It is a grey, overcast day on the Vineyard, cooler than yesterday, early on a Sunday morning, jazz playing as I slowly wake, rubbing sleep from my eyes, a second cup of tea to accompany the morning.
This past Wednesday, I crossed over to Hyannis, spending the afternoon with my friend Nick Stuart. Last year, I was Best Man in his wedding to Lisa Cataldo; it remains one of the brightest moments in my life.
After spending a wonderful afternoon with him – a great lunch, a visit to the JFK Museum in Hyannis, a beer before I left, I returned to the Vineyard, to my little cottage.
A wise friend, Linda, wished me a good 4th, if we could all just ignore the farce which is Washington, DC. How true.
Wherever you are on the political spectrum, what is going on right now is just too much. Trump and the Republican party are, to my mind, a farce and a disgrace to traditional Republicanism, the kind I knew when I was growing up.
The Democrats are in disarray and farcical. There were Democratic debates last week. I didn’t watch. Really, twenty plus candidates?
One of the things I noticed in visiting the Kennedy Museum was that, in JFK’s day, which means when I was young, there was a season for politics. There was the nomination process, there was the convention, there was the campaign. It did not consume the body politic for years on end. Now, it’s presidential politics forever. It is not good, in my humble opinion, and the body politic is not asking for it.
It reminds me of books I have read about Roman politics and that doesn’t make me feel good.
In the meantime, it is now a Sunday morning, with my warm tea, jazz playing. In not too long, I will be at the bookstore, helping the slowly waking island residents and visitors find summer reads.
I am finishing “Lost Roses,” historical fiction of World War I and the Russian Revolution and the years after. On Wednesday, we are doing a signing with Martha Hall Kelly, the author of this prequel to her best-selling “Lilac Girls” at the Edgartown Library. It seems wise to have read her book before the signing, and it is a good read.
It is a mellow morning, this lovely greyish Sunday morning, warm but not hot, a bit of fog still lingering from the night before when it huddled down on the island as I was leaving the bookstore about seven last night.
At the little cottage, I did my own huddling, a martini with “Lost Roses,” a little cheese and meat for dinner, eventually falling asleep, in bed, with my book, a nice end to a not bad day. How lucky am I?
Letter from the Vineyard 
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