Brava, Virginia Crowell Jones. Your op-ed piece Seasonal Economy Not a Sustainable Model (Vineyard Gazette, Friday, May 29) speaks my mind. Our economy demands perpetual growth. Good news, we are told, the GNP went up two per cent. Or bad news, housing starts are down a fraction, and the market is faltering.

This myth, so pervasive that it is scarcely noticed, is running into the non-mythical facts of physics and biology. We do not have infinite resources at our disposal. The vast ocean is filling with our refuse, and its much-plundered populations of sea life dwindle perilously. The very air we breathe is filling with our waste CO2, pushing a growing cascade of catastrophes. On this small Island, those limits are right in our faces. In the 1890s, one of my grandfathers, Capt. Ellsworth Luce West, saw that the whaling trade was on its last legs and moved to other endeavors on the sea and finally as a farmer. My great-grandfather on the other side, William Channing Nevin, moved here from Philadelphia in the same period, and as a selectman in Edgartown was instrumental in promoting tourism as the way to maintain our economy. In the years when my parents were born and came of age, most Islanders still grew their own food, even as more and more folks visited and then moved here, all needing to be fed and served, drawn by our quaint preservation of older ways in the face of all-engulfing change. The challenges of town and gown in a university town are nothing in comparison. A late lamented Vineyard wizard, Milton Mazer, a founder of Martha’s Vineyard Community services, knew us well. (I am happy to say that his gifted portrait, People and Predicaments: Of Life and Times on Martha’s Vineyard, is back in print.) He saw the corrosive influence of this hat-in-hand dependency, of the ballooning and collapse of incomes with the seasonal flood and ebb of people who are here to get away from somewhere else. He saw the need for year-round business. But what?

The dead trees in the state forest are the legacy of a failed attempt to establish a furniture industry here. But even had the trees thrived, chairs and tables are heavy and bulky. The problem with establishing a profitable industry here has always been the cost of shipping. Today we have new opportunities. Specialized electronic devices are smaller and lighter, and far more lucrative. Most importantly, bits and bytes are cheap to ship. Telephone calls are free, given an Internet connection. Some years ago we had the opportunity for a dedicated T-1 connection to service the Island that was scuttled by inter-town rivalry (ask Jim Norton about that). But even under the duopoly of Comcast and Verizon, opportunity beckons.

What is needed is the convergence of three factors. Imagination to envision possible businesses. Practical business people to bring an idea down to earth, meeting the tests of a well-grounded business plan. And venture capital to comprehend the vision and the plan together and bring financial support to establish a working business. Here’s an example that has seemed to me hard to implement, because there are so many moving parts. We suffer in summer from too many cars on our quaint 17th-century roads that we love so well. Many people bring their cars over essentially as jumbo suitcases to carry all their vacation gear. Imagine: The family stops in a parking lot somewhere around Bourne, and loads said gear into containers of moderate size. They shuttle down to the boat with just some light day luggage. They ride the bus or a cab, or rent a small electric vehicle for the duration. Later in the day or the next morning, when a truck has a full load of the containers, it comes over to a depot here. The containers are delivered or the contents can be picked up.

Virginia, you have put forward so many excellent ideas. Brava! Let’s hear more. Can we create a Facebook group (we have some wonderful MV this and that groups now) dedicated to a new Island economy? No idea too foolish sounding. Even the silliest notion can hold some kernel of new possibility waiting to be recognized. Then let’s bring solid business thinking to bear, putting ideas to the test of practicality, hammering out a real business plan. Not a cheap, smug “that won’t work;” rather, can we make that work? And finally, you who have made it by the world’s standards, you who come to us in the generosity of desire to give back, please keep an eye on the main chance for our sustainability, and help to foster this. Yours in hope.

Bruce Nevin
Edgartown