Remy Tumin
There’s a sense of wonder when you walk the trails at Waskosim’s Rock Reservation in Chilmark on a winter day. Dry leaves crunch under your feet on the meandering flat trails that lead you to the stream. It’s easy to be distracted by the moving water, one of few sounds in earshot, but be careful not to trip on the tree roots curving out of the hillside. Up the small stile over the stonewall, across the sheet of ice where life has stopped underneath the frozen water, be sure to take a moment to stomp your feet on the ice and create dizzying patterns.
The Vineyard is generally a safe place to eat. You can visit the fields where your vegetables were grown, you know the roast chicken you’re having for dinner was slaughtered humanely at an Island farm and this is a small enough community where you trust the purveyors.
But not everything Islanders eat is local, and when there’s a baby spinach recall, as there was in 2010, a tomato salmonella scare, as there was in 2008, or a hot dog recall like the one in 1999, questions arise over how safe we really are from foodborne illnesses.
Rising tension over West Tisbury’s responsibility to pay the lion’s share of the Up-Island Regional School District budget led to sharp words at a district school committee meeting this week after the West Tisbury finance committee balked at paying for the school budget.
The finance committee took a preliminary vote last week not to recommend the school budget on the town meeting floor in April. The point of tension centers on the Chilmark School, where enrollment is increasing.
The Edgartown selectmen voted this week to allow the Atlantic restaurant to change its liquor license from annual to seasonal. The Atlantic is now closed until April.
“If the economy improves they’d love to be back to an annual [license],” restaurant spokesman Sean Murphy said at the selectmen’s weekly meeting on Monday. “The numbers just aren’t there to operate an annual license.” The restaurant has been open year-round for the past two years.
Fresh produce, meat, fish, bread, cheese and wine are the essentials of any meal, and come spring you won’t have to travel past the Triangle in Edgartown to collect your provisions. Three new food establishments plan to open this spring.
On North Summer street, fresh baguettes and baked goods will be for sale at Rickard’s. Slated to open in February, Rickard’s will be serving espresso drinks, soups and lunch items as well.
It may have been the coldest day on the Vineyard in five years, but the warmest place to be on Monday afternoon was the pool inside the new YMCA of Martha’s Vineyard in Oak Bluffs. The heated aquatics center was an echo chamber of energy as the Vineyard high school swim team took to the blocks for the first home meet in 40 years.
Many considered it a historic moment as the first swimmers hit the pool for the first event — 25-yard freestyle — against the Blue Hills Technical School from Canton.