There is probably no simpler illustration of the dominant news themes of Martha’s Vineyard, 2007, than that of the friendly Rhode Island red rooster owned by Jessica Rose Seidman, of West Tisbury.

Chickie, who Ms. Seidman hatched from an egg almost five years ago when she was 11 and then kept as a pet, had won four firsts at the annual Martha’s Vineyard Agricultural Society Livestock Show and Fair.

Then in late January, the Tisbury zoning board of appeals told her to get rid of him. A neighbor — a seasonal resident — had hired an attorney to complain about the noise Chickie made.

The case is still under appeal, expected to go back to court sometime in 2008. In the meantime, the rooster has won a fifth title at the fair.

Chickie, as this paper noted at the time, was “caught up in a type of dispute that had grown more common as the increasing creep of suburban values collide with the traditional rural way of life.”

Chickie generated more phone calls, e-mail and letters to the editor than any other issue of the year, even though most writers had no direct stake in the outcome of the case. The Chickie case became a simple metaphor for all the complex tensions inherent in the Island’s struggle to maintain its unique social and natural environment in the face of increasing encroachment from the outside world.

Look closely at so many of the significant stories of this past year — the Martha’s Vineyard Commission’s seemingly endless round of meetings to formulate an Island Plan, the real estate market, the new ferry, the new hospital, the school funding formula, access to ancient ways, pollution in the ponds, the cost of energy, the struggle to save Thimble Farm, the rights of fishermen, to name but some — and that tension is there, either overtly or as a subtext.

Of course the issues were rarely as black and white as the Chickie case. Take the Field Club for example, which made its controversial way to the final hurdle of the approval process — the Edgartown zoning board of appeals — in January.

Memberships of the high-end, exclusive club go for more than $100,000. There were concerns that such an elite establishment would further emphasize the social and economic divisions between the Island’s wealthy, mostly seasonal residents and its often-struggling year-round residents.

But the Field Club also will run a sewer line to the wastewater treatment plant in Edgartown, allowing several hundred homes in other developments to tie into it, which could remove enough nitrogen from the groundwater to restore Edgartown Great Pond to tolerable environmental health — and potentially open the way for more houses, more suburbanization. How do you balance the social environment and the natural environment?

Or consider the example of the Martha’s Vineyard Hospital, which entered a “partnership,” really a sale, to the giant Partners Health/Massachusetts General Hospital group at the very end of last year, and now is being progressively integrated into that huge network. There were those who lamented the potential loss of local control and the personal touch. But the proudly independent Island hospital nearly went broke a few years ago, and without the guarantee of financial solvency provided by the affiliation agreement, the task of raising the $42 million needed to build a new hospital would have been much harder. As it turned out, some $46.5 million was raised, most of it from seasonal or off-Island people.

This Island settlement, which began more than three centuries ago essentially as the personal fiefdom of one man, and which as recently as 30 years ago toyed with the notion of declaring its independence from Massachusetts (if not the whole United States), has always struggled with the dilemma of independence versus interdependence. This year saw its people more firmly tied to the rest of America and the world in a number of ways.

January marked the completion of construction of a new Steamship Authority ferry, Island Home, and it began the long trip north from Mississippi. It arrived in Vineyard Haven for the first time in late February. There followed a protracted round of mourning for its outgoing predecessor, the Islander, which had logged more than a million miles and almost six decades ferrying people back and forth.

On March 5, a suitably gray, windy, snowy day, the old boat made its last run. There were tears and reminiscences of shipboard births, marriages and deaths at a wake held at the Vineyard Haven terminal. There was also widespread criticism of the new boat, Island Home — the need for it, its size, seaworthiness, fuel consumption, etc. — much of it ironically reflective of what had been said 57 years earlier about the Islander.

