August Days Begin

This used to be called changeover weekend, when the July people left and the August people came. But the lines of tradition are not so clear anymore when it comes to vacation patterns, and one summer month melts into another much the way one summer week melts into another.

Numbers tell the story, this year more than ever, for Martha’s Vineyard Community Services, the Vineyard’s sole provider of a wide array of essential human services on the Island.

The annual budget, announced two months ago, cut half a million dollars, a ten per cent reduction from last year, down to bare bones. Community Services employees will see their salaries cut and their benefits reduced.

Someone says let’s write about water.

Water? I say. Why not the history of the solar system, or maybe some ideas about infinity? 

Water? It supports our life, we come from the water, it is our treasure, what we are made of, and die without. I rejoice in the rain and fog. I love ponds, and creeks and rivers. I thrill at stormy oceans, crashing waves. I fear deep water.

This is too big for me. Could we narrow it down a bit?

News Without Walls

The world has changed since the Vineyard last had a sitting President come to visit. When terrorists attacked the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001, a day that went down in history, it changed the way people travel. The necessary but time-consuming added security in airports and at bus terminals is now a well-settled fact of life; people hardly think about it.

What Shark Tournament?

It appears the bloom is fading on the Monster Shark Tournament that has been the cause of so much controversy in recent years, and that is probably a good thing.

Look, But Don’t Pick

Orange is the color of late July, as butterfly weed begins to flower, albeit somewhat later than usual in one of the coolest, rainiest summers the Island has seen in many years. The distinctive blooms dot old meadows and farm fields around the Vineyard; one of the best places to see butterfly weed down-Island is the Sweetened Water Farm field along the West Tisbury Road coming into Edgartown.