The Jobless Goddess

I’m alright now, don’t nobody worry about me. So Kenny Loggins says, even though I struggle with his grammar. We’ve just survived a big storm on the Island . . . and those in the know realize that’s a capital I on island.   Round these parts it’s a whole lot of neighbors helping neighbors, old timers remembering the blizzard of . . . I’m leaving this blank because I know that somebody is going to refute the snowfall total of whatever date I put there. The important part being neighbors here check on each other and if they need a hand, you either extend your own or offer up somebody else’s. I tell you what, it’s a paradox. Before we moved to Martha’s Vineyard from Syracuse, I had colleagues tell me how I’d never fit in here, how it’s virtually impossible to land a newspaper job and if you do, you’ll surely hate it.   Naturally there was the economic issue. Presidents don’t typically vacation in Syracuse. All I could muster at the time is the fact that most of m...

Sometimes it pays to take a look around. Once years ago when I was a single mom without a pot to piss in a handsome friend of mine, a man about 10 years younger than myself, quite coveted in our town for his gold bracelets and the fact that his family owned a fuel business - in upstate New York no less - showed up uninvited at my back door with a 12-pack of beer in his hands. I said thanks a lot, took the beer from him and told him again how much I appreciated his generosity, closed the door while he was still standing on the steps and went back to my telephone conversation - after I cracked one open of course. Another time I was hanging out at a bar with a couple of priest friends, incognito of course, when a younger and sort of attractive man came up to me and said, “Your name is Debbie, right?” “Nope, afraid not,” I said and turned my attention back to my friends. “Really, because you look just like her.” “Nope. Name’s not Debbie. Never has been,” I said, cl...

     I love small towns. When I lived in Parish, New York, there was no end to the reverie, not to mention the constant parades.      We had a Halloween parade through town featuring people of all ages marching in costume along a rather abbreviated parade route. It all culminated at the fire barn where a couple of old draft horses would pull along a hay wagon. Most all town festivities featured the fire barn.       Monday night bingo held there. The caller was a volunteer firefighter prone to bringing on fits of laughter when he drew N 44…which he pronounced as "N farty-far," whereby producing great gales of cackling from the middle-aged women who showed up every week, I think maybe just to flirt with the caller and the other male volunteers who collected their money. Don't get me wrong, I'm not making fun. I spent more than a few Monday nights there myself.      The gas stations served as restaurants in Parish. You...