Gradiation

Turns out, there's at least one last one-room (well... one building) schoolhouse here in Socialist New England. Block Island School graduated its Senior Class this week. It's paywalled, mostly, but you get to read the important point. The irony: (nearly?) all the Tourist Service jobs go to imported cheap furriners. Unless you're a kid of the landed gentry or business community, ya gots to leave the idyllic island. It's too bad. Permanent citizens have numbered under 1,000 for decades. Well, at least according to the Groundhog Day Census going back nearly forever, conducted at a collection of waterholes. Annually, since Groundhog Day does happen each and every year.

A NYT report from 20 years ago, sounds about right, still. While we've never made it to the island in the dead of winter (some day we'll be counted in the Groundhog Day Census; if you're on the island after the last boat leaves, you can be counted. We 'own' a week at one of the lodging establishments, so I guess we qualify as an 'Islander'), most of the report fits our last-week-of-October stay. Just, so far, no snow. Although we did get to stay a few extra days one year: the gale blew so hard there were no boats. We were delighted.