As it turned out, 2007 was something of a banner year for the Steamship Authority, with healthy increases in overall traffic to the Island. The number of tourists bringing their cars here went up about four per cent. Interestingly though, the number of Vineyard residents driving off Island fell by 3.5 per cent. As if the world wanted more of us, and we wanted less of them.

Or maybe there were other reasons. Maybe people here were just struggling so hard to make ends meet that they couldn’t get away. We all know this is an expensive place to live, but just how expensive was quantified in April in a study from the Martha’s Vineyard Commission. The cost of living on the Island was about 60 per cent above the national average, and housing was almost twice as expensive. Groceries were 37 per cent more expensive, utility costs 52 per cent higher, transport costs 39 per cent higher.

And 2007 was a mixed year economically. The real estate bust which afflicted America as a whole also had an impact here. Property prices were down and agents’ inventories of property sales were up. Light truck traffic on the ferries plunged more than 10 per cent as work for building contractors declined.

On the brighter side, though, the Island was to some extent insulated from the so-called “meltdown” of the sub-prime mortgage market. People who got their home loans through Island banks such as Dukes County Savings Bank and the Martha’s Vineyard Co-operative Bank, could take some comfort in the knowledge those banks didn’t dabble in risky practices like dealing in questionable mortgage loans. Chalk one up for Island independence and prudence. The two banks announced in June they were merging, to become Martha’s Vineyard Savings Bank, with $460 million in total assets. Nonetheless, Island foreclosure rates were up.

While real estate was flat, though, other economic indicators — those tied, essentially, to the weather — were positive. An almost snowless winter gave way to a wet and wild spring and in turn to a glorious warm, dry summer. As already noted in the ferry statistics, visitor numbers were up. And that brings money.

Everyone competes for a share of that infusion of cash in summer, and this year the competition for cash was fiercer than ever, with no fewer than four presidential candidates descending on us in search of their cut. They arrived more or less en masse in late August. In what is probably a fair indication of the Island’s political balance, we had one Republican, Mitt Romney, and three Democratic presidential hopefuls, not to mention the chairman of the National Democratic Committee, Mr. Howard Dean.

Mr. Romney and Sen. Barack Obama both were low-profile; Romney stayed only long enough for a big-dollar private fundraiser. Mr. Obama had a big-dollar private fundraiser and a little private rest and relaxation. Howard Dean and John Edwards both held more accessible $50 a head functions.

But the visit by Sen. Hillary Clinton was of a whole different order of magnitude. She not only had a big, high-end function but also a rally at the Tabernacle in Oak Bluffs, attended by more than 2,000 people and complete with guest stars of music and screen. The biggest star of all, though, was her husband, former President Bill Clinton. When they came down off the stage to mingle with the assembled multitudes, the former president drew a bigger crowd than the presidential hopeful.

The brief political season also produced the year’s outstanding story on the police beat — an apparently disturbed crasher at the Edwards function stole campaign materials and Edwards stationery from the host’s home, then rode to the airport with Edwards’s party, but did not make it onto the plane. He was later caught at the Menemsha Coast Guard station.

Otherwise, 2007 was a relatively quiet one on the crime front, although there was an attempted bank heist in August. Someone forced entry to the premises, but failed to get into the vault. Not the least of the mystery was why police took 40 minutes to respond to the alarm from the night deposit box.

But let’s get back to the weather. As noted above there wasn’t much opportunity for playing in the snow, but winter was plenty cold enough, as two people in particular can attest.

Leonard Fogg, of Edgartown, accidentally tested the water of Edgartown harbor while leaning over to look at the price of a boat in late January. His dog Maui, a four-year-old Bouvier des Flandres retriever, raised the alarm by barking; Peter Robb, who had stepped out of the Wharf pub for a smoke, ran down and pulled Mr. Fogg from the 37-degree water.

There was another shaggy dog story in March, when Wesley Nagy of Tisbury tried to help his pets — a 140-pound Siberian husky and shepherd mix named Buster and a 120-pound black Labrador named Julius — when they fell through the ice on Tisbury Great Pond, and wound up having to be fished out himself by the West Tisbury fire department rescue squad. When the feeling returned to Mr. Nagy’s fingers, he became again one of the Island’s finest pianists.

Mid-April saw the biggest weather event of the year: a powerful storm pounded the Island, opening a major breach in the Norton Point beach, and making Chappaquiddick a separate island. Oddly enough, it was then that Roy Hayes, operator of the Chappy ferry for 19 years, announced his intention to sell, just as his monopoly on vehicular traffic became complete.

The Norton Point breach brought new hazards to boating in Edgartown harbor, by trebling the current speed and changing the direction of tidal flows. It also washed ashore the body of a man, an apparent homicide victim. On the upside, it cleared a lot of muck out of the harbor, to the benefit of fish and shellfish.

The storm also began a chain of events which would see Dukes County manager Winn Davis lose his job. Mr. Davis announced an application had been made for $511,000 in disaster relief funds, ostensibly to close or bridge the gap in the Norton Point beach, which neither Chappy residents nor anyone much else thought a good idea. When he suggested the money might be diverted to other uses, the notion was ridiculed. It was his final managerial misstep, and he was gone by September. The county still is looking for a new manager.

Meanwhile, debate continued on whether the county administration was necessary at all, given the number of other local authorities — six towns and the Martha’s Vineyard Commission — on the Island.

Of those other local government bodies, by far the most entertaining in 2007 was Oak Bluffs. Only a month into the year a dispute began over the payment of bonuses, ranging from $4,000 to $10,000, to town department heads between July 2005 and June 2006. In February the town sought legal advice on the personal service contracts of 16 employees, and learned that former town administrator, Casey Sharpe, had exceeded her authority with both the contracts and the bonuses. The town fought and agonized over the problem for months. No agony, however, for Ms. Sharpe: the problem only came to light after she had her own contract terminated, in such a way as to trigger a clause giving her $76,000 in severance money.

There were diverting snafus in other towns too, notably the Water street parking lot debacle in Vineyard Haven. With summer coming, it was still under construction, and the police and ambulance officers as well as the general public were upset with the layout. The planning was such that the handicapped spaces were set on a treacherous slope. Tisbury selectman Tristan Israel spoke of his meeting angry locals there: “I was lucky to get out of there alive.”

While we’re on the broad subject of government, we should note the swearing-in in January of a new Massachusetts governor, Deval Patrick. From an Island perspective, probably the most significant aspect of his ascension was the fact that he was seen as being in favor of the Cape Wind project. The continuing debate about the merits of allowing a private developer to place 130 giant turbines in the middle of Nantucket Sound swung maybe a little in favor of the developers this year, with Mr. Patrick’s victory, with the endorsement of the state’s top environmental official, secretary of environmental affairs Ian A. Bowles, skyrocketing oil prices and increasingly dire warnings about global warming. It’s far from over — we still await the definitive study from the federal Minerals Management Authority — but whatever the outcome, it will not be decided here.

Even if the Island generated all its own power, it would not make a jot of difference to the likelihood of those turbines sticking up out of Nantucket Sound. The Island could easily make all the electricity it needs, and took some baby steps toward that goal in 2007.

Aquinnah continued to explore the prospect of installing its own 350-foot high, three-megawatt wind generator, and Edgartown signed on in support of a study of the wind, wave and tidal energy potential of Muskeget Channel, between Nantucket and Chappaquiddick. There might be 2,000 megawatts of power out there, not to mention a slice of the $50 million a year to be disbursed under the Marine and Hydrokinetic Renewable Energy promotion act for alternative offshore power projects.

But the towns could not get it together to support a joint energy plan. Now they don’t even have a common code for regulating those noble “think global, act local” people who want to harvest wind on their own properties. Still, the wind generating capacity of the Vineyard doubled this year . . . to six approved or operational private turbines. But the trend seems to be growing.

Other environmental issues also loomed large in ’07, and none larger than pond pollution. As early as February, parts of Sengekontacket and the Tisbury Great Pond were closed to shellfishing due to high bacterial counts. The whole of Sengekontacket was closed repeatedly over the months to follow; finally it was decided it would be closed every summer in the future, too, until the persistent bacterial problems could be overcome. Testing late in the year indicated the large and growing numbers of geese and cormorants on the pond were the main culprits. Controversy looms over how to get rid of the unwanted birds.

The greater threat to the ponds, though, comes not from bird waste but human waste, not from bacteria but nitrogen, which leaches from septic systems into the groundwater and thence the ponds, where it promotes algal growth and ultimately starves desirable plants of oxygen, with effects up the food chain.

The first report on an Island pond by the Massachusetts Estuaries project, Edgartown Great Pond, said a 30 per cent reduction in the nitrogen input would be needed to restore it to passable health. As we noted above, the sewering project associated with the Field Club development, in conjunction with more frequent opening of the pond to the sea, might achieve that.

But the Edgartown Pond is a relatively easy fix, say the experts. Restoration of the more densely-settled watersheds, like Lagoon and Sengekontacket Ponds, will be more problematic. But this year forced a start on dealing with the problems. At the conclusion of a six-month moratorium on septic system and well permits, Edgartown adopted new regulations to protect human and pond health in the densely settled Ocean Heights/Arbutus Park area. The new rules will lead to virtual elimination of private wells, limit house sizes and force many homeowners to put in expensive, nitrogen-reducing septic systems.

There were other environmental perturbations, too. An Audubon Society survey found a decrease in the numbers and varieties of birds in this part of the world, as well as shifting ranges, due to global warming, bringing new species in. Fish stocks continued to decline. And between the declining stocks and the regulations imposed to protect what’s left, things are getting ever harder for Island fishermen. Late in the year, Vineyarders learned of the decision of Menemsha’s most respected fisherman, Jonathan Mayhew, to sell his federal permits, after deciding he could not longer make a go of it. Another sign of the passing of old ways.

There were other sad passings this year, too. It was a tough year for the Island’s literary/artistic community in particular.

On Jan. 7, Milton Mazer, the Island’s first psychiatrist, founder of Martha’s Vineyard Community Services and author of People in Predicaments, a clinical study of the Vineyard population, with its tendencies to depression, alcohol and suicide, died at 95.

On Jan. 17, Art Buchwald, Pulitzer Prize-winning newspaper columnist, died at 81, almost a year after he decided to forego dialysis for renal failure. He checked into a hospice, but instead of dying, he rallied and wrote a book — his 33rd — called Too Soon to Say Goodbye.

On Jan. 26, Nancy Coles Hegeman Stephens, Gazette East Chop correspondent for 50 years, died at 85.

On Feb. 28, Arthur Wortzel died at 87. He was a distinguished U.S. diplomat, a pillar of the Hebrew Center and Martha’s Vineyard Community Services.

March 1 brought the death of Herbert Tucker of Oak Bluffs. He was 91. He founded Boston’s first black law firm and was a president of the Boston NAACP. He became presiding judge of the Edgartown District Court in 1979 and served there until retirement in 1985. He served on the board of directors of the Boys’ and Girls’ Club and as a trustee of the Vineyard Open Land Foundation.

On April 27, Polly Hill, nee Mary Louise Butcher died at 100. The amateur geneticist and botanist used her 70-acre North Tisbury farm as her laboratory for more than 40 years. Her arboretum had nearly 2,000 trees and plants on show, including many that people thought would not grow here. She collected exotic seeds while travelling around the world with her late husband Dr. Julian W. Hill — one of the DuPont team which discovered nylon — and introduced some 100 species.

Isabel Washington Powell died May 1, three weeks before her 99th birthday. The entertainer, special education teacher and socialite was well-known both here and in New York.

