Hillery Occasionally

So, it’s my last day of vacation. 
I’m nursing a little bit of sunburn.  You really do need to apply sun block when it’s cloudy, even if you’re sitting in what looks like the shaded area on the deck—trust me on this.  The flip side is I got carded at the liquor store buying a bottle of white Burgundy.  Not just carded, scrutinized, and without a stitch of makeup on my face!  I don’t believe in fixing what ain’t broke, so I opted for a fresh clean face again today and whisked my new hat off to lunch. 

I went back to A Slice of Life (50 Circuit Avenue, Oak Bluffs, 508-693-3838), their slogan is “we love food,” by the way, and ordered the Fried Green Tomato BLT…again.  I cop to being a creature of habit, but I did order their grilled scallops on Tuesday night.  They were great, but for my last meal I wanted nirvana.  And I got it.

After savoring every last morsel, and taking this picture of my plate, I made my waitress listen to me kvell about my lunch. 
She kept nodding and saying, “I know!” again and again.  Then she told me that on her first day training she was too nervous to eat anything, not having a lot of experience, but the kitchen accidentally made an extra BLT and the chef gave it to her to eat in the back.  She said she took one bite and all her nerves disappeared.  “I thought, ‘I get to work here,’” she told me.  And that’s when I knew this was quite possibly the BLT of all time. 

Seriously, I recommend you go to Martha’s Vineyard just to eat here!  The clam chowder has won awards.  It was my pick of the week and you know I tried everyone’s chowder.  Not only that, but I actually ate the coleslaw that came with my BLT—all of it, both times—and I have a solid history of disdain for this particular summer side.  Okay, I’m moving on!

I stopped into Mad Martha’s, a Vineyard ice creamery since 1971, to see if they had any swag that my often irritated colleague Martha might enjoy, but I got my ice cream elsewhere.  I went into The Black Dog for t-shirts for my niece and nephew.  I bought a silver ring at the kiosk in the middle of Main Street in Vineyard Haven. 
And I thoughtfully appreciated my last afternoon tooling around amidst friendly traffic in the clunker.  We ordered dinner from John’s Fish Market (State Road, Vineyard Haven, 508-693-1220), where I’d been buying fresh fish.  They also take orders for prepared meals you can pick up after 5:30.  We got ginger glazed halibut and a fisherman’s stew very similar to bouillabaisse.  Super yum!

I flew out in an eight-passenger plane, same as I came in on, but as the ninth passenger I sat in the co-pilot seat.  For a white-knuckle flier, it was quite a pleasant and educational experience.  As we pulled away from the island, I could easily identify East Chop and West Chop and then, as we flew over, Oak Bluffs, Vineyard Haven, the yacht club and my friends’ house (by way of The Monstrosity, which is a sore thumb even from the air).  Finally I had to look ahead, but I can’t wait for next summer!

They say a good thing never lasts, but I generally feel as though I come into the good things I find at the tail end.  As Cameron Crowe put it, via his incarnation of Lester Bangs contemplating rock and roll, I get there just in time for the death rattle.  As I begin the end of my vacation, I’m feeling that way about this island.

It all started with The Monstrosity.  Wait, first the good news and then the bad.

Here is why, in my opinion, this place—Vineyard Haven and West Chop in particular—is ideal.  All the houses are pretty, tastefully landscaped, and well maintained without being cutesy or ostentatious.  Cutesy is Oak Bluffs.  Edgartown can certainly be ostentatious.  But Vineyard Haven is fairly laid back. 

The community is dedicated to preserving the quality of life here, but there are simply some roads that will never be paved because…well, what a bother! 
There’s a family living in the lighthouse, maintaining that federal property, and they have a basketball hoop over the garage door. 
The tennis club is participating in the voluntary water ban.  Most of the cars in the parking lot at the A&P have the same bumper sticker: Mopeds are Dangerous.  Everyone waves at me or says hello when I run or bike past them…and they mean it—the pleasantry is sincere.  They don’t know me, but I’ve found my way to their neck of the woods and that’s enough.  They’re happy to see me enjoying their way of life.

Then there are the people themselves—families who’ve been coming here for generations and the friends they’ve lured in to keep them company.  I overheard a conversation between two women at lunch the other day.  The older one said, “I know the Elliots introduced you to your husband, but did you know we invited them here for their first visit and helped them find their house?”  They look for any way to weave you into their lives. 

