When I was little I remember being taken by my great-aunt Taddy to a church at the corner of our street to watch a wedding party assemble. Maybe she knew the family, maybe not. But we did it more than once, and if a church was within walking distance of our house, we went. We would watch the folks gather, admire the flurry of the pink and blue-clad bridesmaids, and then the arrival of the bride. The church was surrounded by a green lawn and in the summertime there would be strawberry socials on tables set under the tall trees.

Rare Gift

Editors, Vineyard Gazette:

The Vineyard Gazette has a long and honored tradition as a leader in support of wise land use issues, including conservation, historic preservation and the protection of open space.

These are the challenges of the Veira Park question. It is not about baseball or children or other parents, or even immediate neighbors, mischaracterized in a Gazette editorial as disgruntled.

Author’s Note: This unpublished essay was written in April 2003. Initial and continuing military actions in Iraq, primarily by one aggressor nation, have cast the long shadow of criminal behavior that heretofore has placed civilian and military war-wagers of rogue regimes in the dock, charged and convicted of crimes against humanity.

“War is a dreadful thing, and unjust war is a crime against humanity. But it is such a crime because it is unjust, not because it is war.”

— Theodore Roosevelt,

Street Art With Heart

In The Wizard of Oz, Dorothy asks perhaps the most famous scarecrow of all, “How can you talk if you haven’t got a brain?” He shrugs, “I don’t know. But some people without brains do an awful lot of talking, don’t they?”

The scarecrows appearing around Vineyard Main streets these days are evidence of a clever, can-do community approach at the Martha’s Vineyard Public Charter School that is more than talk.

25 Years Ago

From the Vineyard Gazette editions of November, 1982: