Eroding Confidence in County Affairs

With the county charter study commission midway through its work evaluating the vital topic of whether the Island needs county government — hiring a county manager at this stage in the game feels almost like a robotic exercise of going through the motions. The county commission plans to interview three finalists for the county manager post on Saturday.

Veterans Day 2007

Children learn it like a nursery rhyme: the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month. That was when the first world war effectively ended, in 1918. After unbearable slaughter, at least twenty million people dead and millions more left as refugees, the war to end all wars was exhausted with a truce, an armistice. It became a day to remember.

Preservation vs. Legal Nightmare

As the clamor grows louder in Oak Bluffs around the Veira Park baseball project, a few key points are important to keep in mind.

It is not illegal for the town to spend money to restore its Little League Park, and Oak Bluffs voters have twice said yes to the project, first at the annual town meeting last April and again at a special town meeting this summer. Voters also approved spending money from their town Community Preservation Act fund to pay for the project.

Last Draggers in Menemsha

The Quitsa Strider II sits rusting at the dock in Menemsha. Her skipper Jonathan Mayhew, who has devoted his life to commercial fishing, has sold his days at sea. A Gloucester fishing cooperative has bought the permits that allow him to fish in federal waters.

Street Art With Heart

In The Wizard of Oz, Dorothy asks perhaps the most famous scarecrow of all, “How can you talk if you haven’t got a brain?” He shrugs, “I don’t know. But some people without brains do an awful lot of talking, don’t they?”

The scarecrows appearing around Vineyard Main streets these days are evidence of a clever, can-do community approach at the Martha’s Vineyard Public Charter School that is more than talk.

Wind Futures

At a time when the economic and ecological costs of fossil fuels continue to climb, Vineyarders are growing interested in the power of wind.

Following decades of almost no wind power generation on the Island, proposals are starting to pop up across the Vineyard to generate electricity through wind turbines.

In recent weeks, boards in Chilmark and West Tisbury together have approved three new wind turbines, essentially doubling the number of modern turbines now operating on the Island.