Joan Kanwisher

I visited Joan Kanwisher at her home in Woods Hole near the Bell Tower this week.   Joan was cleaning out her closets, bundling up sketches and prints for the Community Center.  She let me paw through what she had uncovered and pick out a few for gifts. 

We have, in our dining room, three drawings she did of Eel Pond Bridge, Nobska Light, and the Marine Biological Laboratory.  They are signed but not dated.  The first two were gifts in the late sixties, the last we received some time in the last five or ten years.  Joan was very generous to let us expand our little collection of her prints and drawings.

The negotiation was funny.  She was ready to give the pictures away.  I wanted to give her a material value.  We ended up closer to my end of the scale.  I felt like I had gotten a steal of a deal.  She felt glad to have some cash to contribute to her community cause.

Joan is in her eighties and faces heart valve surgery next week.  She is the kind of woman I just want  to hug.  She’s diminutive and pretty, with beautiful eyes.  We are holding her in the light of our love and concern as she faces her surgery.

In 1965 Joan would have been about 42. That year, when the last train departed from Woods Hole, Joan wrote to the railroad company and the Falmouth Conservation Commission to propose that the right of way be converted to a bike path.  Ten years later that bike path was finally dedicated after more than a few legal battles and administrative hassles.