The yacht club is not what you think.  It has exactly eight deck chairs.  Mainly there are benches and picnic tables covered in plastic tablecloths. 
And no computers or cell phones are allowed on the deck.  Everyone knows each other one way or another or they introduce themselves and find they have someone in common.  There is no dress code.  People wear bathing suits, tennis clothes if they’re actually playing in the courts out back, or cargo pants and a t-shirt.  Strangers who sidle up and tell me they like my red polka dot dress simply mean it.  There are no cocktails. 

There is traffic in Vineyard Haven, but no one drives aggressively.  They stop for you and wave.  They ask you if you’re lost when you’re stopped on your bike consulting your book or map.  Also, people drive hybrids and clunkers, not monster SUVs.

The food is mostly grown or caught locally due to the expense of bringing cargo on and off the island.  I was at the fish market again yesterday and I saw a sign that read, “Fishing is not a life or death matter.  It’s far more important than that!”  And this is how people here feel about the food they provide.  There is a farm here that operates greenhouses without soil and another that has backtracked the farming of peaches to recreate The Real Peach.  I may get to taste one tomorrow, but my point is that someone cares about this.  These people care.

I’m also staying in a gem of a house.  Originally built in the1800s and architecturally renovated twenty-some years ago, it’s typical in size for West Chop.  It is fabulously located with a view of Vineyard Haven Harbor and a high hedge that keeps out the noise and general obstruction of cars passing on the road between the house and the waterfront. 
The view remains unobstructed because my friends helped turn the waterfront land into an extension of the Sheriff’s Meadow preserve.  And by securing against future building on this tract they unwittingly invited The Monstrosity…and the end is nigh.

Some Miami trial attorney with more money than sense bought the other two lots that face the protected waterfront land and is in the midst of constructing a five building compound with a swimming pool, tennis courts, a putting green, and a regulation basketball court. 
The hedge is not high enough to block this obstruction. 
As if anyone in the neighborhood were less than appalled by his activities, the owner has posted black and red signs at each end of the construction sight: Private Property, Keep Out!  This is what my friends call The Monstrosity.  I’ve taken to calling it Xanadu…better yet, Xana-Don’t!

I’ve been privy to all manner of worst-case scenario discussions since this business began, but you have to see it to believe it—to understand how things really are changing here.  You let someone like this get a foothold and in twenty years all you have left is yet another enclave for the super rich.  What do you wind up with? Loud parties, drunk drivers, dinner reservations, valet parking, spa day, and a makeover to cover those bags under your eyes.  In short, mopeds are the least of your dangers.

You know how I love to shout out from vaca!  I find myself fortunate to be spending the week with friends on Martha’s Vineyard and I don’t know when I’ve been to a more picturesque, friendlier place—certainly none with better food!

Monday I drove around between Vineyard Haven, where I’m staying, Oak Bluffs and Edgartown just to reacquaint myself with the geography.  I went to the fish market and got a three-inch thick cod filet and then when I picked up my friends’ grandson at the yacht club a friend of the family presented me with a bag of vegetables from his garden.  We ate it all together for dinner…so good!

I’ve been biking around on my friend’s GT Windstream every day.  Tuesday I rode a seven-mile route up around Lake Tashmoo to the Vineyard Sound beach and soaked up a little sun.   

Then I had lunch at A Slice of Life in Oak Bluffs.  I’ve been eating chowder every day, every way, but this place fed me the BLT of my life: fried green tomatoes, Applewood smoked bacon and thick-cut toasted rye bread with rosemary.  Unbelievable mouth heaven!!!

Today it was a little cloudy, but I’d had so much fun on my ride I went even further—a fifteen-mile trip to Christiantown and the Cedar Tree Neck Sanctuary.  I never actually found Christiantown and when I got to the nature preserve the hill was really steep and muddy going down, so I decided the rainbow was in fact the pot of gold and turned back. 

My inland adventure took me through woods, past farms, stables, lakes, and the last cranberry bog on the island.  (Aside from the latter, it reminded me a lot of rural Wisconsin—what those from the sticks call God’s country.)  I had a lobster roll for lunch and got home before it started to rain.

The sun might be gone for the rest of the week, but it’s not supposed to rain tomorrow so the Windstream and I will be out on Beach Road between Vineyard Haven and Edgartown.  Tonight we’re going to see Ratatouille and I get to try another wonderful vineyard eatery.  TTFN!

