Opinion
A large brigade of Island firefighters, wearing their dress blues and standing straight and true, flanked the steps of the Old Whaling Church last Saturday afternoon, a fine May day flecked with sunshine and breezes. Joe Cressy would have called it a sailor’s day and he would have been right. Joe was right about everything — on this point there was general agreement amid laughter and tears, poetry and music at his memorial service on Saturday.
CLINIC IN CRISIS
Editors, Vineyard Gazette:
This is a crisis — our clinic is at risk.
Family Planning of Martha’s Vineyard has been providing reproductive health care to Island men, woman and teens for nearly three decades. In 2010, our community clinic provided safe, confidential and affordable care for over 1,000 clients, greater than eight per cent of the total year-round population.
Memorial Day 2011
A long time ago, in another life, I recall how my stomach cringed when I heard a colleague saying, “Oh, I have all the Macs and the O’s. How is anyone supposed to teach them math?”
One day last month close to five inches of rain fell on Martha’s Vineyard. In Chilmark alone it caused a five-foot wide, four-foot deep sinkhole on State Road, the collapse of a two culverts and the dirt road to Lucy Vincent Beach, the collapse of an old granite bridge and the closure of South Road near the Allen Farm due to an impassable puddle.
Suddenly it’s flooding everywhere, all over the world — and it’s no fluke.
Oprah Winfrey’s show on May 4 honored the Freedom Riders on the 50th anniversary of their historic bus ride to desegregate public areas in the South.
Thirteen young people, many students, both black and white, boarded two Greyhound buses in Washington, D.C., on May 4, 1961 with the goal of riding to New Orleans. They were organized by the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE).