"Wake up! Wake up!"
We stirred, we groaned. We woke up. It was still dark. Who was making all this noise before the sun was even up?
"C’mon! Get up or you’ll miss it!"
It was Idle the Iguana, the Source’s mascot and – since the very beginning of the Source’s existence, it’s New Year’s philosopher. Each year we tracked him down and got his predictions and hopes for the new year.
This year apparently tracking would not be necessary. We flipped on the light and there he was, standing in the doorway, toweling himself off vigorously.
"C’mon!" he said. "You’re going to miss it."
"Miss what?"
But the reptile didn’t say anything, just snapped his towel at us and beckoned to follow him. Out onto the lawn we went and up the hill to where we got a clear view to the east, with the sky above us dark, but the horizon showing the first hint of pink.
Idle spread out the towel and sat, indicating we should join him.
"What do you see?" he asked.
"Not much," we said, still grumpy from being woken from a sound sleep. "Maybe if it weren’t so dark, and if we had a cup of coffee."
"Oh, stop grousing," the prognosticating reptile said. "Take a deep breath. Get it deep down in your lungs. You know I smelling? That’s the smell of change. Change is in the air, whether we like it or not."
"Is that a good thing?"
"Depends," he said.
"On what?"
"On what we do with it."
We admit, we don’t do our best thinking this early in the morning, so we were having trouble following him, and he could tell. He sighed with exasperation.
"Look, let’s start with an obvious one. There’s a new administration about to be sworn in. Now, for some people that’s a victory, they voted for Mr. Mapp, they want him to be governor. Other’s didn’t. But that doesn’t matter now. He is the governor, for all of us. So whether you voted for him or not, if you care at all about what happens in the Virgin Islands, you have to be pulling for him to succeed, don’t you?"
"Well sure, if you put it that way."
"So there’s change coming, and we can carp and grouse about it, or we can try to help. That doesn’t mean you have to agree with everything he says or does, but would it hurt to accept that he’s going to do what he thinks is best for the territory? There’s a difference between being the loyal opposition on the one hand and automatically gainsaying anything the other guy tries to do on the other."
"Well yeah, sure," we said.
"For instance, during the campaign, candidate Mapp said he wanted to create 1,000 new government jobs for young people. I don’t know how Gov. Mapp is going to do it, and neither do you. But wouldn’t it be great if he could?"
"Sure!"
"Then let’s let him try," Idle said. "The same with the Senate. OK, last year’s bunch left some big problems for this year’s Legislature to deal with, and sure, the new Senate is mostly the same people as the old one, who so far have treated Hovensa like an old lover who had jilted them. My hope for the new year is that they solve the problem in a way that boosts the local economy rather than gets us entrenched in a long legal battle."
"Amen to that," we said.
At that moment a bright light shot across the sky, a meteor.
"And while wishing on stars," Idle said, seizing the opportunity, "here’s wishing that Hovensa’s owners show a little more tractability. Whether they’re within their rights or not – and let’s hope we don’t end up having a court decide that issue – they were pretty tone deaf the last few months. Nothing gets the Legislature’s back up worse than appearing to threaten them."
We couldn’t disagree there, so we said nothing. The lizard was on a roll, so we let him go on.
"There’s other signs of change as well," he continued. "For instance, did you notice the scaffolding at Fort Christian?"
Yes, we had noticed that in the last year there actually seemed to be progress on the restoration of what is arguably Charlotte Amalie’s most significant landmark, after a decade of stagnation.
"I almost fell into the traffic on Veterans Drive when I saw that," Idle said. "After almost 10 years of wrangling, something is actually happening. The nature of it almost doesn’t matter. Something is happening! There might be hope after all. Good grief, maybe the Charlotte Amalie waterfront is next. It could happen."
"There are little things that would be a nice sign of change," he went on. "On St. John, it’d sure be nice if the aluminum cans finally got picked up regularly so people can keep recycling on a regular basis. But that’s not the biggest concern on the island.
"After years and years and years of talking, wouldn’t it be something if 2015 were the year some progress was made on that central island school for kindergarten through 12th grade. Now that’s going to take some time. But one simple thing that might help on St. John students would be if the school bus no longer stopped in the middle of the Cruz Bay roundabout, bringing traffic to a halt in all directions. All they have to do is have the bus pull into the DMV parking lot. Then the children could get off the bus safely while traffic flows unhindered.
"See, positive change can be simple!" he said.
"But I realize not every challenge is so simple. You noticed the towel, right""
Yes, we said, we were sitting on it.
"I’d fallen asleep in one of my favorite beachside spots, but I got woken up because the water was coming up higher than it used to. So while I fetched my towel, I started thinking about climate change and melting ice caps and rising ocean levels. Living on an island, that’s potentially a real problem, and it won’t help anything to just say it won’t happen, or hope it goes away. Even if you doubt the science of global climate change, you’ve got to admit that if 97 percent of the world’s climate scientists are right, we could be in a heap of trouble on our little island."
"You’re right," we said, "but this is a global problem, not a local one. What can we do here to stop it?"
"Probably nothing. But that doesn’t mean we should ignore it. At the very least, we ought to have some kind of plan in place before the water starts rising for for what we’ll do when they do. I don’t see a lot of that going on, so here’s one more wish for the new year – that Virgin Islanders recognize they’re on islands, and start planning what steps to take if or when the ocean levels rise."
"Sounds reasonable," we agreed.
The eastern sky was beginning to light up, turning from the pink opalescence of pre-dawn to a band of gold that foretold the sun’s imminent arrival.
"Shhh," Idle said. "This is my favorite part."
We watched as the golden band of sky grew brighter, and brighter, then the sun stabbed a ray of light over the horizon. Within minutes, it was up over the horizon, spreading the U.S.’s first sunshine of 2015 on the Virgin Islands.
Idle lay back and smiled.
"I love a new beginning," he said.
Happy New Year.
