Thanks to Tucker Hubbell, Erik Lowe, Ernie Mendenhall, John Powers and Mark Mazer for making the West Tisbury yard sale a reality. They raised over $2,300 for the town of West Tisbury. Thank you!

Summer seems in the distant past as the New Year approaches, yet some of us are still thinking about the wildlife that frequents the Vineyard in the warm summer months. For the past two summers I wandered through the fields and forests of the Vineyard, planting the seeds for a study I would later conduct. The first phase of the study was launched during the summer of 2011 at Felix Neck Wildlife Sanctuary in Edgartown. The study set out to identify and assess the host plant selection process of Lepidoptera (butterflies and moths) on Martha’s Vineyard.

’Tis the season to offer gratitude for the generosity of others. Those of us who have the privilege of working in Martha’s Vineyard Community Services New Paths Recovery Program want to give our thanks to Island businesses and community members who have been integral to the success of this program.

In the aftermath of what is arguably the most horrific, emotionally impactful mass homicide in memory, nearly every commentator in both print and digital media has evoked the specter of the NRA. Its history of successful campaigns to deter, deflect and defeat every effort by governmental authorities throughout the United States, whether local, state or federal, to pass effective gun control legislation is legendary.

This I believe: Whoever takes it upon himself individually to fire an armed weapon at any one or more persons is by definition violating the Constitution of the United States, specifically the Second Amendment, and should be punished by the proper authorities for doing so, for as the amendment states, he has not shown that he is part of a well-regulated militia.

The year 1977 will be remembered for its great winter freeze and as a time when the Vineyard tried and failed to secede from the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. There were large events during the past year and small, quiet ones. Millions of gallons of spilled oil from the wreckage of the Argo Merchant missed the Island’s shores and went elsewhere.