His strong sense of being vic timized by White America was, I feel certain, what drove the behavior of Prof. Henry Louis Gates Jr., widely known as Skip, that led to his arrest at his home in Cambridge shortly after midnight on July 16.

Unlike the farmhouse I rent on Middle Road, or Binty, the horse who whiles away her dotage in the meadow adjacent, I am not yet ancient. So what is it exactly that scares me about new media — aside from the fact that I need my children to help me download apps to my iPhone?

August Days Begin

This used to be called changeover weekend, when the July people left and the August people came. But the lines of tradition are not so clear anymore when it comes to vacation patterns, and one summer month melts into another much the way one summer week melts into another.

If you’d gone out to the right fork at South Beach on any sunny summer afternoon in the last 40 years, you would have seen her. Dressed in long shorts and shirt, a wrinkled white hat, thick socks and sneakers, Ellen Kendrick would have been there, crouched on a towel, talking to friends. The stories were familiar to the group that met at the same place in the sand all summer.

From a Gazette edition of 1929:

BIRDS AND WIND

Editors, Vineyard Gazette:

I appreciated Susan Whiting giving us the thoughtful comments of David Nash on wind power and bird safety. I completely agree that we should make our wind turbines as safe for birds as possible. However, not mentioned in the article is the bird death rate due to oil spills and the habitat destruction due to coal mining.

Bea Phear

West Tisbury

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POND ADDENDUM

Editors, Vineyard Gazette: