"Christmas was about getting nothing," she says in clipped Yankee cadence. Lorraine Beaucaire Clark's family did not speak English when they came from Portugal; her great-uncle, a Chilmark resident for 55 years,speaks only Portuguese.

Oak Bluffs had fewer mopeds and fewer dealers renting them this year. Now the hospital is reporting fewer people ending up in the emergency room after crashing a moped.

Using new lawyers but spelling out the same themes, the developers of the Down Island Golf Club filed a lawsuit against the Martha's Vineyard Commission late last week, attacking everything from the recent vote to reject a luxury golf course project in the southern woodlands to the enabling legislation that created the commission.

Gasoline is considered a necessity of life, but is one more gas station a necessity for the Vineyard? The Martha's Vineyard Commission was expected to take up the question again last night as a public hearing reopened on a proposal for a new gas station on State Road in Vineyard Haven.

The season's first big snowstorm turned the Island into a winter wonderland yesterday and last night. It marked the first time in years the Vineyard has seen so much snow before Christmas.

Edgartown officials will soon get their foot in the door of every rental property in town, the result of a selectmen-endorsed regulation which forc