I am just back from Viet Nam where I watched water buffalo in rice paddies and sailed in a junk among the curious rock formations of Halong Bay. But more importantly, I visited the War Remnants Museum, formerly the Museum of Chinese and American War Crimes. I spoke with Vietnamese veterans of that impossible war in which America wreaked havoc on a countryside and people with Agent Orange and napalm. It was an interesting but trying trip. So I was delighted to return home to the Vineyard in time to find fall at its finest.

The wind farm proposed for Nantucket Sound is designed to use technology that will be obsolete before the project is built. The project represents a knee-jerk reaction to real long-term energy needs, and opportunism intended to appeal to the casually fashionable environmentalist.

The project is modeled on the failed megagrid system of the past, in which the drop across the system is measurable against the remnant of product delivered.

An Island Apart

From the Gazette edition of October 9, 1959:

Joseph E. Howes of West Tisbury visited Tarpaulin Cove, Naushon Island, a couple of weeks ago. Taken to the island aboard the party boat of his neighbor, Nelson Bryant, Mr. Howes visited the scene of his youth for the first time since he left it sixty-five years ago.

Accountable for Learning

So it’s preemptive strike time in the budget season. Every year Vineyard schools superintendent James H. Weiss has the unenviable task of getting his line items in a row before any of the towns write their budgets, meaning Dr. Weiss must plan the Island’s educational spending without knowing how much the towns’ taxpayers will give him to spend. He is rightly forecasting that no dollar will go unexamined this year.

RED STOCKING TIME

Editors, Vineyard Gazette:

I believe the current approach to a national health program is not well suited to the nation’s needs and times and will likely founder as did the earlier Clinton plan.