There was sunlight after a storm, rousing band music in the background, cupcakes, and a large warm and welcoming crowd when the Elizabeth Taber statue was officially “unveiled” and given to the Town of Marion. Sitting in casual posture yet with an elegance and grace one can only imagine Taber possessed in life, the statue is art on a grand, lifelike scale. The Bicentennial Park location at the corner of Spring and Pleasant streets means that, at last, Taber is back in the center of community life.

            For more than two years, a dedicated group of benefactors along with a supportive and hardworking committee of nearly 30 people combined efforts to make the creation and placement of the Taber statue a reality.

            On October 17 it all came together beautifully, not unlike the many buildings given to the community by Taber, whom many called the town’s “Fairy Godmother.” Waiting in the wings seated on a bench in the recently created garden in the park was the statue. Before short speeches were uttered, a small tent shielding the statue from earlier rains was carried away, fully exposing the bronze figure to her adoring public.

            Taking to the patriotically decorated podium first was Celebrate Elizabeth Taber Statue Committee Chairperson Judith Rosbe, who recalled a conversation that fellow committee member Tinker Saltonstall had had with former selectman Al Winters, in which Winters lamented the lack of recognition for all that Taber had done for the community.

            Sometime thereafter the committee was formed and began the process of finding the right sculptor for their project. Rosbe said they had wanted to secure a local artisan. “We didn’t want to fly someone in from California,” she said. The committee eventually received three responses to its invitation for concepts and costs. When the voting was done, Erik Durant of New Bedford was unanimously selected.

            The Sippican Historical Society started off the fundraising by pledging $50,000 to what would ultimately grow to more than $175,000, Rosbe said. The Fundraising Committee was chaired by Betsy Fallon along with committee members Priscilla Ditchfield, Susan Grosart, Louise Nadler, Shelly Richins, Carolyn Rubenstein, Maryellen Shachoy, and Lisa Whitney.

            Other committees Rosbe said were critical to the success of the project were the Site Committee chaired by Bob Raymond with members Nancy Braitmayer, Debbie Bush, Priscilla Ditchfield, Norm Hills, and Nan Johnson. And last but not least was the Publicity and Outreach Committee chaired by Tinker Saltonstall with members Dana Anderson, Debbie Bush, Laurie Knight, Robin Shields, Amanda Stone, and Margot Stone.

            Of Durant’s work, Rosbe said, “I love the intimacy of her sitting on a bench.” She said the committee had a lot of ideas, but in the end, it was Durant’s artistic vision that they agreed was the best.   Rosbe explained that the statue’s posture is what is called contrapposto, an Italian term which means the arms and shoulders while pointed in a specific direction are somewhat turned but balanced when compared to the torso and legs. Taber’s statue shows her gazing slightly northwest towards the library bearing her name.

            Board of Selectmen Chairperson Randy Parker spoke next, giving a verbal sketch of all that Taber had done for the community and her history that is now published in the New Bedford Whaling Museum’s Lighting the Way program.

            Taber lived in New Bedford after marrying Stephen. She would suffer greatly with the loss of all three of her children and later her husband. As a widow, she retired into her County Street home only to emerge nearly a decade later and return to Marion where she had been born in 1791 at the confluence of Marin and South streets.

            Once back in Marion, she made it her business to bring “snap back” to the town she loved so dearly. The “snap” would be, as she is quoted as saying, “for the improvement and embellishment of my native place, lovely Marion by the sea.” To that end, there are six buildings in all for which her legendary wealth was given for the betterment of the townspeople. Those buildings remain standing today – the library which also houses the Natural History Museum, the Music Hall, the stone chapel across the road from the First Congregational Church, the founding of Tabor Academy, and the building of a home for its headmaster.

            At the end of Parker’s comments, the Board of Selectmen moved to accept the statue as a gift to the town when it was time to make the official transfer of ownership.

            Durant was asked to say a few words about the masterpiece he crafted. He thanked the committee for their trust first and foremost. While there had been a bit of controversy about the pipe the statue is holding and the positioning of her legs in the seated position, for Durant it was all about giving the final piece humanity. “It’s designed to be interactive,” he joked, saying it was ripe for taking selfies. “I designed it so you’d move around it and so that the back would be just as interesting as the front.

