Commentary
Woods Hole, 1910: idling steam trains exhale vapor at regular intervals, buoys clang out in the channel. An 11-year-old boy from Oak Park, Ill., wanders about the dockside. It is the first time he has seen the ocean. A sidewheel steamer is docked perpendicular to the rail terminus — its superstructure casts shadows across the kiosks and cottage industries of the wharf. The New Bedford, Martha’s Vineyard, and Nantucket Steamboat Company, consolidated from several small companies when the railroad arrived in 1873, has an office at the dockside.
MONSTER SPECTACLE
Editors, Vineyard Gazette:
Public spectacles like the annual monster shark tournament have much in common with the gladiator games conducted in the Coliseum during ancient Roman festivals. Large, adoring crowds immersed in a circuslike atmosphere amid unbridled commercial activity, awaiting the extravaganza of torture, execution and the eventual display of victims.
Vinnie sits at the table in the lounge. He wears, as always, a cap. A big pin in his shirt says I’m The Boss. He’s singing Roll Out The Barrel in a thin tenor. He’s also making me keep to the regular four-four time on the piano. Sometimes I miss the right chord but Vinnie sings on. I’m taking lessons from Ed Wise. Ed tells me it’s good for me to play in front of an audience.
Save Our Farmland
An acre a minute. That’s how much farmland is currently being lost to development and other causes in America, according to a report written by the American Farmland Trust titled Farming on the Edge.
Less than three per cent of the earth’s water is fresh, the water that sustains us. As the oceans rise due to global warming salt water is creeping into coastal aquifers, underground reservoirs where drinking water is stored. This is called saltwater intrusion.
In 1998 the Environmental Protection Agency designated the entire Vineyard as a sole source aquifer, which means our groundwater is the sole source of drinking water for “the Island’s residents and visitors; there is no viable alternative source of sufficient supply.”
Raking it In
From Gazette editions of August, 1936:
The honor of landing the biggest striped bass of the season is held by Carl Norton of Edgartown, who yesterday caught a forty-three pound monster at the Oyster Pond. Mr. Norton was at the pond clamming when a big splash behind him apprised him of the presence of something other than clams. He turned quickly and swung his clam rake toward the fish. Mr. Norton finally got his prize ashore and sold him to the Blankenship fish market at Oak Bluffs.