Five Things

• Chincoteague is a town on the island of the same name, in Virginia’s Eastern Shore region. It’s a gateway to Chincoteague National Wildlife Refuge, on Assateague Island, which has beaches and wild Chincoteague ponies. Two herds of wild horses make their home on Assateague Island and every year Each year tens of thousands of spectators come to watch the Saltwater Cowboys swim the pony herd from Assateague Island to Chincoteague Island.  The ponies are well known locally but were made famous by a children’s book called Misty of Chincoteague by Marguerite Henry (1947), a Newbery Honor book about a family that raises a filly born to a wild horse (pony books are not as much of a thing in the US as in Britain but I read this in my elementary school library).  Some believe that the ponies were descended from horses of early settlers but a friend recently came up to me after church in great excitement to tell me there is now evidence to support Henry’s theory the horses are the descendants of the survivors of a Spanish galleon wrecked off the coast of Assateague.

• In front of the Barnstable (MA) Fire Department is a notice board inviting residents to attend a Jamfest of some kind on Wednesday’s.   My sister dared me to remove the offending apostrophe, which I did.  But I didn’t want the firemen to think I was stealing it (bad for a lawyer to commit a misdemeanor), so I tucked it into an unused line below.  Mistake!   They put it right back a few days later.  I am tempted to write to them to point out the errors of their ways . . .

• Wintercombe by Pamela Belle (1988) is one of my all-time favorite books.  I knew it is based on a real house in Wiltshire so was excited to read the author’s story of how she was inspired to write the book.  The book is just $.99 as an eBook. 

• Remarkably Bright Creatures by Shelby Van Pelt (2022).   I don’t know this book or the author (it’s about a widow's connection with a giant octopus) but I saw it in a bookstore and did a double take because I own the Swedish horse on the cover!  I believe my parents bought it back from a trip they took to Scandinavia when I was little.  Is this horse common?

• Sad that summer visits to Cape Cod are over?  I am!  But the Cape Cod Times has some reading suggestions of new books written or set on Cape Cod and the Islands to keep you going until next year.