May Days

Perhaps encouraged by the drenching rains this month, Vineyard woods and meadows are blanketed with wildflowers of every description. Bright yellow buttercups and dandelions, white starflowers and fragrant wild lilies of the valley dance along roadsides. Trailing arbutus adorns rutted old roads, wild strawberry flowers are blooming and soon tiny bluets will be studding the fields.

I have no answers to the world’s big problems. I’m no guru,” wrote artist, teacher and peace-promoter Winslow Myers in a recent e-mail. Although he lives high up in Vermont in Stowe, he’ll be speaking here this weekend. He’s the author of Living Beyond War: A Citizen’s Guide (Orbis Books, $16) and director of a group, Beyond War, that for the past 25 years has worked to change the world’s thinking about military aggression and nuclear armament.

PRAISE RUPERT

Editors, Vineyard Gazette:

The following letter was sent to the Tisbury selectmen reacting to complaints about a rooster in the neighborhood:

The news in my morning newspa per was not good. Indeed, it was frightful and depressive. But why should it be otherwise when agendas seeded and fertilized by politicians and statesmen run amok. No matter what ensign they wave from No. 10 Downing Street, the White House, the Houses of Parliament, Capitol Hill, the Kremlin or from a palace in Baghdad, their acts spell disaster with a capital D. Think death, depression, dismemberment for warrior and civilian alike.

In recognition of national Teach Children to Save Day last month April 12, the Martha’s Vineyard Savings Bank sponsored its 10th annual essay contest for fifth, sixth and seventh graders. The topic for this year’s essay was: In our world where financial differences have wide gaps, explain what the differences are between “wants” and “needs.”

The contest was judged on May 10 at the Martha’s Vineyard Regional High School by Peg Regan (past principal), Todd Sawyer (English teacher) and Ann Tyra (bank trustee).

Anchors Aw eigh

From Art Railton’s Just a Thought, May 20, 1994: