Guarding Beach Safety

The cliffs at Lucy Vincent Beach are collapsing due to coastal erosion, and of course nothing can be done to turn back the Atlantic Ocean’s constant assault on the shoreline; this is simply the natural process at work.

But public safety officials are wise to try to stay ahead of the game this year in being sure that they have clear access routes to Lucy Vincent and other remote up-Island beaches as the summer season begins.

There was a time when my husband and I drove to Squibnocket just to hear the pebbles. And then recently we tuned in to the BP oil disaster in the Gulf. We heard and read about the sightings of globs of oil in the Florida Keys, and the speculation that the oil could possibly reach the East Coast. Were the experts really saying our unique Squibnocket, the pristine beach we’ve exulted over for a quarter century, could be threatened?

From a 1970 Gazette article by Joseph Chase Allen:

Childhood memories retain the picture of the scrub tree, a relic of the past found quite close to the door of some farmhouse kitchen. It is a weathered skeleton of a scrub oak with half a dozen of its principal limbs remaining, every particle of bark removed. Its trunk sawed off above the stump, it extended its bare limbs to the four winds. On wash day garments hung out to dry decorated its limbs after the practice of a forgotten era.

GOOD THINGS, TOO

Editors, Vineyard Gazette:

The town may have budget constraints in this economy, but what about all the good things happening in the town of Oak Bluffs through grants and hard work and good will?

Editor’s Note: The following is an edited selection of reader comments from the Gazette Web site on the story that appeared Tuesday about Brazilian-born seniors at the regional high school who were told they may not wear scarves in their birth country’s colors over their gowns at graduation. Many comments were posted, but the vast majority were unsigned, and by the newspaper’s policy cannot appear in the print edition.

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Pond Sense

Sengekontacket Pond is in trouble again, only this time around it appears to be less about water quality and more about a state bureaucracy whose chief virtue is an uncanny ability to tie itself up in knots.