Opinion
CRITICS OUT OF LINE
Editors, Vineyard Gazette:
The Martha’s Vineyard Festival was a stupendous celebration again. Thank you dearly to all who made it possible.
Flotsam and Jetsam
From the Vineyard Gazette editions of August, 1958:
Among the many paintings by New Bedford’s marine artist, Benjamin Russell, which are now on show, is the Wreck of the Christina. The wreck of the Christina was one of the most famous as well as one of the most tragic that occurred in Vineyard waters.
Recently there have been a number of pieces of legislation on the national and state levels that are concerned with telephonic communication. On the national scene our Congress acceded to the wishes of the administration and allowed that warrantless eavesdropping on citizen’s phone calls was acceptable and further that those who aided in that electronic surveillance could do so with impunity and immunity from prosecution.
The number eight in Chinese brings good fortune, I learned from the scheduling of the Olympic Games. That is why they began last week on the eighth day of the eighth month in the year 2008.
I am not Chinese, I am not an athlete and I live on the Vineyard, not in China. So I should not be surprised, I suppose, that little good has happened to me since I turned the calendar page to August.
Was it the thunderstorms and down pour that preceded the concert, delaying the show two hours, but clearing into a spectacular summer evening?
Was it learning a clutch of Vineyarders had seats in the very same section as us at Gillette Stadium?
Or was it when I first bought tickets online and through a computer glitch, my order was doubled?
This is a tale with a moral. I will try not to tax your attention too long. But I have to go way back to begin because it begins with my childhood. It is about houses and children, and which came first.
We had a cottage in the Highlands of unimpressive size and appearance. My mother loved it for its easy care. It couldn’t even stand in the shade of our city house, and there certainly were no special rules for children. No one had ever looked aghast at a child on its premises.