News
Alexander Arrives
Nicole Leavitt and Donals Ethier of Vineyard Haven announce the birth of a son, Alexander Robert Ethier, born on Feb. 4, 2011, at the Martha’s Vineyard Hospital. Alexander weighed 8 pounds, 1.4 ounces at birth. He joins sisters Arienna and Aliyah.
A Balm for Mother Earth
It’s never easy being a mother. But imagine being mother to 6,898,909,932 people. And that number of children represents just this exact moment. By the time you finish reading this at least another few million births will be added.
Travel to Flower Show
The groundhog checked out the scene and by not seeing his shadow declared spring is on the way. Perhaps there’s some measure of truth in this seemingly arbitrary tradition. A few days later, rain came and washed away all the snow and ice. Perhaps flowers will be in bloom soon.
Witness to Haiti’s Struggle
Over the years, the Martha’s Vineyard community has made a commitment to Haiti through numerous fundraisers, groups of Islanders traveling to the country to assist in myriad ways and by being host to Haitian artists here on the Island. It is a movement that began many years before the earthquake and has intensified since that tragedy.
Edgartown fire chief Peter Shemeth told the town selectmen this week that the Edgartown emergency medical service is upgrading to a full-time paramedic unit. The switch comes on the heels of changed state regulations requiring full-time emergency personnel to be at a paramedic level in order to keep their certification.
“Starting way back when, it [paramedic service] was almost nonexistent,” Mr. Shemeth said. “We’ve progressed a lot . . . we’re always trying to ramp it up another step to give a better quality of service.”
On Monday crews from R.J. Cobb Land Clearing moved into the Manuel F. Correllus State Forest to begin clearing some 90 acres of dead red pine trees that have been blighted in recent decades by the fungus diplodia pinea. The work is part of a larger three-year effort to remove 237 acres of timber that was originally planted as early as 1925 in the forest.