Amity selectmen announced Thursday a new tax will be imposed on all paraphernalia bearing the image The White Shark. Beginning July 1, all merchants will be required to pay an additional 2 per cent to the town for all items sold with the shark.

Reported sightings of Portuguese man-o-war off the Amity south shore continued last weekend when an off-Island woman came out of the water with "stinging lesions" on her arms and legs.

When Dr. Matt Hooper last saw Amity, it was from the deck of the ferry as it sailed toward the mainland. As he remembers it, the day was cloudy and unusually cold for late July.

It looks like real estate agents on Amity will have reason to smile again this summer: rentals for July and August are on pace to top last year's total of 16 — the highest in almost 30 years.

It is plain to me that I, Harry Meadows, will be recalled as the newspaper editor who, having learned of the killing of a woman swimmer a week before the start of the summer season, told the chief of police: "There won't be any story about the attack in the Gazette."