Commentary
Old Houses, Town Stewards
What next for Tea Lane Farm in Chilmark? A cloud of uncertainty now hangs over the project to restore the farmhouse after voters rejected a spending article for a second time at a special town meeting Monday. What was most troubling was not that voters turned down the request for $550,000, but that they did it so quietly. It was puzzling to see almost no discussion on the town meeting floor about this important project which has been actively on the drawing board for two years.
Editor’s Note: The following story was published in the Gazette in February 2006. Basil Welch died on Sept. 24 at the age of 87. His obituary appears on Page Four in today’s edition.
If you want to find Basil Welch , just pull into his Chilmark driveway and follow the signs.
Pass the one on the right that says Caution: Old Hunter Crossing, tacked to the tree on the edge of the yard.
A single note plays for what seems an eternity, wavering in the ear of the fiddler. She tunes, walking the stage at the Katharine Cornell Theatre to greet each band mate, seeking perfect pitch. The guitar player entertains the audience with an anecdote. “It’s close enough for pop music,” declares the mandolin player. The fiddler surrenders.
ILLNESS AWARENESS
Editors, Vineyard Gazette:
My name is Rebecca Perkalis. I have bipolar disorder. I would like to have the community know that Mental Illness Awareness Week is October 2 to 8. According to the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI), the United States Congress established the first week of October in recognition of NAMI’s efforts to raise mental illness awareness. NAMI is an organization that fights mental illness stigma and promotes advocacy.
Like most kids from suburban New Jersey, I grew up disconnected from the earth compared to the Native Americans that I’m learning to live like today. But I was not completely disconnected; I loved to be outside and despised video games. I would spend a lot of time “suburban canoeing” in polluted rivers and “party bagging” on the Vineyard during the summer. We would forage for bags of beer cans and redeem them for money at Our Market. The natural hunter-gatherer inside me was itching for the natural world and I didn’t even know it!
Border Lines
From the Gazette Fence File:
The boulder-strewn hills of the Vineyard are enduring but many of the relics of a more recent past are not. Consider the split rail fences of fragrant cedar. A generation ago they were familiar in the landscape, though not so much as the stone walls.