Opinion
I noticed the oaks right away. My first visit to the Vineyard was in spring 2002 when the abundant oak trees were raining down yellow pollen. Later, after moving to the Island while my daughter was playing at the West Tisbury School playground, I wandered off into the woods to look at the trees. I was gleeful to discover five oak species, including Quercus alba, the white oak. A young mother asked why I was so excited. After I explained my love affair with oaks, and my new position at the arboretum, she gave me some input: “I hate oaks; they’re everywhere.
It’s August. Oh God, it’s August.
When you leave the Island for a couple of years and come back, as I have, it’s reassuring to know that most things don’t change much. The way folks behave in August, for example — that never changes. But that’s not good.
From Gazette editions of July, 1934:
Here it is, summer on Martha’s Vineyard, a pleasant time at a pleasant place. We are always tempted at about this phase of every summer season to look around and take stock, or, if that is too businesslike a phrase to use in association with the Island, to form a picture of the busy, idle summer.
Recently I read David Hearn’s letter regarding the denial of his request to install a pier from his property on the Vineyard Haven side of Lagoon Pond. The conservation commission denied his application yet again, based on the town bylaw. Generally, local bylaws are put in place by communities to compliment the Wetlands Protection Act and one of the stated interests in the act is to “protect land containing shellfish,” in this case the shellfish beds in Lagoon Pond.
I congratulate the Gazette on its coverage in your July 27 issue of the large house issue and of the related zoning board of appeals hearing in Chilmark last Wednesday concerning the Zoia property on the shore of Nashaquitsa Pond. In fact, we are fortunate to have had this hearing which has highlighted the weaknesses of current regulation.
In Mending Wall, the poet Robert Frost wrote that “something there is that doesn’t love a wall.” I thought of this poem after reading “Super-sized Houses Are Talk of Towns” in the July 27 issue. I think I know what Frost meant.