Cans of Paint and a Handshake

The Edgartown Hardware Store has long been a place where not only could you buy your paint, garden hoses, scallop baskets, art supplies, light bulbs and sheetrock screws for that weekend home project, but whatever you bought came with an important add-on at no extra charge: customer service.

HOUSE OF HEALING

Editors, Vineyard Gazette:

I am writing this letter to make our community aware of Vineyard House, an organization that may not be widely known, but whose existence is so crucial — not only to the individual who is personally struggling with drug and alcohol addictions, but also to the people in the lives of the afflicted. The residual damage of these diseases has a trickle-down effect on the entire community, especially one as unique and isolated as Martha’s Vineyard.

From a July, 1960 Gazette:

Important as salt is and has been to the welfare of humanity the world over, and extensive as the industry of salt-making has been on Martha’s Vineyard, history has almost nothing to say about the Island industry. In the history by Dr. Charles Banks he merely states that there were extensive saltworks on Bass Creek in Vineyard Haven in 1840 and that others were operated near the herring creek (Tashmoo, presumably).

The West Tisbury selectmen unanimously voted on July 21 to award three lots in Bailey Park to Habitat for Humanity of Martha’s Vineyard to create three new units of affordable housing. Bailey Park Road Community Housing (Bailey Park) is the result of several years of thoughtful effort by the West Tisbury affordable housing committee, along with the commitment of West Tisbury Community Preservation Act funds.

On a recent Friday morning, a group of Edgartown School students could be found in the back of the building, grossly immersed in studies. They had no books, no pencils, no teachers telling them to quiet down, only their hands for tools. The six students, all under the age of nine, were wildly excited to be back to school to pick from the beds of vegetables they had started during the school year.

Interested in hearing more about wind turbines and noise? On Wednesday, July 28, there will be a work session on the issue to help the preparation of a Wind Energy Plan for Dukes County. The session is free to all and begins at 5 p.m. at the Martha’s Vineyard Commission (the Stone Building) at 33 New York avenue in Oak Bluffs.

The statistics never look good, but one thing remains clear: miracles do happen at Vineyard House. Thursday evening marks the 13th annual water tasting to benefit the only sober house on the Island, where staff, board members and volunteers hope not only to raise money for the organization, but to send people home with a message of helping out their neighbors.

After a lengthy candidate search for an assistant principal to replace Neal Weaver at the Martha’s Vineyard Regional High School, school officials have opted to hire an interim candidate internally.

Matt Mulowski, an English and English as a second language [ESL] teacher at the high school, as well as the director of the high school’s alternative STAR Program, will act as the temporary assistant principal for the coming year. He began working yesterday.

Michael Chertoff, former United States Secretary of Homeland Security, will speak on security in the 21st century in the season’s fourth program of the Summer Institute speaker series, on Thursday, July 29, at the Martha’s Vineyard Hebrew Center.

As a Secretary in the Cabinet of President Bush, Mr. Chertoff led a 218,000-person department with a budget of $50 billion. He also served periodically on the National Security and Homeland Security Councils, and on the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States.

Gone are the grownup gatekeepers of movie merit — kids are the audience for the weekly Cinema Circus films. So the Gazette and the Martha’s Vineyard Film Festival bring you the big view from the smaller viewers with weekly kid critics.