Commentary
Being a seasonal Island resident, when I return to my other homeland I am often asked what do people on Martha’s Vineyard do in the winter? My most immediate impulse is to react to this probing inquiry by saying that they, the entire Island population, immediately after the last seasonal resident or tourist has disappeared over the horizon, take off all their clothing, paint their fundaments an intense shade of aqua and indulge in the worship of various forms of fungi.
As Thomas Ricks was writ ing his definitive account of the planning and execution of the invasion and occupation of Iraq, he would sometimes look out his window and see children walking home from the kindergarten down the street, and have an awful premonition.
“I would look at those kindergartners and think ‘one of those kids is going to fight in Iraq’,” he told a small audience at the Bunch of Grapes bookstore last Friday night.
Derby Days
Here are some things to like about September:
Two Ponds Share Common Theme
The images linger in the mind long after they first are glimpsed: the tranquil surface of Mill Pond at the entrance of West Tisbury, the dancing waters of Menemsha Pond a short distance away from narrow Menemsha harbor and the open expanse of the Atlantic Ocean.
KEY PATH PROTECTION
Editors, Vineyard Gazette:
By Leonard M. Robinson, longtime Tisbury resident and sometime contributor to the Vineyard Gazette. From the Vineyard Gazette editions of May, 1951:
I live on Frog Alley. I often wish that the town had kept the name. It is now known as Owen Little Way, whatever that means, but when I was a boy everybody knew it as Frog Alley, and that had a meaning.