so he was a lover of justice, and would not invade their jurisdiction, but would assist them if need required; that religion and government were two distinct things, and their sachems might retain their just authority, though their subjects became Christians.

And the rejection of white working-class voters as desirable partners betrays an ugly elitism that is at odds with what Democrats are supposed to stand for. The disdain was made explicit in 2016 when Hillary Clinton described half of Trump supporters as “deplorables.”84 Although Clinton was certainly right to denounce racist, sexist, and homophobic attitudes as deplorable, her comments were troubling on several levels. She changed what is normally an adjective into a noun, suggesting that white working-class people with less education than her were completely defined by their attitudes on race. Clinton used the line while speaking to audiences whom she described as “successful people” at fundraisers in the Hamptons and Martha’s Vineyard, where her audiences knowingly chuckled at America’s benighted white working class.85 And it did not go unnoticed, one journalist remarked, that deplorables is not a term Clinton ever applied to highly educated Wall Street bankers who brought about the Great Recession and threw millions of people out of work.86 In

JACKIE ONASSIS HAD a dinner party to welcome Jane and me to New York. Guests included William Styron and his wife, Rose—they were Martha’s Vineyard regulars with Jackie; Pete Hamill, the Daily News columnist; and Annabel and Mike Nichols.

1611, the year that Shakespeare produced The Tempest, the English explorer Edward Harlow voyaged to the region. By the time he returned to London, he had abducted close to half a dozen Indians and killed at least as many in several brutal confrontations. One of his Indian captives was quite tall, and Harlow helped defray the cost of the voyage by showing him on the city streets “as a wonder.” The Indian’s name was Epenow, and he soon realized that there was nothing the English valued more than gold. He told his captors that back on Martha’s Vineyard, an island just to the south of Cape Cod, there was a gold mine that only he could lead them to. An expedition was promptly mounted, and as soon as the English ship came within swimming distance of the island, Epenow jumped over the side and escaped.

industry that spends $36 billion a year on marketing messages precisely to persuade us to eat more, and eat at different times, eat in the car, eat in front of television, and eat highly processed foods,

It makes sense that the Obamas both deplore the 1 percenters and seek to rub shoulders with them at Martha’s Vineyard or Vail.

partners Guccifer 2.0 and DCLeaks, had kept busy. I don’t know if Guccifer is a man or a woman or a robot, but it was releasing these private items from the Democrats in a manner that seemed very attuned to the rhythm of the United States election. Before I left for Martha’s Vineyard, Guccifer released cell phone numbers and passwords from the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee so that those candidates would not begin their campaign season undistracted. Less

Umm... You're not a serial killer or something, are you?

The imperial Prisoner of the United States has a lot less freedom than meaningless old me.

There are some Keepers that should not be talked about. Much. It is as if, with each telling, they may lose some of the angel’s stardust from which they come. A tad of stardust given away with each telling until years later they no longer have the stardust they once had. Except to the story’s owner and friends whose hearts have enshrined it.

Looking back, I see that encountering that lone and revered Islander Owen Rabbitt was an omen, an announcement, a heads-up. He was telling us two things that proved to be most true: 1. Come correct. Fishing here takes knowledge. Fish the right lure the right way at the right place. 2. What you catch in this place will enrich you far more than fish. The lone elder on that rock up in Gay head made it clear: This place has the ability to show you things deeper than fishing: things seen and heard in liminal space.

There are stories that should not be told. Much. They contain stories only shared late, after most of the other things that day have been handled. Because they are too rich and righteous to waste on the fly. Because they are too wholly human, wholly memorable, wholly intimate, wholly tender. And like that. Holy. These stories should not be told. Much.

This wasn’t about catching a fish. This was about overcoming. The sea, and fishing its surf, has meditative power.

The physical movement of casting, for 15 minutes or 75, opens fishermen up to the pondering, the evaluating, the remembering, the admitting, the resolving, the planning that comes with contemplation. Casting also moves the surfcaster to the place where after a year’s worth of noise, one’s Inner Voice can be heard and responded to. In the Cast you get lost.

The Car is the space where Dad gets to ask his kids stuff he wants to know about their lives.

