On Thursday, July 17, my wife Wendy lost her battle with brain cancer. It has been the most amazing fight I have ever seen. She went at it with a smile and determination, knowing full well it was an uphill battle all the way. Her strength and courage were inspiring and unmatched.

In the Forest

From the Vineyard Gazette editions of July, 1933:

Capt. A. S. Knight, commanding officer of the Civilian Conservation Corps on the Vineyard, has received orders permitting the enlistment of fifteen local men for service with the 106th company, the company at present on the state forest on the great plain. This will bring the company to about 200 men, the strength allotted to the camp by the government.

Barack Obama has been sprint ing so rapidly to the center that we need binoculars to find progressive ideas in the 2008 election.

So I was open to Looking Back From 2101 (Xlibris) by Steve Halpern. Based on Edward Bellamy’s 1887 novel Looking Backward: From 2000 to 1887, the Halpern book imagines a Philadelphia factory worker awakened from a 104-year trance to discover a socialist utopia in 2101.

Bringing Engine No. 2 Home

To run, maintain and protect a town, taxpayers buy all sorts of vehicles: dump trucks, police cruisers and backhoes, among others.

Yet whatever loyal and lengthy service any of them render, they won’t begin to attract the affection inspired by a fire engine.

North Tisbury Restaurant Revival

Jackson and Mary Kenworth want to take over the burned-out West Tisbury restaurant known most recently as Deon’s but also historically known as the Ice House and the Red Cat. The little restaurant sits along State Road in the North Tisbury corridor that is dotted with a pleasant country mix of small businesses and homes.

From July Vineyard Gazette editions:

Ordinarily at this phase of an Island summer the hedgerows would be dusty, and dust would be coating the dry, hot sweet fern beside our sandy roads. The scent of huckleberry and bayberry thickets would seem to be part of the heat, part of the sunny day and the elixir of sunlight itself. Older inhabitants remember how the iron rims of carriage wheels used to sink into the sand, and how the heat and the dust mingled and then fell apart.