Commentary
Back in the middle of the last decade, a round about was proposed for the Island’s key blinker intersection, where Barnes Road crosses the Edgartown–Vineyard Haven Road. The discussion faded away. I thought the proposal had done likewise.
This past April the roundabout came roaring out of hibernation when the state Department of Transportation (MassDOT) held what is called a 25 per cent design public hearing. While hibernating, the roundabout proposal had magically transformed itself into a done deal. I was shocked.
The Vineyard will be a very different place in 100 years, notes Island naturalist Gus Ben David. The changes in his lifetime have been “phenomenal,” he says, especially the explosion in population and degradation of natural habitat.
Hurricane Watch
Will Irene, lumbering up the coast earlier this week, lose her gumption and shrink from landfall as Earl did last Labor day weekend? Or will she gain momentum and pack a wallop the way Bob did two decades ago? As we go to press, the first hurricane to threaten New England this season seemed likely to spare the Vineyard a major disaster. But despite big advances in hurricane tracking over the past 20 years, weather patterns remain just capricious enough to keep the skeptics among us skeptical and the planners preparing for the worst.
HELPING HANDS
Editors, Vineyard Gazette:
During the last presidential campaign, the poet Naomi Shihab Nye had the daunting task of introducing Caroline Kennedy at an Obama campaign event in San Antonio, Texas. The honor was made particularly formidable because Ms. Kennedy’s plane had been significantly delayed.
From a 1991 Just a Thought column by Art Railton:
Most of us have moments when we feel more important than we really are. It doesn’t happen often, but occasionally a certain smugness takes over. And why not? We’re living in an age of conspicuous self-importance. It’s the current talisman.