Opinion
On Thursday, May 24, Friends of Family Planning of Martha’s Vineyard Inc. hosted our annual art show benefit gala preview party. Each year we are overwhelmed by the generosity of our Island community. This year, our gala event (relying almost solely on donations) was one of the best and most successful ever, due to the many donors who made it possible.
I read with a great deal of interest Prof. David Morris’s column on Thomas Paine (“The Long-Lasting Influence of Common Sense”). Readers should understand that Paine did not stop with the most cogent and perhaps first-published arguments on why the Americans should separate from the British Empire. He also wrote, just a few years later, two of the most important tracts on why society must care for its less fortunate citizens, in the second part of Rights of Man (1792) and Agrarian Justice (1797).
I build stone circles To watch The sweep Of year The fan of rises The arc Of settings
There are many good reasons for growing native plants. Native plants are adapted to local growing conditions, they promote biodiversity and support local wildlife, and in general they need less maintenance. Besides, native plants are Vineyard vernacular — they just look right in our gardens and landscapes.
I was moved by news of the death of Gladys Widdiss. She has long been one of my Island heroes, starting with her becoming valedictorian of her senior class at the Tisbury High School in 1932. More recently I admired her for her determination and success in her dealing with the Bureau of Indian Affairs to get the Wampanoag community of the Island recognized as a tribe. “We know who we are,” she used to say. “The challenge was that we just had to convince the bureaucrats in Washington who we are.”
From a July 1, 1960 column by Joseph Chase Allen:
Looking backward, the most astonishing thing to contemplate is the realization of how brief the span of years there is between the electrified present and the primitive colonial age, a span which my personal memory cannot cover of course, yet it can visualize the dovetailing of one age into the other.