As the controversy over a reality show hitting Vineyard shores swirled around the Island last week, potential cast members defended their decision to audition for the docu-soap in order to depict “the real Vineyard.”
News of the slated reality show, which goes by the working title The Vineyard, spurred pointed criticism on social media and the Gazette website, with hundreds of Islanders and visitors alike saying they feared the show would portray a false, glossy representation of Island life.

What do oysters and seaweed have in common?

“Both remove nitrogen,” Woods Hole marine scientist Scott Lindell told a large group that attended his recent talk at the Chilmark Library about a two-year exploratory effort to cultivate seaweed in Waquoit Bay. The $150,000 project will continue through this summer and is funded through the Woods Hole Sea Grant program.

About 20 North Atlantic right whales were spotted south and southeast of the Vineyard on Tuesday, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration confirmed. This is the second report of right whales seen near the Vineyard in a month.

On Feb. 15 six right whales were seen from the air halfway between the Vineyard and Nantucket. On the same day two more whales were seen swimming south of Nantucket.

It’s been a real New England winter this year, and as February comes to a close, numbers tell the story.
One day before the end of the month, records from the National Weather Service station in Edgartown show that total snowfall on the Vineyard is 25 inches for the year to date. Nearly all of that snow fell in January and February, when the Island had 10 and 15 inches respectively.

The ferries can sometimes can be the best indicator of life on the Vineyard, and certainly this was true last Friday when outgoing boats were jammed to the gunwales with children and adults of every description. Standby lines resembled an August day minus the tourists. A visitor from another country might well have concluded that some strange plague had descended and Islanders were fleeing for their lives.

They come for the sun, sea and rich plankton that occurs in the ocean waters around the Island. This is the season when North Atlantic right whales migrate north to Cape Cod from their wintering grounds off Florida and Georgia. Last month eight of the endangered marine mammals were spotted near the Vineyard and Nantucket. Six were seen from the air swimming between the two Islands; the other two were seen south of Nantucket. Then early this week, twenty whales were seen swimming in the Atlantic Ocean off South Beach in Edgartown.

I teach a writing workshop here on the Vineyard and often I begin the class by saying: “We are alchemists. We can turn garbage into gold. We can take what happened to us, the trauma, the hurts, the tiny murders, and we can transform them into something beautiful. But the most important thing we have to do first is, we have to feel them. You can’t skip the pain part.”

Editor’s Note: Olive Tomlinson spoke with Linsey Lee, oral history curator for the Martha’s Vineyard Museum, about her recollections of Liz White’s Shearer Summer Theatre, one of the first summer theatre groups on the Island after World War II. An actress who felt stymied by the stereotyped African American roles available to her on Broadway, in the summers Liz returned to Oak Bluffs where her family owned and operated Shearer Cottage, a popular inn for vacationing African Americans.

I was concerned to learn that a popular medical facility, Dr. Monto’s office in West Tisbury, was planning on ending their services on the Vineyard. My understanding is that a lack of cooperation between the hospital and Dr. Monto’s facility was the cause.

In Saturday’s Boston Globe there is an article about sea level rise in Boston. Mayor Menino is taking proactive steps to fortify parts of Boston. On the Vineyard, like Boston, we have had several storms this winter season where if the storm surge had occurred at high tide there would have been substantial impact.