Sam Bungey
Television journalist Thomas Flynn was sitting in the back garden of his Greenwich Village apartment, midway through a coffee, when he heard, then saw the plane fly over on its way to World Trade Center One on 9/11.
On instinct, he shoved some pens, a notebook and cell phone in a bag and set off on his bike for Wall Street.
Bureaucratic black holes, poor communication and a lack of tact that borders on comedic are to blame for a series of recent misunderstandings between the Aquinnah town government and the Wampanoag Tribe of Gay Head (Aquinnah).
The first fiasco began in late July when building inspector Jerry Wiener sent a letter tribal chairman Cheryl Andrews-Maltais citing the tribe for violating town zoning laws and the state building code on three building projects.
With a town vote looming on whether to purchase the Home Port restaurant in Menemsha and turn it into municipal land, the long-running seafood restaurant closed its doors for the summer last Sunday, possibly never to reopen for business.
Meanwhile, two Chilmark innkeepers and restaurant owners have signed a new agreement with Home Port owners Will and Madeline Holtham to buy the property and keep the restaurant as a going concern if the town vote fails.
Michael Chester, the newly-appointed commissioner of education for Massachusetts, laid out his vision for schools at the Martha’s Vineyard Regional High School Performing Arts Center this morning for an audience which included the new principal of the Martha’s Vineyard Regional High School, Stephen Nixon.
Meanwhile, approximately 2,280 Vineyard students will have their first day at school this week; a sign, argues superintendent of schools Dr. James H. Weiss, that the sharp decline in high school enrollment will stabilize over the next decade.
An Edgartown bird has tested positive for West Nile virus in the first such case confirmed this year on the Vineyard.
A crow was discovered by a hotel restaurant worker and shipped to the Massachusetts Department of Public Health by Edgartown health agent Matt Poole.
Reached by phone yesterday, Mr. Poole said the worker spotted the crow corpse under a tree near the intersection of Main and Winter streets in downtown Edgartown. Mr. Poole said the discovery is confirmation of what is already assumed: that the virus exists on the Vineyard.
The Vineyard Haven July 4 fire gutted Main street’s center of commerce in a few hours, destroying Cafe Moxie and decommissioning the Bunch of Grapes bookstore on the traditional start date of the summer retail rush.
And as the final weekend of the season begins, store owners in and around Main street Vineyard Haven are still assessing the fire’s impact on summer business and adapting for a winter without two anchor outlets.