Opinion
On Jan. 15 more than 90 people gathered at the Martha’s Vineyard Hebrew Center for an afternoon of videos, music and discussions about the Occupy Wall Street movement. As participants gathered, pictures of “occupiers” from all over the world as well as many taken right here on the Vineyard, were shown on the large screen at the front of the community center’s main room. One of the many anthems of the Occupy movement, We Are The Many, written and sung by Makana, a popular Hawaiian troubadour, set the mood.
TAX JUMP
Editors, Vineyard Gazette:
I love to work a crowd from top to bottom
and as wide as they make em
as long as you’ve got ’em.
I love to work a crowd
that I can swim across—hand
over hand —
an ocean of hands . . .
of all kinds of colors . . .
and a thousand pairs of eyes
and they wink
as they press away
with a sea of smiles
to make room for me!
“hey-how’re you doin’?”
He was a man of few words, but when he was honored with a surprise party in 1991 after half a century in the Oak Bluffs fire department, more than thirty of them as fire chief, Nelson Amaral told the gathering of some two hundred well-wishers at Anthony’s Restaurant: “You sure know how to get a guy. I’m at a loss for words. It has been fifty great years. I have loved every minute of it. I just wish I had fifty more to give.”
As a winter-long discussion begins in Chilmark about the impacts from overly large houses on the landscape and character of the town, it is ironic to see the Coast Guard refusing to budge much on its plan to build an overly large replacement to the historic boathouse that burned in the July 2010 Menemsha fire.
By TODD FOLLANSBEE