Opinion
I’m sitting on the Vineyard waiting for the wind to let go so the ferries will start running again so I can drive up to Boston to meet my wife who is in a hotel, also waiting for the wind to die down. When we lived on one of the small islands in Gosnold, the transportation situation was entirely different. The regular ferry service is privately owned and not under the same scrutiny as the Steamship Authority.
Nearly twenty years ago a group of parents began formulating a plan to create a new school on Martha’s Vineyard. The idea was to provide another public school option on the Island, one that was still free and taught the same state-mandated framework as other schools, but that was more project-based and gave students the freedom to pursue their own education plan, whether it be mathematics or becoming a better skateboarder.
Workers in downtown Vineyard Haven never needed a watch to know when it was lunchtime. They had their reminder every day when the noon whistle blew from the fire station on Beach street. The sound made dogs howl and, according to an old account from the Gazette, one day a horse died of fright following the whistle blast.
If I had the opportunity to provide a family with all its financial needs for a year, I would stick with the basics, but include things that would carry this family for years to come. My idea is kind of like the old saying: “Give a man a fish, you feed him for a day.
In public seminars this month, the Vineyard Conservation Society, using colorful and frightful maps, showed how we were on our way to becoming the next Atlantis. My wife and I just bought here and now they’re telling me “here” may not be here for long? Here I was enjoying my status as a washashore and now they have the audacity to inform me that life’s odyssey is destined to make me an out-at-sea? Why worry about securing my next appointment with the electrician or the plumber if my future is among flotsam and jetsam?
In January 1851, according to the diary of Jeremiah Pease, a British boat “castaway” off Muskeget with 256 Irish on board. Four froze to death. Who were those nameless people? From the date it is clear they were fleeing from a country that had become a graveyard to seek opportunity and salvation in America. Turning their backs forever on families and communities decimated by famine and oppression, these uninvited and undocumented immigrants hoped to find work and food.