It’s August and summer’s bounty is reaching its peak. I head to the West Tisbury Farmers’ Market with an empty straw basket and an open mind. A full wallet helps as well.

POPS PREMIER SEATS

Editors, Vineyard Gazette:

As one member of the Friends of Oak Bluffs, I have been working with folks from the YMCA and the Vineyard House to sell premier seating for the Gladys Knight and the Pops concert this coming Sunday, August 10.

It will be a remarkable event that we are proud and pleased to be associated with and the funds we raise will go to benefit three wonderful and worthy Island charities.

Vineyard Purple

Joe-Pye Weed is blooming around the swamps and streams and in the moist woodlands of the Vineyard, a certain sign of late summer. An Eastern North American native, there are three varieties: coastal plain, spotted and hollow. Of course the coastal plain variety is found most commonly on the Island.

Always Prepared

For many Island residents, the Coast Guard is a comfortable, innocuous presence. Coast Guard vessels and boats, usually painted a cheerful white, red and blue, are commonly seen in Vineyard waters. The service’s lighthouses provide guidance for mariners at night, and thousands of photo opportunities for tourists during the day.

In large part, though, the Coast Guard tends to be taken for granted. When out of sight, they are out of mind.

Housing Bank Comes to Rest

Advocates for the housing bank, who have worked long and hard for their cause, lost the battle last week when a bill to create a new tax on real estate sales — with the money intended to go into an affordable housing fund — died as a piece of unfinished business on Beacon Hill. The Massachusetts legislature is now in summer recess.

And the housing bank, first filed three years ago, has run out its string.

In for a Penny

From the Vineyard Gazette editions of August, 1933:

A relic of times when Edgartown was a port under the jurisdiction of the British king came to light last week in the form of an old coin found by an employee of James Lineaweaver, summer resident of Edgartown. The Lineaweaver summer home at Tower Hill is near the site of the old landing where, doubtless, merchant vessels of two centuries and more ago often discharged and fitted.