            “It’s not a monument to what she has done, but it’s bringing her to us … just sitting here … a real person.”

            Rosbe said there was a fund for the continued maintenance of the site and to keep the statue clean and “not turning green.”

            The event was made more festive with music from the Sanborn’s Academy Brass Quartet headed by former Tabor Academy music chairman Phil Sanborn, “Celebrate Elizabeth Taber” stickers, and mini-cupcakes.

By Marilou Newell

Photo by Ryan Feeney

            There has never been a time in my life when the US Postal Service did not matter. Some of my earliest memories of growing up in Onset include going to the post office for my mother. Our dependence on the services provided by the USPS was high with nearly daily interaction with the postal clerks who seemed always to be beavering away.

            We did not have home delivery service in Onset. Everyone walked to the post office. It was a hub of community activity and a place where people would stop and chat each other up for a bit. It was the heartbeat of that tiny village.

            Carrying the mail home each day was one of my chores. Ma would sort through the mass of advertising circulars and utility bills, handing me anything she thought could be relegated to my play-office in the corner of my bedroom.

            The post office kept us connected to the bigger world outside the confines of our little house and our little village. Magazine subscriptions and the arrival of the seasonal mail-order catalogs were events. Whether it was delivery of my summer Weekly Reader or the Christmas edition of the Sears and Roebuck catalog, the post office provided the conductivity, albeit manual, that we needed.

            Through the years, staying in touch with people via the written word was a high priority for yours truly. When I say written word, I don’t mean keystrokes. I’m talking about good old fashion pen in hand. I was thinking the other day about all the people I once wrote letters to, maybe as many as seven at one point in time. A book of postage stamps was like an internet connection.

            When my high school friends began migrating west to California in the ‘70s, writing and receiving letters became the conduit by which our relationships were maintained. Coming home from the post office with a thick envelope knowing it contained the latest Gold Coast adventures, detailed in longhand, of friends living a bohemian life-style thousands of miles away. It was exciting. Writing a response was expected, otherwise, I’d receive, “Why haven’t you written!” Writing and receiving letters was simply part of living and made possible by the USPS.

            Later on when I began a decades-long quest to “find myself” my journeys took me to Italy. The postal service kept me connected to family and friends. I attempted to explain myself, be understood, be accepted, and included all by way of letters entrusted to an operation we really couldn’t see or understand.

            As I sat in that small apartment in Vicenza looking out from my fourth-floor perch across the fields that surrounded the country farm villa far below at the end of the lane, I’d describe what I was seeing in living color and in long rambling sentences to my cousins and my mother so far away. The act of writing a letter and posting it made me feel like I was talking to my family. I just had to wait two weeks to hear their voices in return. I relied on the postal service; in this case, the A.P.O. afforded the US military service that kept the mail moving across the Atlantic. Those letters swept away the loneliness.

            By the late ’80s, I’d returned east after a stint on the west coast near my hometown friends. They stayed there, not wanting anything or anyone back east. My return spoke volumes about missing home. Once again it was letters that tied me to Onset, primarily my mother but also several cousins who seemed to enjoy reading my missives.

            But I wonder today, usually when the internet goes bye-bye, as it has just now while I write this, what would we have done without the US Postal Service? Consider all the services it’s offered over the years far beyond mail distribution. People without a bank account can buy money orders. Applications for a variety of things such as passports can be obtained from the post office. I don’t know if this applies any longer, but the post office used to offer notary services.

            When I think about the mail it is not so much the actual stuff that now arrives daily, but instead, a sentimental journey through relationships, most of which have come and gone, that I once enjoyed, secrets shared, love expressed, gifts sent, and received.

            The USPS was so reliable I once baked cranberry-nut breads during Christmas time and mailed them from Onset to Santa Monica so my girlfriend could have a taste of home during the holidays. And those cards in the mail received into my homesick hands so often when I lived thousands of miles from family, Christmas, Easter, birthday, or simply “thinking of you.” Small emotional life rafts that buoyed my spirit for days knowing that someone somewhere was thinking of me.

            Today receiving hard copies of my Medicare statements ranks high on the list of must-haves. After all it is my responsibility to make sure the program is only paying for services rendered, and maintaining those documents for two years is necessary. But, let’s face it, people of a certain age depend on hard copy versus scrolling through electronic lists. Yes, I still prefer real books, too.

            Sure, I use the usual suspects of delivery services available at a keystroke in our digital satellite-controlled world. But much like the library, the brick and mortar types, the post office stands out as a bastion of what good government can accomplish. I know, I know the USPS if fraught with money troubles, mismanagement, etc., etc. That is troubling. But the principle of a government helping its citizens, connecting people, providing business opportunities, and keeping the love light burning between sweethearts is precious to me.

            While most of the family I wrote to has passed away, as grandchildren have grown into women of purpose using quick texts to convey messages complete with emojis (give me strength), and my penmanship now rarely pressed into service deteriorates, I hold steadfast to the importance of the USPS. For surely if it were dismantled, a private letter-carrying service would fill the void, and costs would be what the market would bear, not what the market should bear.

            I “heart” the USPS. May it last at least as long as I do, for to lose it now would be like losing another loved one.

This Mattapoisett Life

By Marilou Newell

            The wild turkey has made a remarkable revival in numbers from near extinction in Massachusetts when the last one was killed in the year 1840 until today; the state population is approximately 25,000.

            Frequent attempts at stocking over the years failed because pen-raised hens did not have wildlife survival skills to teach their poult, who died off wherever they transplanted. The effort turned a corner in 1980 when flocks were moved from Pennsylvania to Berkshire County, and they expanded so rapidly that a limited fall and spring hunting season was allowed and, 40 years later, is still in effect to this very day.

            Over the next quarter-century since 1980, state trap and releases of wild stock moved the population across the state with the final stocking on Cape Cod. According to many officials, they are now almost everywhere except the island of Nantucket. The Indian name for Nantucket means far-off place, which is obviously why they are still not there.

            Today in many of our suburban wooded areas they have become a problem with some residents, thus biologists wonder if they were too successful for the turkeys’ own good. Turkeys are social creatures with a pecking order in each flock. The trouble usually begins with younger males coming of age by contending and pushing for position around them. In suburbia, they lose their fear of people, and are known to chase away children waiting on a street corner for a school bus. Sometimes they become obnoxious and ornery around wooded back yards, and managing them by involving animal control officers has become a sticky situation. It is still legal to feed wild turkeys, but authorities do not recommend it because it attracts competition near your house.

            Strangely enough, it is the suburbs that have attracted large numbers of turkeys instead of moving into vast remote forests, as might be expected. Agricultural habitat clearings developed by human beings are more to their liking, which seems to be a contradiction of wildlife adaptation in modern times.

            Turkeys were very abundant here when the pilgrims were shown in paintings bringing them home from the hunt for their first Thanksgiving, but their numbers declined every year that forests were cleared for agriculture. Extensive hunting also took a toll for almost the following century. When the continental congress of a new nation voted to name the turkey its national bird as recommended by Benjamin Franklin, it was not approved because the turkey loses its head at the first sign of danger and flies scatter-brain in all directions. Instead, the bald eagle was adopted, even though it had a flawed character of regularly stealing prey from ospreys.

            The turkey’s final recovery is unique in a country that endangered and decimated the passenger pigeon to extinction, nearly wiping out endless herds of buffalo, as well as two species of whales, the western sockeye salmon, and the eastern Atlantic salmon.

            The wild turkey may have risen out of the ashes of stocking failures like a phoenix, but its saving grace may well have been the similarity to its domestic cousin; both have an American image as leading role in Thanksgiving’s historical tradition. It now appears to be right at home at the edge of harvested cornfields, or nearby pumpkin patches, and often close to barnyard habitat.

            They would fit in today with other of Mother Nature’s cornucopia of natural blessings for the feast that was celebrated to express thanks for a bountiful harvest. The present wild turkey may still rank with the Indian three sisters of squash, corn, and beans, almost 400 years later.

By George B. Emmons