News
The Vineyard Gazette won 27 awards in the annual New England Better Newspaper Contest this year, including general excellence, the top prize awarded in the winter contest for small newspapers for 2011. “An outstanding, fascinating weekly newspaper. Superb newspaper writing. It should be studied in journalism classes on community newspapers,” judges wrote.
There is a group of about 1,500 winter commuters a day between the Cape and Martha’s Vineyard, and not one of them takes the ferry. They all fly.
The commuters are crows. They leave for the Cape early in the morning and return to the Vineyard around 4 p.m. to spend the night here.
The phenomenon, known among some birders for years, is now the subject of a scientific study that promises to shed light on the reasons for, and effects of, this curious behavior.
Chilmark is now accepting proposals for Tea Lane Farm after town voters agreed, with sweeping support this week, to lease out the historic farm on a long-term basis.
Applications are due by next month; the Tea Lane Farm committee is still finishing a timetable and rubric for the project. The farm committee will review proposals and conduct interviews with applicants and then make recommendations to a joint committee of the selectmen and land bank advisory board, which will make a final decision.
Students and staff at the Martha’s Vineyard Early Childhood Center are mourning the loss of preschool lead teacher Sherry Winnette, who died last weekend.
“She was an amazing teacher, and clearly the children, the staff, and the parents will miss her,” said Debbie Milne, the director of early childhood programs at Martha’s Vineyard Community Services. Ms. Winnette, who had been at the center since September, taught a class of 14 three and four-year-olds.
As the federal government presses ahead with plans to develop wind farms on a 1,300-square-mile plot of ocean south of the Vineyard, on Monday night the Island had its turn to have a say about it.
Representatives from the federal Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, accompanied by members of the Gov. Deval Patrick administration and Cape and Islands Rep. Timothy Madden, came to the Katharine Cornell Theatre in Vineyard Haven Monday to solicit public comment as part of a call for information announced on Feb. 6.
The former chairman of the Edgartown dredge committee is at the center of a flap involving unathorized use of the town dredge for a project on private property in Katama Bay.
Norman Rankow resigned from the dredge committee last week, saying that he felt he needed a break. He had served on the committee since its inception.