A group of riparian owners on Squibnocket Pond pressing for permission to use herbicides to control phragmites found no relief from the Chilmark zoning board of appeals this week.

The board of appeals voted unanimously to uphold a cease and desist order that bars the Squibnocket Pond Organization from using the herbicide Rodeo on the invasive plants.

Finding a new occupation at the age of 45 is either a testimony to necessity being the mother of invention or pure foolishness. Who knows? Nothing was going particularly well when my husband and I moved to Martha’s Vineyard in 1988. I was exhausted after a having a huge garage sale and then packing up the contents of a 10-room house on the mainland and moving to a summer cottage with six rooms, plus a storage unit that would be emptied when the addition to said summer cottage was completed. My husband was now the business manager for the Vineyard Gazette.

Four words are carved in a wooden block sign hung above the door frame in Peter Martell’s Oak Bluffs office. Ever Ready. Ever Willing. Mr. Martell is one of the co-owners of the Wesley Hotel, the oldest hotel on Martha’s Vineyard. Along with George Fisher and Richard Kelley, he bought the hotel in 1985 from Paul Chase. The three men renovated it for nine months and reopened for business in the spring of 1986.