White Flower Parade

Holding the Sheriff Accountable

If the state takes over the Dukes County sheriff’s department — and it appears that this will eventually be the case — Islanders likely will not notice the difference. The Edgartown house of correction will still be run as the local jail and the communications center, which is so integral to the Island emergency response system, will remain the same.

What will change is the sheriff will become more accountable for his budget. This is long overdue.

Protecting the Herring

More than one hundred fifty years ago, Henry David Thoreau noted the many rivers on Cape Cod named for herring. The day could come, he mused in his book Cape Cod, when people might find more Herring Rivers on the Cape than herring.

While that day has yet to come, the scarcity of herring in recent years from runs throughout Massachusetts, including on the Vineyard, has endowed Thoreau’s observation with an eerie prophecy.

Museum in Limbo

Less than two years ago, the board and staff of the Martha’s Vineyard Historical Society, now called the Martha’s Vineyard Museum, were brimming with optimism about their chances for raising twenty-five million or more dollars to pay for an extensive new campus in West Tisbury. The time had come, they said, to give the society’s extensive historical collection the display that it had long deserved, in a beautiful and spacious setting on property along the Panhandle Road.

Garage With a View

The controversy over Joseph G. Moujabber’s illegal garage in Oak Bluffs has gone on for a long time — too long — and that may be the only point on which Mr. Moujabber and his neighbors can agree.

But the neighbors have good reason to be upset, and indeed, this conflict has struck a chord that has rung out around the Island, far beyond the North Bluff neighborhood of modest bungalows situated about a nine-iron shot from Nantucket Sound.

Spring Litter

Last week on Earth Day, 26 Island beaches were cleared of empty bottles and cans, plastic odds and ends and other debris. The beaches are much the better for it; 250 volunteers filled 250 bags.

It is fun to find an occasional treasure on a Vineyard beach after the long winter, but such treasures are few and far between. So the annual Earth Day Cleanup sponsored by the Vineyard Conservation Society is welcome each spring.