Someone apparently forgot to tell the titmice about social distancing. They are cheek by jowl at the feeder like morning anglers at the Dock Street diner at Derby time. The finches, too, all yellowed up and proud for the summer, are apparently unruffled by the turmoil engulfing the world of the wingless. The poor wingless, who cannot fly away and so plod down to SBS wondering how many other wingless may have – GASP! – touched the bag of meaty sunflower seeds between whenever the sunflowers, rooted in their fields, were turning their faces toward the sun for a season and today. The poor wingless and rootless, masked and gloved and wondering, perhaps for the first time ever, if somewhere along the way their species might have been better off trading some cleverness for feathers. Or bartering some grasping ambition for ever more of everything for the simple satisfaction of a season in the sun.

Not that birds, too, don’t occasionally go full speed toward openings in life that they are certain are a portal leading to prosperity and happiness, only to hit the glass and find themselves, if they are lucky, flat on the deck thinking, “Shit, I hope this is cyclical.” I heard a tremendous crash not long ago and found a bird on the ground beside my house. Dead, as wingless and rootless now as any of the rest of us. It was a flicker, a large thing of crazy beauty, and I carried it down to the edge of the woods near to where a long time ago we buried the best dog known to history.

I found myself sad for the bird and the dog, of course, but also strangely grateful for the opportunity to witness up close something so spectacular, and to be a part of its transition into whatever flickers become when life moves on without them.

It is an irony of life that one of the principal human reactions to the seemingly unending supply of woe and misery that the world can throw down is gratitude. It’s a theme as old as Job and Socrates, Buddha and Confucius, and as new as CAT scans and evolutionary psychology. Gratefulness, it turns out, may be one of the things we picked up around the time we stopped dragging our knuckles on the savannah, or even earlier.

On the Vineyard, a spirit of thankfulness has bubbled and gurgled through the past few months like the sourdough starter that everyone seems to suddenly have begun growing in their kitchens. Oh, sure, there have been plenty of loud and sour voices of fear and loathing in the usual arenas where the bitter gather to proclaim their own purity and trade misinformation and blame. But in between the squawks and howls can be heard a steady underlying harmony of everyday people thanking other everyday people for simply showing up. To sell groceries or pump gas. To keep the hospital and post office going. To figure out how to keep their enterprises alive even while closed so they can keep their employees employed. To plant their farms. Or fix your tires. Or sell you birdseed.

Once again we are celebrating the annual Best of the Vineyard awards. And more than ever we at Martha’s Vineyard Magazine are filled with gratitude to be a part of the community of small businesses and big hearts that make this other Eden the envy of less happier lands.

This article appears in July 2020.

The best thing about July, it sometimes seems to me, is that it is not yet August and all of those weeks of summer are stretched out ahead like a lazy line of turtles on a log. Usually, a negative compliment like “not yet August” would be some kind of slight, either to July or August. But it is not. It’s just a pure statement of fact: the beginning of summer is better than its end, even accounting for the truth that most of the year-round population rarely has time to exhale until September.

So enough already of the usual wistful, crypto-nostalgic, nothing is sweeter than a late summer late afternoon on the porch hooey. Save it for next month. Or better yet for September. Or never.

No. July – right now – is the time to pick up a sandwich somewhere and hit the beach. Or the boat. Or the trail. I don’t care what beach; whichever one you like to go to. Whichever one you can talk your fancy friends into unlocking for you. Whichever one is right down at the end of your road, or across your pond. Whichever one you usually don’t get to until August, in time to say: “What happened to July?”

So blah blah blah already about all the little chores around the house. The stuff that’s always cracking or peeling or leaking or growing weeds. Mildew? I don’t relish being the one to tell you, but if you don’t get some sun and wind on your skin, brothers and sisters, there is going to be some mildew growing in places you really won’t like. Like between your ears. Gutters? You should have done all that stuff in June, and now that this June’s gone you’ll have all of next June to do it. You’re lucky to be in that house on Martha’s Vineyard, so get out of it already and go eat the best lobster roll on the Island. Go get a slice of the best pizza. Eat some of the best fried clams. Lick a cone.

You say the best food is on your own porch? We have thousands of votes that say you’re wrong, and to doubt the voters is un-American, which is un-July. And didn’t we already agree that it is July? So why would you want to be un-July? You don’t want to be an oxymoron. Think about that while you unpack the Island’s best breakfast sandwich.

At least, all of the above is what I am telling myself this summer. I’m going to take as much time as I need to remember that I have all the time in the world to enjoy the best of the Vineyard all summer long, before it’s too late and summer is over all over again. It’s July; it’s early summer; there’s still time to do everything.

There’s still time, too, by the way, for all good Vineyarders to come to the aid of their coastal ponds. But not as much time as you might think. Read Alex Elvin’s report on the challenges facing the Lagoon, which starts on page sixty-four. It’s a sobering wake-up call. For all of the all-American money that has been made over the past few decades building new houses, big and small, all over the Island, there also has been an unseen reckoning flowing slowly but relentlessly underground. The bill is past due, and the sooner we begin to pay it down, the less it will ultimately be.

Which is one more reason you should go to the beach: you won’t be at home over-fertilizing your inappropriate lawn or, er, utilizing your septic system.