Down East Magazine - Maine Vacations, Real Estate, Lifestyles

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How Civilized

Eva Murray

(page 1 of 2)

The sky was blue, which we are learning this summer to never take for granted. The new teacher was visiting the island for a few days in July, prior to beginning her tour of duty in September. One always wonders what notions of island life a new person might have assembled. Has she been reading Elisabeth Ogilvie? Robinson Crusoe? Perhaps, with trepidation, the “society pages” out of the local papers? (That, by the way, means the court news.)

She sat in an Adirondack chair on a new friend's deck at the “four-corners;” the hostess and another couple of neighbors came out of the house carrying chips and homemade salsa, something akin to a plate of bruschetta, goat cheese from Appleton Creamery, locally baked French bread. Before long, another half dozen women were there, sharing wine, telling stories. One was Hanny, who works at the Farnsworth and is eighty-plus years old. One teaches French, one makes a line of local soaps which you may have seen in Rockland area shops, one is a full professor who has also climbed Kilimanjaro, one has sailed on the schooner Bowdoin. We all joked to the new teacher that “things are like this all the time...the weather is lovely, it's a regular social whirl...” Sure. She knew better, but heck, take it when you can get it.

Nobody went home drunk; one a little too talkative, perhaps (that would be me,) but nobody started a brawl. Nobody fell down over the steps. Nobody swore, nobody raved. I ate a lot of those little toasted delicious thingies, whatever they were. Maybe a really refined lady doesn't go to a “glass of wine on the deck” sort of gathering actually hungry, but I did, and I stooped to a couple of wise-aleck remarks about government. That's as rough as things got. Everybody else behaved in a manner which would earn a carefully-manicured thumbs-up from Emily Post (who, by the way, was a distant relation to somebody who lived here.)

Tonight, as I write, singer/songwriter Andrew Calhoun will be performing later. A couple of others will also be up there too for the “open mike,” Tom with the drum, Rob, who is somebody's company for a few days and who sings, and Nat will usually play us something. He's got some new songs out this summer (“...tryin' to make a living in paradise...”). We're hoping Dennis will play sometime too, although he prefers to play in his trap shop, meaning the audience comes to him. Nothing wrong with that. They've got the basement of the church set up as a sort of “coffeehouse” atmosphere, and if there happen to be musicians about, a few times a summer, an itsy-bitsy little concert breaks our routine. Andrew is playing this time to benefit Matinicus Island Rescue, which has put a defibrillator on the passenger boat, replaced an oxygen setup, bought a few epi-pens. It's not about the charity, though. People come for the music, because live music on this island is an absolute treat. CastleBay played here a couple of years ago. I had the chance once to gab with Steve Romanoff of Schooner Fare, who said something about playing on another, larger island and there having been a power failure. I assured him if they'd come play Matinicus we might not be able to pay the rate but we can at least guarantee them electricity.

We have very fine electricity.

A few days ago, we had “movie night” at the school, using the new projection setup. Our little school was given this equipment, if I am not mistaken; don't bother fretting about where your tax dollars are going. At any rate, about a dozen of us watched an indie film called “Once,” about some musicians in Ireland. No explosions, no blood, no sleaze, no computer-generated monsters. A couple of people brought popcorn to share; all very relaxing. Hey, why not? Some of us had to pry ourselves out of the house to go, as by that time in the evening we tend to fade. We're the early-rising sort of sophisticates.