Martha’s Vineyard Commission’s Lesson

With the dust still settling from the Edgartown special town meeting this week, the next task at hand is for the Martha’s Vineyard Commission to ask itself some hard, probing questions, and central among them is this: Has the commission grown out of touch with the Island community?

A Scrooge No More

From Art Railton’s Just a Thought, of December 16, 1988:

About this time each December I begin to wonder: Is Christmas worth it? Frazzled and frantic, with a long list of things still undone, presents still not bought, cards still not written, the tree to put up, I’m tempted to chuck it all in. Bah, humbug!

How did Christmas get to be so hectic? Why not go back to the “good old days,” the way Christmas used to be?

Tuesday Vote in Edgartown

Special town meetings in December are often lackluster affairs; most of the time a town considers itself lucky if a deep off-season special town meeting attracts a quorum to conduct the necessary business at hand. Usually at this time of year it is housekeeping business that leads to the need for a special town meeting — bills from a prior fiscal year that require voter approval to be paid, emergency repairs to a leaky roof on some town building.

On the Side of Angels

Lights, please. Every year Linus van Pelt asks for a spotlight and steps right in to quote the gospel of Luke and remind Charlie Brown that Christmas is not a time for fear, but of “good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people.” To all people, the angels said, came a child.

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights is the secular articulation of the deepest truths of all spiritual traditions. It is the best, deepest and highest ideals of all traditions,” says Rabbi Brian Walt, a founder and former director of Rabbis for Human Rights-North America. Three years ago, that organization began to produce prayers, sermons and teaching materials linking the Universal Declaration of Human Rights to core Jewish values for use by Jewish congregations to celebrate International Human Rights Day. Today, Dec.

My son Hardy and I have been fighting about clothes. It is December and the weather has turned much colder but he refuses to wear anything warm. He likes his short-sleeved shirts and thin pants. Winter coats are bulky and feel “horrible.” Hardy recently turned six. Horrible and gross are his two favorite words.