News
Paul Adler climbed up a ladder toward the top of the giant parabolic solar collector in his West Tisbury backyard carrying a long wooden plank.
“You want to see something burn?” he asked.
The giant mirrored dish is essentially a reverse magnifying glass, with the sunlight concentrated at a 10-inch absorber at the dish’s center that is almost too bright to look at. Angling the plank directly into the 1,200-degree beam, the wood instantly ignites.
“You should have brought some hamburgers,” Mr. Adler said.
Chilmark selectmen are now rethinking the future of the house at Tea Lane Farm after voters rejected a second plan at a special town meeting on Monday. The plan would have have renovated the 18th century house at a cost of $550,000 to prepare it for leasing to a tenant farmer.
With little discussion voters defeated the article by indefinite postponement.
Former town treasurer Judy Jardin led the move.
Town employees can expect to feel the pinch from rising health care costs in the coming year thanks to municipal health care reform legislation that will shift the burden of paying for health insurance away from towns and onto workers.
The new state law passed in July makes it easier for towns to bargain for health insurance plans with unions and allows towns to move their employees to the less costly health insurance plans used by the state through the Group Insurance Commission (GIC).
Karen Christina Pardo and Kofi Ali Cash are pleased to announce their marriage on Oct. 6, at 10 a.m., at the Harbor View Hotel and Resort in Edgartown. Justice of the peace James Pringle will officiate. A champagne brunch reception is planned following the ceremony in the hotel’s Edgartown room.
Dr. Pardo is a pharmacy clinical manager and medication safety officer for Memorial Hospital in Martinsville, Va. Karen graduated from the University of California, Santa Cruz and received a doctoral degree in pharmacy at the University of California, San Francisco.
The riff of the Rolling Stones’ Emotional Rescue had segued into more mystical rhythms by the time the students in Sherry Sidoti’s — and Martha’s Vineyard’s — first yoga teacher training course were wrapping themselves into lotus position on the wooden floor of a Chilmark barn last Friday. Without pretense or pressure, Mrs. Sidoti gently showed several variations on the cross-legged pose, most not requiring the flexibility of an unbaked pretzel.
The West Tisbury Library Foundation announced this week that a pledge of $300,000 has brought the library past the halfway mark in its goal for private donations toward expansion and renovation of the library facility. The donors, who requested anonymity, retain the right to name one of the library’s rooms down the road when the facility reopens (planned for 2014).