Commentary
Summer Swells
From Gazette editions of August, 1986:
In the middle of what will be his last long summer on the Vineyard for some time, Angelo Bartlett Giamatti enthusiastically compares ballet star Mikhail Barysnikov with the baseball Wizard of Oz, Ozzie Smith, who works his magic in the infield of the St. Louis Cardinals, one of 12 teams over which Mr. Giamatti will now preside as chief executive of the National League of professional baseball.
Every year the Martha’s Vineyard Ecu menical Youth Group goes on a mission trip. Last year we went to Washington D.C. to help in a homeless shelter, the year before we worked in a soup kitchen in New York city. This year we were lucky enough to get to fly out to Nashville, Tenn. to help with flood recovery efforts.
Within a healthy system of food produc tion and distribution, farms would not need “saving.” However, as it is, we are losing farmland (and the corresponding skills,) at alarming rates. (In Massachusetts, about 20 per cent in the last 25 years.) The traditional system of inherited family farms is not sufficient.
For as long as I have been an active member of Amnesty International, and certainly from the mid-1980s, it has been taken as an article of faith that founder Peter Benenson was inspired to write his famous Forgotten Prisoners article in May 1961, that in turn led to the establishment of Amnesty, after reading a British newspaper article about two Portuguese students who had been arrested and imprisoned for raising their glasses in a toast to freedom.
HURTFUL LESSON
Editors, Vineyard Gazette:
Dating back to the early 1940s when the Steamship Authority’s ferry would leave from New Bedford, it has been a tradition for my family to vacation in the summer on Martha’s Vineyard. Therefore, when my grandsons were born, this tradition continued.
Routinely in the morning, the boys (now 11 and 13) and I would have our breakfast and then read a few chapters from our respective books. After reading at least three chapters, we would have a discussion.
Every time I see President Obama autographing a piece of legislation in the Oval Office, I’m in awe of how neat his desk looks. I mean, here’s the head of one of the most powerful countries in the world — as of last week, that is — and there’s nothing on his desk but a telephone and a notepaper dispenser. That’s from my limited perspective as a television viewer, of course. Maybe he also uses a blotter, one he can doodle on while carrying on delicate negotiations with, say, Afghanistan’s Hamid Karzai.