Editorials
This is the time when voters in Island towns gather to direct their community’s public activity for the year. Hundreds of thousands of dollars will be approved for new fire trucks, historic building renovations, wastewater upgrades, road and sidewalk repairs, police cruisers, public park projects and affordable housing initiatives. Millions more will be pegged to annual town operating budgets.
Martha’s Vineyard could be viewed as having a split personality. Regular folk live here year-round, going about the business of making a living and raising a family just like in any community, and they do it mostly anonymously, at least as far as the rest of the world is concerned.
Walking west on East Chop Drive on a tranquil spring morning, the only indication of trouble is a short metal gate with a spray-painted detour sign. The pavement is remarkably free of potholes and the two-lane road appears intact as far as the eye can see.
March madness is not just a college basketball tournament. It is also a season in flux. When spring wants to take center stage but winter refuses to go quietly. When the call of the pinkletink is interrupted by a late frost, when snowdrops rub shoulders with frozen pipes.
And yet it is also the time of the NCAA basketball tournament. With this in mind, the following bracket invites one and all to choose an eventual victor in this battle between the seasons.
The editors have made their picks.
Ask any adult for a memory they will never forget, chances are if they played high school sports, the big game will top the list. Often it isn’t the big win, though. It’s the loss that sticks tightest; every loose ball, turnover, timeout and bead of sweat shed in that final game. We hope the boys’ basketball team is not feeling this way after playing in the semifinal game of the Division 3 state tournament. Vineyard basketball has not travelled this far into the post-season since 1973.
They’re calling out in Lambert’s Cove. In Oak Bluffs, too, Edgartown, the entire Island by now. They’re looking for love in all the muddy places and anyone out at dusk can’t help but be caught up in this annual mating call. The pinkletinks have awakened. Spring is here.