Opinion
On April 10, I voted to uphold the West Tisbury bylaw prohibiting dogs at Lambert’s Cove Beach from June 15 to Sept. 15 of each year. This bylaw was approved by the Massachusetts Attorney General on Dec. 29, 2011. The result was that dog owners would be able to walk their dogs on Lambert’s Cove Beach for three quarters of the calendar year.
From Gazette spring editorials:
The trailing arbutus is not the first flower of spring — it appears after the skunk cabbage, for instance — but it has as distinctive a place in the emblemology of the spring season as the Easter lily. Its appearance is hailed with singular delight, and with good reason, for in the whole cycle of the year there is no near equivalent of its delicate pink and white beauty, woodland essence, and unforgettable perfume.
I grew up in a very small town in Connecticut. There was one babysitter, Mrs. Shepard, an older woman who lived on a farm, and many kids in town were in her care. We walked to and from our small school, and after school we fed the horses, ran in the fields and splashed in the stream. I remember catching salamanders under rocks — fascinated by their yellow spots or orange stripes. We watched tadpoles grow in stale water and we learned, the hard way, that when chickens peck, they mean business.
The news that the Bunch of Grapes Bookstore would be moving hit me hard. Granted, it’s only to a space across the street. And I shouldn’t have been surprised. For years now, I’ve seen the great independent bookstores of New York and the Bay Area downsize or close up shop. Whether you blame mega-stores, the digital era of e-books in general or Amazon in particular, it’s an undeniable truth that the way that people are reading and buying books has changed.
FREE THE BEACHES
Editors, Vineyard Gazette:
I find it embarrassing to reside in a town where the issue of dogs walking on a private town beach is discussed in length, yet at the same time we do not discuss and continue to exclude from our beaches all outside members of our community.
Nearly ten years ago a small shed went up on the Cook Lands in Aquinnah fronting Menemsha Pond, property owned by the Wampanoag Tribe of Gay Head (Aquinnah). It seemed an innocuous enough little building, but there was one glitch: the tribe had not obtained a building permit for it.