After a quiet month on the harbor, amplified outdoor music is back in Oak Bluffs. Selectmen voted to drop the town’s recent, controversial music ban, at least for two weeks, before an overflow crowd of musicians at Tuesday’s board meeting. Music will be allowed at the harborfront bars in Oak Bluffs until 9 p.m. during the next two weeks while the town continues to evaluate its policy on noise.
Baby boomers may shudder at the thought but Jefferson Airplane and Hot Tuna founding member Jorma Kaukonen is entering his sixth decade of performing. It may be somewhat reassuring, then, to know that Mr. Kaukonen, he of blistering licks and subtle fingerpicks, is still at the top of his game.
Pulitzer prize-winning historian William McFeely set the mood for the rapt crowd at the library of the Martha’s Vineyard Museum on Tuesday. They had gathered to learn about the role that one Vineyard ship played at the close of the Civil War.
The Massachusetts Attorney General issued a severe reprimand to the town of Oak Bluffs this week for a long list of violations to state public bidding laws between 2009 and 2011. Citing “a pattern of disregard and certain evidence of intentional avoidance of public construction bidding laws,” the attorney general upheld a protest that had been filed by a former town selectman but stopped short of issuing any fines or penalties to the financially-troubled town.
It has been a quiet month on the Oak Bluffs waterfront. In the three weeks since the Oak Bluffs selectmen put the kibosh on outdoor amplified music, Island entertainers have been pushing for the town officials to reconsider. With selectmen set to address the issue again on Tuesday, musicians are hoping to turn around what has been a frustrating start to the summer.
The past year has been a difficult one for Jared Meader. Caught at the center of some of the most pressing national issues of the day, the two-time Iraq war veteran has had to refinance his Vineyard Haven house to pay off medical bills from a brain tumor, and he now struggles to hold onto a mortgage while battling the psychological scars of combat. All while raising four children. For most people the burden of such a harrowing biography would be too much to bear, but Mr. Meader has the support of a community rallying to his aid.
