Opinion
After more than two decades of living with Lyme disease, communities in the commonwealth are becoming fed up; many residents are finally saying, “We need something done now.”
Well, something is being done, much of it on the Vineyard. The Martha’s Vineyard Tick-Borne Disease Initiative is one of two promising initiatives against Lyme disease focused on the many things that people can do to reduce their risk.
Six months ago marked the 216th anniversary of the publication of Common Sense, written by Thomas Paine, a book that reshaped American thought at that time and helped provide the foundation for the United States.
If you live on the Vineyard and haven’t had Lyme disease, it’s a good bet you know someone who has. The risk of contracting the disease while hiking, gardening or just headed to the beach is at its peak right now, when the nymphal deer tick that carries it is most active.
At first glance it would seem that allowing folks in seaplanes to zoom into any of our great ponds is a bad idea. And maybe it is. But, according to a knowledgeable bush pilot friend, the pilot who landed recently on Edgartown Great Pond, Thomas Miozzi of Rhode Island, was within his rights. Most water bodies are open to seaplanes unless there is a local ordinance against them. The seaplane pilots association lists Tisbury Great Pond, Edgartown Great Pond and Chilmark Pond as “Open, no known restrictions,” in their water landing directory.
Oh what fresh hell is this?
Those were Dorothy Parker’s words, and who knows to what original hell she referred? Her wry brand of anguish has entered the lexicon of familiar quotations; we can invoke it for any horror, from a splash of red wine on a white shirt to a six-car pileup on the San Bernardino Freeway.
From the Vineyard Gazette edition of July, 1945:
The Lambert’s Cove Methodist Church, atop its rise of high ground in one of the beautiful parts of the Island, is one hundred years old this year.