Commentary
ROARING SUCCESS
Editors, Vineyard Gazette:
Once in a while, something happens on the Vineyard that makes you take stock of the wonderful place where you live.
That happened to us Saturday, Nov. 10, when we launched our latest children’s book, Thirty Dirty Sailors and the Little Girl Who Went a-Whaling.
Unless you are the world’s biggest fan of déjà vu, you probably do not enjoy the nonstop reruns of late-night talk shows, and it will only get worse as the Writers Guild of America strike marches on.
Scripted shows are now either getting pulled all together or destined to grind to a halt in the middle of the season at the most painful cliffhanger imaginable, leaving you and your family to resort to unspeakable alternative entertainment such as bingo or — gulp — conversation.
It was as cold as charity at 8:30 a.m. on the West Tisbury School soccer fields last Saturday. The wind cut right through you, and it was periodically spitting rain.
The Vineyard’s fall youth soccer season was ending, not with a bang, but with a shiver.
It might have seemed a sad end to the season — particularly considering that the previous week’s play had been abandoned to the remnants of Hurricane Noel — except that the kids didn’t seem to mind at all.
This is our second stint as editors for Sophomores Speak Out. This week we have a different set of opinions on everything from Halloween to school, child abuse and even greyhounds. Enjoy the read.
— Breanne Russell and Troy (85) Small
Why Help Darfur?
By Eric Fletcher
Saturday at McCarthy Field: The Big Game
Whoever said it was only a game had it wrong. Like so many of the great football rivalries across the decades — Harvard and Yale, Army and Navy, Ohio State and Michigan — the rivalry between the Vineyard and Nantucket is buried deep in the psyche of the people who live on the two Islands. The slumbering beast awakens once a year with an infectious burst of energy and rah-rah. In this case that means the Saturday before Thanksgiving, and this year the Big Game will be played at home.
Shifting Sands
Scientific study is yielding valuable insights into coastal erosion. Researchers have discovered that permanent structures built in attempts to contain and control erosion — jetties, groins and seawalls — vary in effect between futility and making things worse.
Government and private individuals build these structures in good faith: sometimes to protect roads and houses, sometimes as a strategy to catch and retain sand drifting in the water down the shoreline.