Julia Rappaport
As it has the past few years, the department of Dukes County Sheriff Michael McCormack will continue to face budgetary uncertainty this year.
So said Sheriff McCormack this week after news leaked that the effort from Gov. Deval Patrick to assume budgetary control of the seven county sheriffs still elected independently in the state appears headed for defeat.
Tucked into the corner of the Woodland Business Center in Vineyard Haven, between the bakeries and offices in this off-the-beaten-path part of town, is an office door. On a recent Monday, just shy of 9 a.m., workers passed right by it in their beeline pursuit of morning coffee. Not one paused to look in.
Had they done so, an empty hallway is all they would have seen.
The temperature in Florida Tuesday was a goosebump-raising 58 degrees, but Island artist Margot Datz was riding shotgun in a convertible and was not about to let the weather foil her plans of a road trip with the top down. “I’m on a teenage adventure at 54,” she crooned into her cellphone while en route from Jacksonville, Florida to Savannah, Georgia.
The Chilmark shellfish industry can expect a bumper 2008 scallop season and a broader revitalization, given the early successes of its experimental shellfish propagation program launched last summer, town selectmen heard Tuesday.
The town’s shellfish propagation officer, Isaiah Scheffer, presented selectmen with a 34-page report of his work to date.
In the summer months, Island cook Jan Buhrman starts her days early. After waking her two sons, feeding her two pigs, checking on her 12 ducks and saying goodbye to her one husband, Ms. Buhrman gets into her car. Rather than head straight to work, many mornings she seeks out the farmers who sell to her. More often than not, these farmers are women.
A young filmmaker perched on a stool in the Chilmark Community Center Saturday afternoon, microphone in hand. An Island woman born and raised, she waited for the lights to flicker on and then watched, her eyes twinkling, as the members of the audience joined in steady round of applause for her film about her Island and featuring the people who call it home.