UNBEARABLE TRAGEDY

Editors, Vineyard Gazette:

What follows is an edited selection from 20 reader comments that were posted on the Gazette Web site over the weekend in response to the fatal car crash.

My heart goes out to the parents and family of both of these young women.

Karen Bressler

Edgartown

From a June. 1991 column by Arthur Railton:

Packing is a science, no doubt about it. Making the most of the space you’ve got takes talent. And that’s true whether you’re packing a carry-on bag for the weekend or the family possessions for a household move. A good packing job looks so easy. Just put this over there and that over here, and there’s space for everything.

The high stone wall curves around the small gray house as if enfolding it in a protective embrace. When the winter winds blew, hard and damp, across the north shore of the Island, those thoughtfully-placed granite stones shielded the house, and the people within it. It’s so easy to imagine the Tiltons listening to the wind moaning in the chimney piece as the sponge for the next day’s bread worked on the hearth.

Summer On the Horizon

It certainly has been slow to arrive by the weather, which has been stubbornly cool and rainy this year; nevertheless summer has its official start this coming weekend with the solstice. And so we turn to the late nature writer Hal Borland, who wrote this about summer:

“Summer is considerably more than a solstice and the slow diminishing of daylight’s span in the annual march from spring to fall.

Ten members of the American Legion held a solemn ceremony on Sunday, Flag Day, to burn retired flags. The gathering culminated with flames and dark smoke rising from an old steel caldron. The 10-minute service included a prayer, a speech and the playing of music.

The infrequent event is held when the veterans have collected a large enough pile of flags, the organizers explained.

Tragedy Strikes at Home

The statistics paint a stark picture. Motor vehicle accidents are the leading cause of death among fifteen to twenty-two-year-olds. And the already high odds of a teenage driver having an accident are highest in the summer months, when teens spend many more hours driving each week than during the school year.

The Vineyard yet again has several youth soccer teams excelling in the post-season, as the under-12 team heads to league finals, the under 14-team heads to semifinals and the under-16 team has already qualified for the Massachusetts Tournament of Champions (MTOC).

The extraordinary beauty, rich geological history and challenges for preservation of the Vineyard landscape were all topics for discussion last Wednesday evening in paleoecologist David Foster’s guest lecture at the Polly Hill Arboretum in West Tisbury.

Sam Bungey has been named online editor for the Vineyard Gazette, newspaper editor Julia Wells announced this week. Mr. Bungey grew up in London and graduated from Trinity College in Dublin, Ireland in 2003. After university he launched Mongrel, a monthly youth-culture magazine that he ran for four years. Published in Dublin, the magazine was circulated nationwide.

He began working as a reporter for the Gazette in September of 2007. The nephew of Geraldine Brooks and Tony Horwitz of Vineyard Haven, he lives in Chilmark.