A pit bull on the loose in Oak Bluffs has been the cause of some concern among residents, and selectmen took steps this week to have the owners control their dog.
Highlighting the increasingly complex legal and environmental issue of whether beachfront homeowners should be allowed to armor their property against the eroding south shore, the West Tisbury conservation commission last week once again rejected plans for a large stone revetment on a private property on Tisbury Great Pond.
At issue is a proposed 135-foot stone revetment on the West Tisbury property of Wall Street financier Wesley Edens. Mr. Edens has been trying to armor his property for over a year. His house sits some 90 feet from the edge of the shoreline.
After 10 years of planning and debate this week the public will have what may be their final say on the proposed roundabout in Oak Bluffs. On Thursday the Martha’s Vineyard Commission will hold a hearing at 7:15 p.m. at the high school cafeteria, not far from the controversial intersection where the Edgartown-Vineyard Haven Road meets Barnes Road.
Faraway, tectonic plates clenched uneasily, brutal regimes held on tenuously and a hurricane gathered confidence, but on Martha’s Vineyard it was still vacation for President Obama and his family.
In the Panama Canal the grand challenges facing the world are played out in miniature. Here freshwater management, deforestation, biodiversity and global warming have converged to pose economic challenges that the rest of the world may not face for decades. From his perch in the middle of the rainforest, Biff Birmingham, director of the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute (STRI), has made this convergence the focus of his research. He spoke at the Polly Hill Arboretum on Wednesday night.
This is a conversion story. My road to Damascus led past the bustle of the Oak Bluffs harborfront, ending at Dinghy Dogs, the daytime home of Brian Langhammer, the self-proclaimed Hot Dog King of Martha’s Vineyard. I was a hot dog agnostic, chastened by a lifetime of experiences of the sausages as an ignoble mystery meat turning slowly in convenience store displays, or stewing anonymously in suspicious, yellowed water. All that changed after a summerlong education by the evangelizer of the all-American barbecue staple.
