We had just got done hiding from one glossy magazine’s freelance journalist when another called with plans to harass Matinicus. OK, everybody, back behind the bushes.

This week, I offer a few stories of how we are kept from harm by those far wiser than us.

Eric called from Burlington wondering how things were going on the island. One always wonders how to begin. “Well,” I began, “we just got done with the bomb squad…”

We’re getting ready for the Annual Town Meeting of the municipality of Matinicus Isle Plantation, an entirely humorless gathering always held on the last Saturday of April. In some ways the event might remind one of the Norman Rockwell “Freedom of Speech” painting from the “Four Freedoms” series. This well-known image from the 1940’s may or may not have been inspired by a New England Town Meeting, but it certainly resembles one.

This morning, as I write, the island prepares for a funeral. There won’t be a church service. I do not believe we’ll be seeing the funeral director or any professionals in suits. The Ladies Aid, as such, does not have to sweep the floor in the church basement, set out tablecloths, and arrange flowers. This particular fisherman requested a far more informal sort of celebration of his life.

So I fried up a big mess of doughnuts. That’s all I can do.

I write on the first of April. The sky is blue, the sea is twinkling, the storms are over, the breeze is — well, no, not exactly warm, but no teeth in it. We heard the peepers for the first time this year on the 31st; Paul came home from the evening check of the powerhouse and stuck his head through the kitchen door and said, “Step out here!” We’ve already had the crocuses; they’re almost gone by. Lobstermen are headed home from Florida and Texas and Tenants Harbor. The daffodils are poking up.

As a member of the Board of Directors of RSU #65, which means a school committee member on Matinicus Island for better and for worse, in sickness and in health, until Town Meeting does us part, and as a former island teacher myself, and a school bookkeeper, and the parent of two little island students in homemade sweaters, I feel like I know a thing or two about what an applicant for this job ought to think about.

The problem is we’re not supposed to talk about much of it.

You want to know what it’s really like around here?

A few weeks ago somebody asked me to write a few lines about my first days on Matinicus and to explain, “in 25 words or less,” about the lobstering. I assured my friend that I was not the best person to describe the fishery, that any of my neighbors would do better, that even a couple of back-issues of National Fisherman might be in order; she just smiled sweetly as if to say “quit your wobbling and write about lobstering.” Sure.

Sometime during the night of February 25th, while the National Weather Service was forecasting twenty-five-foot seas and sixty-plus mile-an-hour gales, the bell buoy outside the Matinicus harbor breakwater broke free of its mooring and made its way into the inner harbor, within feet of the shoreline and a couple of fisherman’s wharves. The next morning, as islanders worked to clear trees and restore electricity to sections of the island that had lost power in the storm, the familiar ring of the harbor bell seemed a bit … loud.