News
Responding to the largest number of grant applications in its 26-year history, the Permanent Endowment for Martha’s Vineyard last month awarded $35,050 in grants to 17 nonprofit organizations on the Island.
Martha’s Vineyard Rod & Gun Club opens its annual Fall Shotgun Shoot to the public on Sunday, Nov. 30. Everyone is eligible for prizes in this marksmanship competition the day before the shotgun deer season opens.
Last Thursday night, having turned off the lights after the first full day’s trading at the newly-reopened Bunch of Grapes bookstore, Katherine Fergason sat down in the aisle, in the dark, in the silence and cried.
Happy tears this time.
It was not just that the bookstore was back — albeit in temporary form and in a temporary location — after the July Fourth fire.
It was the smell of 4,000 brand new books. And the smiles of scores of old customers.
Principal Steven Nixon’s decision to cut five and two-fifths positions at the Martha’s Vineyard Regional High School, potentially an unprecedented measure, met with very little opposition at a public hearing on the school budget Monday night.
The hearing was attended by about 50 Vineyarders.
If the school committee votes to certify the budget at its meeting Monday, as now appears likely, the $16.5 million budget, a 1.7 per cent increase on 2008, will reflect a significant tightening of purse strings.
The Gazette reception desk will be open until noon today. The office reopens on Monday morning.
Remember shotgun season for deer begins Monday.
Every year the children of the West Tisbury School put together Thanksgiving baskets for Martha’s Vineyard Community Services to distribute to families in need. Forty of them, turkeys with all the trimmings.
Last year that was enough, said Community Services development assistant Sterling Bishop on Monday. “But when they came in today, we had 60 people who needed them.”
Just another sign of economic hard times, he said, which have pushed up demand for all the services his organization offers.