After a busy week on the floor, Cong. Willliam Delahunt could not refrain from putting his feet up on his desk to rest. "It's been frenetic," he said last Friday, taking a short break in his House office across the street from the Capitol.

The difference between a politician and a statesmen, someone once observed, is that a politician’s time horizon extends only as far as the next election.

So it was in statesman mode that Cong. William Delahunt arrived at the Gazette office last weekend, for perhaps a last editorial board discussion with the newspaper. He will not be a politician anymore after the election. But he will leave, unlike most of the Democrats who (the polls tell us) will be out after this election, at the time of his own choosing.

Thirty-five years ago, at the end of the Viet Nam war, there was a mass evacuation of Vietnamese orphans who had been adopted by Americans and other nationalities. One of the parents anxiously waiting for news of Operation Babylift was one William Delahunt.

It was a nerve-racking time. Mr. Delahunt thought his new adopted daughter was on the first flight out. Then he learned the first flight crashed.

But despair turned to joy. She was safe on the second flight. And so the Delahunts gained a daughter, Kara Mai.

Martha’s Vineyard will be part of a new 9th congressional district under a redistricting plan announced this week.

Shortly after the plan was unveiled by legislative leaders, Rep. William Keating released a statement saying he will change his residency from Quincy to the Cape so he can run in the new district.

The completion of the first 100 days has become an important milestone in the career of a politician. For freshman Cong. William Keating, it has seemed more like 1,000 days, with geopolitical, domestic and even nuclear crises coming in quick succession. For the past two weeks Mr. Keating has been catching his breath, meeting with constituents from Edgartown to Quincy, but on Sunday he was reminded that the world doesn’t wait.

There are some positive aspects to being a new Democratic congressman after an election which saw a Republican landslide. Yesterday the new representative for the Vineyard, William Keating, enumerated a few.

For one, he said it does not take long to get to know your fellow freshmen party members.

“There are only nine of us,” he said yesterday, the day after he was sworn in.

“That’s the lowest number since 1915. So it just makes sense the nine of us would become close very quickly. And we have,” he said, adding: