I am currently reading the book, Chesapeake Requiem, which was recommended to me by a friend. It was written in 2016 and chronicles the year its author, Earl Swift, spent with the watermen and other residents of Tangier Island. I have found it to be a fascinating and disturbingly sad read. It has taught me a great deal about crabbing and the life cycle of crabs as well as the daily routines of watermen and others who live on the Island. Their way of life is vanishing. According to the 2020 census, the town’s population was 436, at least half of whom were senior citizens. At its peak, in the 1940’s, the town’s population was 1250. Tangier Island has also lost 67% of its land mass since 1850. It is literally being swallowed up by Chesapeake Bay. Thus, the Island, its people, and their way of life are facing real extinction.
Reading this book has been a painful pleasure for me. While I am enjoying learning about this very isolated part of the world and its culture, I am keenly aware that even in 2016, when the book was written, Tangier Island was in a state of sinking deterioration from which it would not be able to recover. And despite not personally knowing anyone from Tangier or ever having set foot on its shores, I have felt saddened and upset while reading about this.
When I tune into what I am actually feeling, it is a visceral sensation of being punched in the gut, almost as though I can’t catch my breath. When I ask myself why I might be feeling this so intensely, it occurs to me that our current political climate has threatened us with a different kind of extinction. And much like the watermen and the other residents of Tangier Island, we complain about the changes that are happening in our midst, and then go about our day-to-day lives as though this is not really happening. I pray that, unlike Tangier Island, our country will recover from the greed, racism, and oligarchic fascism that have been biting at our shores and eroding our way of life. However, I am not sure we will be able to beat back this storm. Too many of us are asleep. Too many of us are selfish. Too many of us are complacent, too many of us are brainwashed, and too many of us are afraid to stand up to the routine cruelty and fear being used by the current regime to vanquish our freedoms.
While the end of Tangier Island seems to be a certainty, I think it is too early to say that about our democratic way of life. Perhaps the roots of our Constitution run deeper than we think. Perhaps the values of liberty, justice, and decency will be able to weather this storm. It is possible that the storm will turn out to be a clarifying and cleansing force, prompting us to let go of non-truths and embrace the democratic principles necessary for our survival. The one thing that seems clear from the many storms that Tangier Island has weathered over the years is that the longer the storm, the more damage it did, and the longer it took to repair. We will see how much damage this current storm does and how long it will take for these dark and menacing winds to finally subside.
Margot Weiss McClellan
Easton
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Poetry
Thank you!
Another excellent book in the same vein is Tom Horton’s “An Island Out of Time,” published in 1996, about Smith Island, which straddles the Maryland-Virginia border about 11 miles north of Tangier. Horton lived in Tylerton, one of Smith Island’s three settlements,for several years. Smith Island today has a population of about 200, down from a peak of 800 people in the early 1900s. The island is reachable by ferry from Crisfield and is definitely worth visiting.
Thank you for the recommendation! I will definitely get that book.
I read “An Island Out of Time,” and “Chesapeake Requiem.” The latter book described a mean spirited, bigoted, unlawful, hatefully tribal community at war with itself. As they attacked each other, vandalized churches, sank a preacher’s boat, drove Jews off the Island, they all counted on Donald J. Trump to save them. He promised them a multi-billion dollar sea wall that would save the island. Of course, he broke his promise. I think the environmental erosion eating away the island is a metaphor for the moral erosion of the souls of the people remaining there.
The people on Smith Island did not always appreciate Tom Horton. But his description of the residents of Smith Island made them seem much more sympathetic and humane than the people on Tangier Island.
I hope like heck that the moral decay we see today is not as deep and changeless as the people of Tangier. But with the Republicans gleefully embracing cruelty to the point of sadism to helpless men, women and children, It is hard to be optimistic.
Agree Michael. Trump and his sadist side kicks who have all the power now to destroy what they hate: decency and love, are nothing but avatars for Americans who are racist, homophonic and indecent
people. This is America, they have always been here and now they flourish. What are we to do? I say fight.
Mike,
I think the book shows how misguided people can be.