Hot enough for you? The quintessential New England weather cliche is usually reserved for July, or August, not December, with church bells ringing carols, flip-flops observed and people hanging out on the Island Home’s weather deck.
Hot enough for you? The quintessential New England weather cliche is usually reserved for July, or August, not December, with church bells ringing carols, flip-flops observed and people hanging out on the Island Home’s weather deck.
Here are the 10 stories from Martha's Vineyard that received the most traffic on vineyardgazette.com during 2014.
It snowed as if it would never stop snowing. A resort economy sputtered back to life. History came alive and sailed down the Sound into Vineyard Haven harbor. These were a few benchmarks of the year.
It was a year punctuated by visits from a president and right whales, the arrival of a roundabout and a reality television crew. Pieces of the past were restored and given new life while other parts of the Island changed irrevocably.
After the years following the recession that began in 2008, when the Vineyard as well as the nation remained mired in day-to-day survival, 2012 felt like a shift in a new direction. There was a slight uptick in economic optimism and a move toward planning for the future. Questions of character and big house debates revealed that the main topic was no longer unemployment and how to make ends meet, although these issues still remain, but how Vineyarders define themselves and their community.
With the end of December comes the annual temptation to sum up the calendar year. But if the past 12 months offer any instruction, endings are just a prelude to new beginnings. In 2011, projects that lay dormant for years were revived (and sometimes reviled). Noble works sunk by a leaky economy were given new life. Coastlines eroded and beaches formed anew. Heroes returned. Protests resumed. Events seemed to transpire in a kind of cosmic roundabout.
