February, 2026
I’m home from a day at the bookstore, now reopened after being closed for four and half weeks while a new floor was installed and we did inventory.
Generally, I spend a few days crafting my “letter.” Not this one. It’s poured out of me; I want to get it out before I hack at it again.
My return from vacation while the floor was installed corresponded with the most snow the Vineyard has seen in a dozen years.
The day the store reopened, walking to my car, I didn’t notice a patch of ice, fell, made a small fracture of my ankle. Now I am in a boot, which makes navigating difficult. This winter is more trying than any other I’ve had on the Vineyard. I am working very hard not to be cranky. It’s not easy.
So much is not easy these days.
There is so much to be angry about, dismayed about, and I effing don’t want this man and his MAGA movement to dominate my head space completely. Trump and his minions do so many things so despicable it is hard not to have one’s jaw constantly dropping.
While all of this is going on, relentlessly, from our president and the cast of despicable people with whom he has surrounded himself, I must seek out things to give me solace because in solace there will be found strength to go on resisting because we are moving into a time when we have to actively resist.
There is joy in my days in the bookstore, in the comings and goings of people, of the joy of watching them pick out books for themselves, often not what I would guess. There are moments of conversation, about the weather [for the island, pretty awful right now], politics [most of our customers are aligned with me, but not all], our Banned Books section, which is forever changing as there are so many banned books.
Hope I feel when young people come into the store and buy thoughtful, serious books that will demand something from them.
Gratitude when I wake in the morning and look out my windows, surrounded by nature, glad I am still walking the earth with a moment to feel grateful. And that’s been harder to do wearing a boot on my left leg, using an umbrella as a cane to help me navigate the sheet of ice my driveway has become.
I am grateful for all of you who take the time to read my letters.
Yes, I am enraged right now. The administration is working to obtain subpoenas to look at social media accounts to see who opposes ICE. Well, yes, I oppose ICE in this manifestation, thuggish as it is, masked as it is. Even the Brown Shirts back in the day didn’t wear masks.
So, if the administration gets its way, I will, perhaps, be targeted for opposing the behavior of ICE. And that astounds me. That in this country this would be happening. Goes way beyond Richard Nixon’s Enemies List. Brings it down to all of us, at every level.
This morning, I was at St. Andrew’s, confirmed as a member of the Vestry, the Episcopal Version of the Parish Council, my second tour of duty as a Vestry member. As I stood on the altar, I thought doing this was an act of hope.
St. Andrew’s is a little church and it’s the church which took in the Venezuelans dropped on Martha’s Vineyard by the Governor of the great state of Florida from the great state of Texas.
In the day to day, we work to do good things. We collect food and clothes to pass on. We helped start the first shelter for homeless on the island, along with two other churches, now grown into its own building.
Mainstream Christianity has been in decline but, unless I am misremembering the reports from Pew, the decline has plateaued, perhaps because of Covid, perhaps because churches are, in their essence, community in a time and world craving community.
To stand for good is an act of hope – and defiance – in a time when hope and defiance are now needed as much as ever.
An immigrant in Minneapolis posted a video on Tik Tok in praise of old white women in Minneapolis, who helped him feel safe. Watch it here. It’s wonderful and some of those old white women are people with whom I went to grade school. Take inspiration from them.
As, God knows, we need inspiration.
Letter from the Vineyard 