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.