The Martha’s Vineyard Land Bank reported revenues of $286,590 for the business week ending on Friday, May 17, 2013. The land bank receives its funds from a two per cent fee charged on many Vineyard real estate transactions.

The Martha’s Vineyard Vision Fellowship has announced the appointment of Melissa McKee Hackney as its program director on the Island. Under her leadership, the fellowship program plans to continue to offer grants to individuals and nonprofit organizations to support environmental, social, economic and cultural sustainability on the Vineyard.

Mrs. Hackney is an attorney who has worked extensively with nonprofits, including the Permanent Endowment Fund for Martha’s Vineyard.

Offered By Wallace & Co.
Offered here is a dramatic, high quality waterfront home on the north shore overlooking the Vineyard Sound, Elizabeth Islands, and Cape Cod with three bedrooms and over 3,200 square feet of living space. The home's open floor plan flows easily between indoor and outdoor spaces.

The high school baseball team closed out its season on Monday with a 4-3 loss to visiting Bourne. The Vineyarders, hampered by injuries for much of the season, finished with a 7-11 record. Senior captain Jack Roberts led the team in batting average, turning in a .545 before a dislocated shoulder put him out of action last month. Roberts also led in stolen bases (19). Sophomore Andrew Wiley posted a .362 batting average and led the team in RBIs (16). Senior Brendan Maseda led in runs scored (19), with a .273 average and 16 stolen bases.

Seen in West Tisbury this week: a steady flow of pickup trucks in and out of the parking lot by Alley’s General Store driven by landscapers, carpenters, plumbers and electricians. Fueled by coffee and breakfast sandwiches, iPhones pressed against their ears, Island tradesmen were on the move. There were windows to hang, screens to repair, painting touchups to do once the May sunshine burned through the fog, seaside gardens waiting for a top coat of compost.

It’s Memorial Day weekend and sometimes I think we forget what that’s about. First, it’s about our war dead. No matter how you feel about war, we all hurt for the sons and daughters who don’t come back or come home damaged, and how that reverberates through the psyche of our society. It is also about people missing from our lives leaving that permanent, empty and personal sense of loss. All through life, things and people fall away, reminding us that we are all going to have a turn. It’s the ultimate equal opportunity.

The Edgartown fire department has received a grant of more than $475,000 from the Federal Emergency Management Agency. The money will go toward upgrading the current cardiac monitoring equipment for all of the Island emergency medical services. The ambulances will now be supplied with advanced cardiac defibrillator monitors, he said, which will assist in transmitting patients who are having active heart attacks.

In the cemeteries in Oak
Bluffs, Oak Grove and Sacred Heart, stars and stripes mark the graves of veterans, men and women who fought and served in wars ranging from the Civil War to the World Wars and up to Afghanistan.

Last Saturday morning, Patryck Nascimento, a Brazilian student at the Martha’s Vineyard Regional High School, volunteered to plant American flags and replace old ones at the two cemeteries.

It was not until I cleared the underbrush

I saw unfurling monk-like bodies of ferns

It was not until I walked the lonely pond

forsythia fronds and red bud bloomed in the water

We wish to express our heartfelt thanks and gratitude for everyone in this very special community who called, wrote a personal note or expressed their concern in the Gazette over the fatal attack on our mini-horse, Majik. Majik is greatly missed by all whose lives she touched. She never missed a chance for a hug and a scratch, her tiny neck and head bowing to fully benefit from a human’s or Chance’s (her constant companion’s) affection.