After the MCAS Dust Settles

As Island schools deal with the fallout from the annual Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System exams, their administrators will be tested. Voters will find their own commitments tested, as town and state coffers are scraped to find ways to pay for ever-higher scores demanded by the federal government’s punitive and never fully funded law, No Child Left Behind.

The United Nations has designated the first Monday in October of each year as World Habitat Day. This is a day to reflect on the state of our towns and cities and the basic right to adequate shelter for all. It is also intended to remind all of us of our collective responsibility for the future of the human habitat.

Each year, more than three million people experience homelessness. Millions of low-income American households have to pay more than 50 per cent of their income for rent when estimates say the figure should be no more than 30 per cent.

WITH DELIBERATE SPEED

Editors, Vineyard Gazette:

There’s a red herring mixed with the Oak Bluffs sharks, and it’s time for us to get on deck and do some sorting.

The Humane Society of the United States last month released a video shot by an undercover investigator at the most recent Oak Bluffs Monster Shark Tournament. The video, together with the accompanying letter, showed that the tournament is, in addition to being a cruel spectacle, quite probably a major illegal gambling operation. It is one more reason why the tournament should be shut down forever.

I t was a long winter last year and, finding myself sitting in front of the fire a lot, I got into a frame of mind where I began to consider increasing my cultural input.

Part of the solution was to actually get out of the house and make a trip to Miami for Art Basel with my cousin Lanny MacDowell (which we documented in this newspaper) and another part was to make trips deep into cyberspace on my computer — browsing widely to find culture in the ether.