Editorials
Giant tour buses line up outside the visitor center in Edgartown, letting out scores of tourists who wander streets where leaves now fall thickly and stray roses still bloom on fences like summer holdouts. Along the Beach Road in Oak Bluffs fishermen of all ages cast into the chilly, wind-roughened waters as the derby enters its final days.
Originally an A&P, the Vineyard Haven Stop & Shop was built years before anyone on the Island ever contemplated problems with overcrowding. Water street once hosted a modest ferry terminal, a hot dog stand for tourists and the Smith, Bodfish and Swift farm and feed store.
Stand on the north shore of the Vineyard at any point as the sun begins to set and look to the west. As the last light of day floods the land and sea, in the distance you will see the silhouette of the lighthouse, a lonely sentinel standing on a promontory of land at the westernmost edge of the Vineyard.
With its historic carousel, best-of-the-Vineyard pizza and fried clams and Victorian seaside charm that is rooted in an earlier century, Oak Bluffs
Tearing down old buildings is most often cheaper than restoring them, so the sale of two antique houses to private buyers this week marks a positive turn for historic preservation on the Vineyard.
The Old Parsonage in West Tisbury, a seventeenth century farmhouse believed to be the second oldest home on the Island, and the Warren House, an eighteenth century merchant’s home on North Water street in Edgartown, are both in urgent need of extensive renovations.
Chappaquiddick residents who have fought long and hard to get cable and internet service to the tiny island are less than two weeks away from another critical hurdle.
Comcast has said it needs to receive letters of commitment from two hundred and seventy Chappy homeowners by the first of October in order for the cable giant to provide service. Though more than two hundred and seventy people have verbally committed, according to proponents, an escrow agent at the Edgartown National Bank has received fewer than two hundred and forty letters to date.