He was announcing it loud enough for the God of the Sea and the Fish and the Souls and the Universe, could hear it. .. Sometimes a moment takes your breath away, your draw drops, your eyes widen, you pause. But this was the other kind of moment. The kind of moment you inhale and take it in because it is for your soul. And the older your soul the better it gets at letting you know when to automatically take it in. I actually felt myself breathe it in. The intimate gesture of Paying Tribute.

Among Amex’s rivals in the luxury space is Quintessentially Group, a members-only concierge network with offices in fifty countries. Quintessentially promises incredible access for its global clientele, which includes, its founders have claimed, hundreds of billionaires and thousands of hundred-millionaires. (Virgin Atlantic’s Richard Branson, rapper P. Diddy, Madonna, and author J. K. Rowling have reportedly been among its clients.) Want a last-minute table at Noma in Copenhagen on a Saturday night? No problem. A private performance by Elton John? Done that. A safe driver to pick up your kids from boarding school in a clutch and deliver them to your vacation home on Martha’s Vineyard? Say the word. Polo lessons from an actual pro? Ask Catherine Mills, head of equestrian services, whose duties have ranged from sourcing a top-notch steed for an international competition to showing up at a children’s garden party in central London with a bunch of ponies “and walking them through the front door.

That same day, nearly seven thousand miles away, Sam Aronson woke up hungover at a friend’s beach house on Martha’s Vineyard. Sam was thirty-one, five foot ten, with a solid build and an olive complexion.

The stories of my heroes provided me with MUCH better things to think about. Important things, meaningful things, real things that mattered and didn't depend on ratings. Learning about them, reading their words made me want to be a better person.

There were ottomans and framed photographs and curio cabinets full of souvenirs, their very frivolousness reassuring. You did not bring home a carved seashell from Key West or a miniature of the CN Tower or a finger-sized bottle of sand from Martha's Vineyard unless you intended to stay. Mrs. Richardson's family, in fact, had lived in Shaker for three generations now - almost, Pearl learned, since the city had been founded. To have such a deep taproot in a single place, to be immersed in it so thoroughly that it had steeped into every fiber of your being: she couldn't imagine it.

I left the door open so I could hear the music, grabbed my clippers and went out to play in the garden~~the best place to count my many blessings. And then I though, if I can't get through one door, I'll try the next, or I'll go through a window. Something good is going to happen. Red-Letter days are not provided by others....

During a snowstorm we built a fire, and made my grandma's stuffing and my mom's layered Jell-O, and mashed potatoes with lumps and my mom's delicious gravy and every other family thing we loved. We filled the house with the fragrance of sage, pumpkin, apples and cinnamon.

I also learned that my heroes had heroes of their own. They had stood on the shoulders of those who came before them, learned from them, were inspired, took what that learned and wave it into their own originality, and made something brand new for their own times. Everything was connected. Everything stepped up forward in though and genius.

It was easy to see that I was made up of exactly the same basic material as the people who built the Golden Gate Bridge and the Statue of Liberty, heart, blood, bone and dreams. And desire too.

but it finally occurred to me that the time was going to pass anyway, I might as well try to have something to show for it,

With times the way they were in the 1980s , I was worried that moms might have gotten the mistaken idea that what they did didn't matter. What I understood from the women's movement was that we had free choice to be anything we wanted. We could choose to stay home with the children or work out of the house, depending on our personal needs, and each of those choices deserved equal respect. But sometimes , watching Phil Donahue in the Pre-Oprah days, it felt like women were being pitted against each other.

I was enchanted as soon as I stepped off the train. As were the hundreds of others who got off the train with me who were now in the process of climbing into buggies and wagons, en route to the dozens of resorts, enclaves, and tent campgrounds in the area, where they would soak up the sun, get drunk on Cabernet, swim and picnic in the druidy redwood groves while reciting Shakespeare. I climbed into a wagon and was driven off by a Mr. Lars Magnusson to view the old Olson farm. We traveled a mile or so into the hills, past oak glens, brooks, and pools of water, past manzanitas, madrones, and trees dripping with Spanish moss. Sonoma Mountain was to the west; its shadow cast everything in a soft purple light. When we finally reached the farm and I saw the luscious valley spread out in front of me, I knew this was it. Greengage. It would be a home for me and Martha at first, but I hoped it would soon be something more. A tribute to my mother and her ideals; a community in which she would have flourished, where she would have lived a good long life. Greengage.The burbling creek that ran smack down the middle of the property. The prune, apple, and almond orchards: the fields of wheat, potatoes, and melons. The pastures for cows and sheep. The chicken house and pigsty. The gentle, sloping hills, mounds that looked like God's knuckles, where I would one day plant a vineyard.

After ordering the requisite pork chop on a stick and taking a couple of bites, Hillary climbed into the back seat of a black SUV, leaving Iowans and the Blob behind, to fly on a private plane to Martha’s Vineyard for Vernon Jordan’s eightieth birthday party.

and rich, those girls were like princesses in a fairy tale. They were known throughout Boston, Harvard Yard, and Martha’s Vineyard for their cashmere cardigans and grand parties.

A long time ago, in a small village, there lived a wise old monk named Tenzen. One day his neighbors discovered that their sixteen-year-old daughter was pregnant. Furious, the parents confronted her and demanded to know the name of the baby’s father. Through tears she confessed, “It was the Zen master, Tenzen.” The parents went to Tenzen and angrily accused him of betraying their trust. “How could you do this?” they cried out. “You are going to raise this child!” The great sage listened attentively, replying with no emotion. “Is that so?” When the baby was born, they brought the infant to the master’s door and said, “This baby is now your responsibility.” Taking the child in his arms, he replied, “Is that so?” He then compassionately cared for the newborn. As word of the teacher’s misdeeds spread throughout the countryside, he lost both his reputation and his followers. This meant nothing to him as he continued to care for the child with great love. A year later, feeling terrible about what she had done, the young mother confessed to her parents that Tenzen was not the father. Instead, it was the young man in the butcher shop whom they had forbidden her to see. Horrified and embarrassed, the parents returned to the master’s compound to seek forgiveness. “We are so sorry,” they said. “We have just learned you are not the baby’s father.” “Is that so?” “With your blessing, we would like our baby back.” “Is that so?” And with that the master gently returned the child to the parents.

People are often unreasonable and self-centered. Forgive them anyway. If you are kind, people may accuse you of ulterior motives. Be kind anyway. If you are honest, people may cheat you. Be honest anyway. If you find happiness, people may be jealous. Be happy anyway. The good you do today may be forgotten tomorrow. Do good anyway. Give the world the best you have, knowing that it may never be enough. Give your best anyway. For you see, in the end, it is between you and God. It was never between you and them anyway.” “Who wrote this?” “Mother Teresa.

Despite my broken heart, or rather, because of it, I was grateful to be where no one knew me. I was totally invisible here. I didn't have to pretend to be happy or nice or that everything was okay.

Now fifty years old, Jackie was in her prime. She was building her dream house on Martha’s Vineyard, had raised two children in uniquely difficult circumstances, had earned the respect of her peers in publishing, and had fallen in love with Maurice Tempelsman, a man she had known since her years with Jack. She had no desire to marry again, ever, and that was just fine with him; he remained married to his first wife and had no desire to divorce. Jackie had always had a penchant for married men and the emotional distance baked into those arrangements, but Maurice was different; he was devoted to her. Jackie Onassis, in short, had found her bliss. She was now the architect of her own life.

few strokes brought them under the stern. The name of the ship was there in faded letters, also the port to which she belonged. “Shenandoah. Martha’s Vineyard.” “There’s letters on her,” said Mr Button. “But I can’t make thim out. I’ve no larnin’.” “I can read them,” said Dick. “So c’n I,” murmured Emmeline. “S-H-E-N-A-N-D-O-A-H,” spelt Dick. “What’s that?” enquired Paddy. “I don’t know,” replied Dick, rather downcastedly. “There you are!” cried the oarsman in a disgusted manner, pulling the boat round to the starboard side of the brig. “They pritind to tache letters to childer in schools, pickin’ their eyes out wid book-readin’, and here’s letters as big as me face an’ they can’t make hid or tail of them—be dashed to book-readin’!