So, I’ve been distracted and a little lazy, regarding this Occasionally business at least.  And doing my dishes—definitely distracted and lazy about the dishes.  Not so much concerning the rest of my life.  I’ve been on point almost everywhere else.  But I do miss spouting off something like regularly.

How we happen to have this time together now is I’m sitting in a jury pool.  I’ve had three hours of sleep, seeing as I worked last night, and I’m sitting here in a Ramones T-shirt and sunglasses resigned to the fact that I absolutely cannot sleep sitting upright.  Hey ho, let’s go!

As I wrestle with my fundamentalist Christian upbringing on one hand and my respect for Rousseau and the social contract on the other, surprisingly I’m not thinking about what I’ll say if they call my name…I’m thinking about the devil.

Satan is the best character ever.  Have you noticed?  In fiction, we call him the antagonist; on television and in films, simply the bad guy.  “The devil made me do it!”  Our antagonists motivate our narratives.  They tempt and taunt our good guys, doing everything they can to create conflict.  And every story needs fresh, relevant, or daring conflict.  In fact, most of the time, the bad guy makes the flick.

So, I find myself wondering, as is my wont, ‘If I could be any devil, what kind of devil would I be?’  I don’t have to ponder very long before the vision comes to me.  I’d totally be a cylon!  A skin job, of course. 

I feel compelled to interrupt my geek-fantasy fan-boy rant for a moment here to shame the shit out of you if you don’t know what the frak I’m talking about.  Everyone who’s anyone knows that Battlestar Gallactica is the best thing television has to offer these days, so don’t bother with Netflix or TiVo—just go out and buy the DVDs already.  And if you want to argue the merits of Ugly Betty or Top Chef, STOP READING MY BLOG!  We’ll both be happier.

So, yeah, being a cylon would be so hot.  (Technically, all female cylons are hot, literally and metaphorically.  Strangely, the men are not, unless Sam is actually a cylon (which, incidentally, I’m not completely sold on yet (I heart parentheses, by the way (being a tangential thinker and all)) no matter what Ronald Moore says).)  But which cylon would Hillery be?  I’m not a Number Six and definitely no version of Sharon Valerii.  I simply cannot fill the boots of a Lucy Lawless character—plus, I’m not bedding down with Baltar…ewwww.  There is one yet to be revealed model, the twelfth—a highly contentious topic for us to speculate until the show returns in 2008.  But I have a better idea.

If I could be any cylon I’d be the thirteenth model; the one they’re working on in their tricked out toaster labs; the one they’re making from the eggs they took from Starbuck when she was in captivity on the farm; the one that only exists in my imagination…for now.  To my mind, the interbreeding has been merely a means to this end. 

Starbuck is the character I identify with most.  There’s a cherry picking party of protagonists to choose from: Adama, Appolo, President Roslin, and even Baltar (although he does have so much Satan in him, he’s just too incompetent to be really eee-vil—hence, not wanting to sleep with him.).  But Starbuck best represents the beauty of our flawed humanity.  It is, after all, her dysfunctional rebelliousness combined with blind faith that carry her through her most harrowing hours.  She’s a hot head, untrusting, stubborn, fiercely protective, rarely pragmatic, more than a little insecure, and the bitterness cultivated by all the hard knocks she’s taken is necessary to cover the biggest heart you’ve ever seen.  That’s us all over!  Right?

Starbuck has been identified by the cylons as a pivotal player in their grand plan.  They’ve taken the trouble to study her both physically and psychologically.  I think they think (not that there really is a they—I’m fully aware that my hypotheses are all predicated on the wild eyed imaginings of Sci-Fi Channel staffers) that if they can beat her, they can beat us.  So they’re making a humachine based on her to take us down.  And that’s the devil I’d be if I had to choose today.  So many beautiful problems!

I wouldn’t look exactly like her, I’d have a little Sam in me and a little Zak (rather than specifically Lee) just to throw her off.  I’d be a super-humanoid, so I’d probably be able to out fly her.  I’d count cards and drink her down too.  The only chance she’d have would be hand to hand combat—close, personal, messy, unpredictable.  That’s what people are good at.  That’s all we’ll ever have over engineered perfection and it’ll always be a story worth telling.  Looking for something to tide you over to season four?  Watch Gattica!