Publicity/sound bytes abound these days on: Green living, local food, concerns over climate, water and soil, using more local/renewable resources, alternate transportation, and Green/natural building. Designing/remodeling homes, landscapes and whole communities for lower resource use, more recycling and reuse, less oil-based transportation, and more local businesses, employment, products, and food production are becoming more important to the economy, the environment, and human welfare. Sustainable Strategy efforts are springing up for cities/towns, schools, colleges, open spaces, farms, and neighborhoods.
"I go back quite a long ways. I was born in 1903. William Allen was my father’s name, and Sarah Allen was my mother’s name. She was a Hammett. My father’s people, they came over on the Mayflower, and they settled in Chilmark. So I have quite a title to my name.
"My father was a farmer.
"I grew up on the South Road. My father was John Bassett. Oh, we had quite a farm. It was at least a hundred acres. It was on both sides of the road. My father had cows, and the sheep, and oxen and the horse. We had ducks. There were turkeys. He used to sell turkeys, ship them off-Island Thanksgiving and Christmas. I remember him crating them up. I suppose Bart Mayhew picked them up and took them to the steamship wharf.
"I was born on Canonicus Avenue in Oak Bluffs on April 6, 1931 down near Farm Pond to Jesse Steere and Florence Catherine Steere. When I was born Mother was eighteen and Dad was forty-two.