The blizzard, the worst snowstorm in decades, came roaring across the water, burying Martha's Vineyard under more than two feet of snow.
Starting Saturday, Jan. 22, the storm raged throughout the following day. Winds hit 70 miles per hour, creating white-out conditions, rendering roads impassable, and essentially cutting off the Vineyard from the mainland. Schools remained closed for the following week.
Fed up with petty internal politics, Dukes County voters this fall decided to take another look at the structure of their regional government. Hoping to prevent another divisive land use dispute, town and tribal leaders in Aquinnah spent months negotiating a potential peace accord. And with a solid financial footing, Martha's Vineyard Hospital trustees closed the year by securing approval for a new state of the art facility.
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.
On July 8, four days after the devastating fire that burned Café Moxie and the Bunch of Grapes Bookstore, Tisbury defiantly held its summer street fair. Gazette photographer Jaxon White captured the event with a shot of an eight-year old girl on Main street, beaming through new front teeth and swirling a balloon. Her name was Hope. Hope Alwart.
And there was a single-frame metaphor for 2008, adversity and hope.
In her summation of the Martha’s Vineyard economy, presented to an audience of Island businesswomen in November, Martha’s Vineyard Chamber of Commerce executive director Nancy Gardella labeled herself an optimist. For certain sectors, she said, things were going well. Very well.
For most people on the Vineyard, the good news about the year 2009 is that it is over. No matter which way you look at it, last year was a tough one.
Even the weather was bad, beginning with a big dump of snow on New Year’s Eve. That was briefly very pretty, but over the succeeding weeks and months of repeated thaws and freezes, the ground cover mostly alternated between mush and dirty, treacherous ice.
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.
