The Dukes County pest management program will be discontinued beginning July 1 due to lack of funding. County manager Martina Thornton notified selectmen and town administrators of the decision in a letter sent last Friday.

The program would have been funded by just two towns, Chilmark and Aquinnah, for the fiscal 2014 year.

Each family has its own Vineyard specialty, a beloved summer-after-summer tradition that everyone cherishes and remembers during those empty winter days in February. Sometimes it is the patriarch’s birthday party. Sometimes it is the matriarch’s birthday party, especially if the house belonged to her family.  Sometimes it is a Fourth of July or a Labor Day event when far-flung family members assemble to celebrate.  One of our friends, who is not French, gives a lavish annual dinner party with many guests in honor of Bastille Day.

Carol Carrick, the award-winning author of more than four dozen children’s books and books for young adults, many with a Vineyard setting, died unexpectedly at the Martha’s Vineyard Hospital on June 6. She was 78 and lived in West Tisbury. The cause was complications from a stroke.

Ralph Graves, the former editor of Life Magazine, a novelist and longtime summer resident of the Island, died in New York city on June 10 after a period of declining health. He was 88.

With construction about halfway complete on the new West Tisbury Library project, town leaders raised concerns this week about a rapidly dwindling contingency fund for the project.

The $6 million project has already used up half of a $200,000 reserve in the budget. Construction began in December and there is a little less than $100,000 left.

Once the address of choice for whaling captains, North Water street in Edgartown is now home to captains of modern industry, a handsome boulevard of stately white mansions and manicured hedges that runs from Main street past the Edgartown Light.

Handsome, that is, but for Number 62, the so-called Captain Warren House — the now-decrepit building next to the Edgartown Free Public Library — which has become the most public of eyesores as the town of Edgartown continues its search for a buyer who will take it off its hands for a reasonable price.

Tuesday night was the first home baseball game of the season for the Sharks and kids from all the little league teams around the Island were invited to take part in the festivities. Teenagers to tee-ballers as tall as a Shark’s backpocket came dressed in their uniforms with gloves at the ready. The competition on the field was first rate. So, too, were the scrambles for foul ball souvenirs.

All the years of my marriage when
things have gotten tough, my husband has always said at least no one is chasing us with machetes. Really? has always been my inward eye-rolling response.

When I was first dating him I asked him all those beginning-of-a-relationship questions, like what’s the meanest thing your father ever said and what food did your mom make you eat and were you rich or were you poor? He said his father never said a mean thing and his mother never made him eat anything he didn’t want. And without hesitation he answered yes to rich.

June 15 marks the eighth World Elder Abuse Awareness Day, a time for us to build a better understanding of elder abuse and effective ways to respond.
Elder abuse has no boundaries. On-Island and around the globe, the experience of elder abuse transcends communities, cultures and income levels. The term elder abuse refers to intentional or negligent acts that cause harm to those the law recognizes as vulnerable elders Massachusetts law defines an elder as a person age 60 and over. The law requires people in certain professions to report suspected elder abuse to public authorities.

From the Vineyard Gazette edition of July 12, 1946:
The season at the Martha’s Vineyard Playhouse on East Chop has begun this week with Arthur J. Beckhard’s revival of his success, Goodbye Again, which is to open in New York in the fall. Roger Pryor is seen in the leading role, originally played by Osgood Perkins.

Goodbye Again is a comedy in a lighter vein by Alan Scott and George Haight, first produced in 1932. It has in it some inspired fooling, a slight mixture of bedroom farce, and ample opportunity for Mr.