West Nile Virus has arrived on the Vineyard. On Thursday the Massachusetts Department of Health announced that a single mosquito collected in Tisbury tested positive for the disease and health officials are asking Islanders to take reasonable preventive measures.
On Saturday, Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick strolled through the newly-minted, solar-paneled Eliakim’s Way affordable housing community in West Tisbury — which by midday had become a virtual power plant in the boiling summer heat — on the Island leg of his summer conversation tour through the commonwealth.
New clues surfaced this week to the mysterious series of on-again, off-again swimming closures at public beaches that have plagued the Vineyard, when the Edgartown health agent sent water samples to two different labs for testing — and saw different results.
The West Tisbury Public Library is expanding, its patrons hope, to make room for more books like David McCullough’s The Greater Journey: Americans in Paris. Mr. McCullough spoke at the Agricultural Hall on Wednesday to a rapt, full house, without notes and with his inimitable panache about the importance of libraries and the illuminating effect the City of Lights has had on its American visitors over the centuries.
With a trying fiscal year 2011 behind it, the town of Oak Bluffs must now grapple with a fiscal year 2012 budget that looks increasingly unsound. Selectman and board chairman Kathy Burton said the town was looking to make up a shortfall of around $300,000 in its 2012 budget based on revenue projections, and everything was on the table at a Thursday morning brainstorming session with department heads and representatives from town committees.
Knowledge of the Atlantic great white shark has been relegated for too long to the fevered imaginations of nervous beachgoers and boaters. With the animals returning to the New England coastline in larger numbers, one state scientist with Vineyard roots is bringing that understanding out of the realm of the mythical and uncovering fascinating insights into this elusive two-ton, apex predator’s behavior.
