A former island teacher who has fallen in love with Matinicus (as people occasionally do) returned for a visit last week and was amazed at how much there was to...attend. The little community was buzzing with the goofy summer socializing we enjoy — perhaps a sophisticated tete-a-tete hanging around the grill at the Farmer’s Market (sorry, no farmers this year, but wicked good sausages).

If you go to the hospital with an earache, and wait, and wait some more, and then somebody comes in with an ax in the back of his head and he is invited to skip ahead of you in line, are you rightfully indignant?

I hope not.

You could say, “Hey, I was here first. I’ve been waiting for quite some time. I deserve to have my discomfort taken seriously. Who the hell does that fellow think he is?”

The storms last winter howled and smashed and tore and the old spruce trees easily gave way. We live surrounded by Picea Mariana, the black spruce, identified by that well-known silvicultural scientist Edna St. Vincent Millay (who mentioned these specific shoreline trees in her poetry). The Internet says otherwise, but I was told by a forester once that these trees don’t usually make 100 years. A black spruce does not become a venerable and ancient tree.

I love that television program where the two ex-stuntmen and their cluster of nerdy science geek assistants eagerly blow stuff up in the name of research.

Around here we call that “solid waste management.”

No, in all seriousness, I tip my hat to the “Mythbusters” team. They have the workshop that dreams are made of, walls filled with shelves covered with bins-full of parts and supplies and components and materials (starting to sound like our bedroom), and the bomb squad guys are always just a phone call away (hey, just like here!).