Opinion
CONSCIENTIOUS OBJECTOR
Editors, Vineyard Gazette:
I have been walking at Lambert’s Cove Beach with my dogs for many years. I am seasonal so my dates of walking are typically from June 20 to Sept. 10. I usually arrive there around 8:30 in the morning and stay until we must be off at 10:00. I have never gone off-season or in the evenings. I write for the times I go every morning. Usually during a summer season I see a total of two or occasionally three dog feces on the path that have not been picked up.
In 1967 and 1968, here on the Vineyard, I began to prepare myself to meet the epic sea change that is the Occupy Wall Street Movement today. Those years began a 43-year course in what is possible in this life we live together on earth.
It has been an uninterrupted series of lessons on the power of beauty, on right and wrong, on the limitlessness of love, on the authority of compassion, and on the depth of the grief we must embrace for all that we have destroyed and lost over the last 150 years.
The year 2012 will mark the 35th anniversary of the Martha’s Vineyard Shellfish Group. Traditionally such a milestone is reason to reflect on the past and ponder the future. So please permit me to indulge in some memories.
Alarming Contradictions
Editors, Vineyard Gazette:
Making Main Street Music Again
The holiday shopping season was much in the news this week, as the warmth of Thanksgiving quickly faded to Black Friday, followed in close succession by Small Business Saturday and Cyber Monday. The stuttering economy has put retail sales under the microscope, and consumer activity during the run-up to Christmas is occupying the center of attention for business journalists around the globe.
Thanksgiving 2011
Rain and drizzle fell softly this week over the fields and lawns of November, still green from a mild fall that has seen Islanders out in their shirtsleeves right through last weekend. That’s when gusty winds finally blew the last leaves off the trees and sent them skittering around the yard. Raking at last! The warm weather has served to take the urgency out of fall chores this year, as if these days might stretch on forever with no hard winter ahead.