Sam Bungey
In what has become a fiercely contested primary battle, Vineyarders rushed to register last week in time to vote in the Massachusetts Democratic and Republican primary elections, scheduled for “Super Duper,” “Tsunami,” or even “Destiny” Tuesday, Feb. 5.
That day will feature the biggest one-day collection of state primaries and caucuses ever held in the United States.
Enrollment at the Martha’s Vineyard Regional High School is expected to drop by 150 students — or about 20 per cent — over the next 10 years, according to a report from the New England School Development Council.
When a furnace burst, coating much of Edgartown’s library building in atomized oil at the beginning of December, director Felicia Cheney thought she and her staff would be in and out of emergency digs in the town hall selectmen’s meeting room within a fortnight.
But a drawn-out insurance claim process has left the books and artwork gathering dust on top of oil in the North Water street library for the seventh week, and the librarians have no definite end in sight.
When Akira Kurosawa’s Rashomon, the story of a rape and murder told from three perspectives, was released in 1950, it won the Gold Lion at the Venice Film Festival and has since received some of the most gushing reviews of all time from Western critics. But the head of the Japanese production company which had coughed up just $5,000 for the film’s budget disliked what he saw so much, he took his name off the credits. Japanese critics called it complicated and boring, and they worried about the swear words.
An unpopular Martha’s Vineyard Regional High School budget reemerged last week after a staff member at the school superintendent’s office spotted that not enough votes had been cast to obtain the legally required two-thirds majority at a meeting in December.
The high school committee voted 7-1 to certify a revised $16.2 million budget last Thursday, but not before eliminating a controversial proposed facilities manager position.
When jazz crooner Jerri Wells is finally coaxed up to the front of Oak Bluffs’ Offshore Ale by Eddie (Pepé Caron) Larkosh for a rendition of Do You Know What It Is to Miss New Orleans? she does not stick to the script for long. She delivers a few bars of the prescribed number then, like some sort of thief sidling past a security guard, hums her own improvised segue and ducks into the second verse of A ll Of Me, the Billie Holiday version, leaving the band to scramble after her.