SUPPORTING DIVERSITY

Editors, Vineyard Gazette:

The Island community recently suffered a tragic loss with the death of a young woman. No one denies this. But in the aftermath of the accident, some members of our community began to talk in disparaging and mean-spirited terms about other members of our community.

On Stage

Cue the lights, please. In rooms small and large, some even sporting curtains, children are filling stages all over the Vineyard these days. Many debuted not long ago at the Vineyard Playhouse through its wonderful fourth grade theatre project. Others are finding their spotlight in spring productions staged in school gyms or cafeterias.

Some of their lines will be delivered with punch, some mumbled, some forgotten entirely until whispered from the wings. But listen carefully and what you really hear is the flint of imagination.

Cinematic Gift

“A good movie can take you out of your dull funk,” film critic Pauline Kael said. “A good movie can make you feel alive again, in contact . . . make you care, make you believe in possibilities again.”

Patrons who venture to the Chilmark Community Center this weekend will be transported from the funk of Island winter, through three days of films carefully chosen by movie lovers who love to be moved.

Welcome Home, Mr. Turkington

He was a quiet politician in a noisy political arena. He was sometimes so quiet he seemed out of place in the fractious clamor of Vineyard politics. His critics wondered in the early years if he was too timid to survive the political wars that roil the everyday life of the Vineyard, Nantucket, Falmouth and Boston. His supporters hoped his quiet reserve would translate to a strong and effective voice for his Cape and Islands district in the state assembly.

As our town counsel Ronald H. Rappaport pointed out at a recent Oak Bluffs selectmen’s meeting, access and use of a town park is not a privilege but a citizen’s right. During the late 1800s and early 1900s, town parks were symbolic of a wider commitment to the public good, citizenship and public well-being. Cottage City, which in 1907 became Oak Bluffs, is one of the first planned communities in the United States. The town planners recognized the importance of parks as open spaces for active and passive recreation.

The heartburn in West Tisbury over the tri ennial real estate revaluation, which hit riparian owners on the north and south shore with increased assessments of two, three, and four times their previous values, is not likely to quiet down any time soon.

Our three elected assessors, who bear the major responsibility for this gut-wrenching mess, don’t seem to understand that 107 applications for abatements in one year signals a level of discontent and political turmoil they must confront in ways beyond the abatement process itself.