Mandred Henry died May 5 in Edgartown. He was 73, and had been a visitor to the Island most of his life and full-time resident since 1993. Twelve years president of the Vineyard NAACP, he also was a Hospice volunteer and board member, and a mentor for school children and jail inmates.

On May 8, Philip R. Craig, the Ocean Heights resident and author of 20 books, died at 74. He wrote the popular mystery series — a new one every June since 1989 — featuring J.W. Jackson, who lived a Vineyard idyll fishing, clamming cooking and solving crimes.

On May 24, Miles S. Carpenter died, aged 90. A 60-year resident of Vineyard Haven, he established the Marine and Machine Corporation, the first machine and welding shop on the Island. He was a figure in town affairs for more than 50 years on numerous boards and committees.

On July 2, Beverley Sills, America’s favorite coloratura soprano, devoted supporter of the arts and longtime Vineyard seasonal resident, died in her New York home of lung cancer. She was 78.

On July 11, Lady Bird Johnson, nee Claudia Alta Taylor, wife of the late President Lyndon B. Johnson, astute businesswoman and longtime summer Island resident, died. She was 94.

Nina Schneider died on Sept. 8, at 94. Starting in the mid-1940s, she and her late husband wrote nearly 80 science books for children. On her own she wrote numerous other children’s books, as well as one well-critiqued adult novel. She lived in West Tisbury from 1980.

On Oct. 16, Nancy Whiting of West Tisbury died at 82. She helped found the Vineyard chapter of the NAACP on Nov. 22, 1963, the same day President Kennedy was shot. She also worked with Milton Mazer.

John Morelli died Oct. 17 at home in Chilmark. He was 69. He moved to the Island in 1966 and taught English for 35 years before his retirement in 2001.

Catherine F. Mathieson who, with her husband George founded Chicama Vineyard in 1971, died Oct. 21. She was a volunteer with the Island Food Pantry and Vineyard Haven library.

Sad as it is to record the passing of such community-minded people, other events showed the community spirit alive and well. The first-ever Vineyard telethon on Plum TV for affordable housing raised $515,000. Plans for a $200,000 improvement of the Veira Park, Oak Bluffs, baseball field narrowly survived the objections of neighbors worried about traffic. The annual affordable dreams auction, afflicted by bad weather and lacking auctioneer Art Buchwald, was not as successful as in previous years. But other pro-community endeavors progressed. Plans for a new YMCA, a 35,000-square-foot complex opposite the high school, made it past the Martha’s Vineyard Commission. Once again, waste disposal remains a problem.

But not everyone showed themselves altruistic or community-minded. Consider the example of William O’Connell, one of 10 plaintiffs who fought against an affordable housing development near their Chappaquiddick homes. They argued the eight one-acre blocks were environmentally-sensitive habitat. Then Mr. O’Connell clear-cut a 106-by-104-foot part of the property for a helipad.

There were a couple of other notable legal cases in 2007, which also highlighted the tension between the old and new Vineyard values.

In one case, a landholder got workmen to cut a large number of trees along an ancient way which gave access to a family property. The cutting was done despite special protection accorded to the ancient way (one of five in the area) by the Martha’s Vineyard Commission. The court case raised complex matters of public access and private rights, with a history dating almost 300 years. Similar issues of historical access and private property came up when a group of residents in West Tisbury defended in court their right to stop people walking or riding on Roger’s Path, an ancient way which ran across their 60 acres of land. Judgment in both cases is expected in the new year.

One significant example of discord within the Island community in 2007 ­— funding the high school budget — was driven by external forces. A new state funding formula dramatically altered the amounts the various towns would pay; Oak Bluffs would pay $413,000 less while Tisbury would pay $220,000 more.

At first, there seemed to be unified opposition to the change. In March, the regional school board votes to retain its old enrollment-based formula rather than a new one.

Alas, this resolve did not survive the town meeting season. In April, Oak Bluffs broke and went for the money. In short order other towns, which had initially to ignore a state law requiring special town meetings to on the school budget, all bowed to inevitability and scheduled them. On June 29, two days before the end of the fiscal year, Chilmark became the fourth town to approve the new school assessment.

A far happier story was that of Thimble Farm, leased and operated in a Community Supported Agriculture program by Andrew Woodruff. The future of the farm share operation looked grim in August, when Mr. Woodruff could not match a $2.3 million offer to buy the 43-acre farm. But the sale fell over. Mr. Woodruff still could not raise the money, but in November a new buyer, Eric Grubman, executive vice president of the National Football League, agreed to pay $2.45 million, and promised to renew the lease, allowing the farm to continue operating as an organic farm cooperative.

Now we come to a grab-bag of other stories of 2007, which fit no particular theme or category:

• After 20 years of planning, work began on a new, $9 million temporary Lagoon Pond drawbridge. Final construction will probably take another 10 years and cost $30 million.

• Island seasonal resident and living national media treasure Walter Cronkite reprised the editorial comment which played a big part in convincing America to get out of Vietnam almost 40 years ago: he said it was time to leave Iraq.

• The Vineyard’s Roman Catholic parish explored the prospect of selling some or all of its three church buildings, in response to costs and the shortage of priests.

• The historic Harbor View Hotel in Edgartown was closed for renovation. Some $77 million will be spent over two years updating the 1891 building.

• There was debate over using dogs to search for drugs at the high school. In a compromise, it was decided students would be warned well in advance of any searches.

• Aquinnah voters endorsed a new land use agreement with the Wampanoag Tribe of Gay Head (Aquinnah) at a special town meeting, 28-18. They also approved wine and beer sales with meals in restaurants.

• Oak Bluffs began a major effort to restore the town’s vanishing beaches by importing sand, part of a $2.7 million restoration of the beachfront.

• There were concerted moves to provide up-Island cellular phone coverage, and confident predictions that by next summer one could watch the Menemsha sunset and describe it to a friend by phone.

• Another chicken problem: Bob and Kathy Harris of Longview Road West Tisbury complained about rooster noises. As evidence, they engaged a sound consultant to measure the noise levels. To no avail. Local zoning allowed the birds.

• A exodus of the Island’s Brazilian population continued. Some 2,000 to 3,000 are estimated to have gone in the past two years, due to factors including the economic slowdown here, the fast-appreciating Brazilian currency, police harassment and hostility to immigrants after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

• A dead mink was found beside an Edgartown Road, and a dead whale was lost for months. A 19-pound lobster named Lobsterzilla became a hit with tourists who posed for pictures with it at Menemsha Fish Market.

• A 57.56-pound bluefish, which looked like a winner in the annual derby, was disqualified after 1.68 pounds of lead was found in its stomach. The fish was not deliberately loaded up, and it was dis-disqualified, but it fired a debate on the practice of “yo-yoing” using lead to weight baitfish.

• Wampanoag tribal leaders announced they had formed a business partnership with the Seneca nation in upstate New York, which owns and operates three casinos.

• A survey showing an extraordinarily high rate of attempted suicide among Vineyard middle school students was dismissed by experts as being statistically flawed. Actually, kids here are in better mental health than most in the state.

• A Gazette investigation showed 43 per cent of female Island residents failed their first driver’s road test, compared with 24 per cent of males and way above the state averages of 25 and 21 per cent respectively.

• And Island native Sandy Grant, 58, won $10 million in a lottery. She said her immediate spending priorities were a hairdo, a big dinner, better dog food for her pet and a flyswatter.

And that was about it for 2007. We could not end, however, without an update on Chickie, that beautiful, controversial, iconic rooster of West Tisbury. When we checked last week with his “grandfather” Daniel Seidman, he passed on this message.

“Chickie is happy and healthy and he wishes everyone a happy New Year.”

And so do we.