Commentary
By 10 p.m. on the night of the New Hampshire primary, the signature chants of the hundreds of Barack Obama faithful gathered in the Nashua school gymnasium were getting pretty thin.
Sporadically, and particularly when the big screen on the wall cut to the speeches of the various Republican candidates — whose contest had been decided two hours previously — the call-and-response broke out still.
“Fired Up. Ready to go”.
When I first showed up to the Vineyard in 1988 as a candidate for state representative in the newly created Barnstable, Dukes and Nantucket District, I knew maybe six people on the Island and Bob Morgan wasn’t one of them.
Fortunately for me, Bob decided I was his candidate, and he took me around to the VFW, the scallop shucking hall, the senior centers, the coffee shops and other places where Islanders could be found in the off-season.
YO-YOING: ANOTHER VIEW
Editors, Vineyard Gazette:
Recently you printed a letter from Scott Terry regarding the controversy over the use of yo-yoing for striped bass. Mr. Terry has a reputation for being a very good artist as well as a very good fisherman and he has certainly had his share of press over the years, not all of it positive.
January Thaw
To be sure, Islanders worry about global warming, but when the weather turns from bitter cold with temperatures in the single digits to a balmy fifty degrees — as it did between last week and this — well, they might put the worries aside for a day or two.
Weathering Leaner Times
Statistics from the Martha’s Vineyard Land Bank, which keeps the most accurate records on the Island real estate market, are the latest and strongest confirmation of the Vineyard’s softening economy.
Real estate transactions on the Vineyard fell last year for the third year in a row. Revenues at the land bank fell for the second consecutive year.
Tisbury Tilting at Windmills
The decision by the town of Tisbury to challenge the state school funding formula in court is a wasteful expenditure of public money and a near-certain recipe for deepening the rift among the six Island towns over how they divide their payments for the high school budget — precisely at a time when a regional approach and mindset are needed.