Gazette Design Underwhelms

Editors, Vineyard Gazette:
 
It must be a slow year indeed, when both Island newspapers choose the same summer to undertake a radical makeover. It was bad enough when the Martha’s Vineyard Times adopted its new, grotesque, crime-ridden look. Now, with the Tuesday paper, the Vineyard Gazette has blanched: gone pale and gossamery. Stop the madness!
 
Gazette, I beg you to consider the errors of your ways:
 
• The daintiness of the new typeface makes news headlines look like they belong over display ads or magazine feature articles. You’ll be sorry, the minute a truly alarming story comes along. How ever will you project gravitas?
• The letterspacing of the text size is too tight. Letterforms are jammed together like cars aboard a Fourth of July steamship. It’s ophthalmologically claustrophobic!
• The “heavy” version of the typeface is balloony and far too black. Used as a subhead, it overpowers both headline and text.
• The italic version of the typeface is rotund, ignores the legacy of italic types (which came about, in part, from a desire to save space), and is so upright as to be practically indistinguishable from the roman.
• The old vertical page rules are sorely missed. They served a real purpose organizing the page, guiding the eye, and signaling the end of a story.
 
I understand that summer is a time for experimentation: silly haircuts, ill-advised bathing suits, lightheaded dalliances. The more you work within the new parameters you’ve set, the more I think you’ll realize how limited this new look really is, how badly you’ve boxed yourselves in. By fall, when school starts and ice cream parlors close, I hope the Vineyard Gazette will tire of this graphic flirtation and get back to the business of looking like a real newspaper.
 
Dan Waters, West Tisbury
 
 
 
Small Farms, Big Ideas
 
Editors, Vineyard Gazette:
 
Congratulations to Island Grown Initiative, its donors and to Martha’s Vineyard on IGI’s recent acquisition of Thimble Farm. The need to preserve farmland and promote sustainable small-scale farming enterprises is critical, not just here but across the country. A great precedent is being set by members of our community to entrust IGI in this endeavor and in land stewardship. In that spirit — and as an eater, a mother, an activist and a writer — I am excited about the potential of this for all of us.
 
Ali Berlow, West Tisbury
 
 
 
More Thanks Due
 
Editors, Vineyard Gazette:
 
It is wonderful news to hear that the immediate threat to Thimble Farm has eased, and that it will perhaps be saved in perpetuity for productive agriculture. It has been a cliffhanger. Ownership will give IGI a chance to perfect the problematic agricultural restriction (APR) so that there is no high-end private horse farm or Christmas tree farm in its future, both allowed by the definition of agriculture in the existing vintage APR that the Land Bank purchased from Bud Moskow more than a decade ago. Strengthening the APR by prohibiting those non-food production uses would be a very important first step in bringing the APR into conformity with those reviewed and approved by the commonwealth’s food and agriculture department.
 
Several recent news items, while honoring the very real accomplishments of many who have been recently involved, left out the many hundreds of hours and thousands of dollars contributed by individuals and nonprofit organizations over the past decade to preserve this very productive farm with its over 40 acres of valuable but vulnerable agricultural soils in three towns, plus greenhouses and farm buildings.
 
At the risk of compounding the errors of omission, and with my apologies to those who have been missed (you will know who you are and how valuable your contributions of time, money, blood, sweat and tears, have been), here are some additional names. Most, if not all, have been involved in this effort for many years.
 
From the private conservation organizations, Adam Moore of Sheriff’s Meadow Foundation, Brendan O’Neill of the Vineyard Conservation Society, Jon Previant of The Farm Institute, the Martha’s Vineyard Agricultural Society (which funded the consulting work by Jim Oldham who reviewed and recommended various very impressive strategies, with Ag Society leadership provided by Dale McClure, Glenn Hearn, and Trip Barnes), Rob Kendall, who worked tirelessly as a private individual and in his professional capacity as a land planner and broker, Penny Uhlendorf and Alice Early of the Whippoorwill Farm CSA who spearheaded last summer’s Vineyard Farm Project initiative, with participation from Philippe Jordi from the Island Housing Trust, various town boards and committees from West Tisbury, Tisbury and Oak Bluffs, town land bank advisory boards and the central board, and of course, Andrew Woodruff who had the original vision for farming once the Moskows sold Thimble Farm, and who has put in more time and effort than anyone will ever know.
 
Thanks to all including those who have been in the project from the beginning.
 
Virginia Crowell Jones, West Tisbury
 
 
 
Skunk Rescue
 
 Editors, Vineyard Gazette:
 
Just outside Edgartown on the Vineyard Haven Road about 9 p.m., traffic ahead was stopping on both sides. A couple of cars looked to be turning around. Accident? Police stop? A young woman stepped out of her pickup in front of us and walked to the middle of the road where several cars were pointing their lights. She bent down and in each hand picked up two baby skunks marching in a column, and walked to the roadside to gently deposit them. A silent cheer and high five went up acknowledging a good deed spotlighted for all to see. Enough to make everybody feel a little bit better.
 
Randy Williams, Vineyard Haven