The sound of my childhood bedroom door echoed as I opened it. I stood in the middle of the tiny blue room and imagined everything just as it was when I was 12 — my twin bed with a starry comforter, a collage on one wall of magazine cutouts (lots of ‘N Sync), murals of fairies, flying mice, frogs playing fiddles and other whimsical things on another wall. My parents let me paint anything I wanted to on one wall.

In the middle of the last century if you headed east on Lagoon Pond Road from the Five Corners intersection you would have seen much as you would today, a large expanse of giant cattails on your right.

Both federal and state law require that public schools provide special education to students with disabilities, a mandate that grows more costly each year. Next week, the All-Island School Committee will consider a budget for Islandwide shared services that is twenty one per cent higher than last year’s, almost entirely due to higher costs and lower federal subsidies for these programs.

While we all know Martha’s Vineyard youth face unique challenges, great work is being done to ensure that these challenges are being faced head-on. Based on recent surveys, we know that all the way through middle school, our youth are making excellent, healthy choices, at rates higher than national averages. This is the result of community collaborations and the careful, concerted effort of our parents and schools to ensure that our youth are informed, invested and empowered. We are aware that there is much work to be done.

Struck him out! 6-to-1. You won.

I went to the senior center in Vineyard Haven last Wednesday morning for my very first time. In fact it was my first visit to any senior center. I don’t like those euphemisms — senior, golden oldie, retiree.

From the Vineyard Gazette editions of November, 1888:

To accommodate those wishing to vote and leave the Island the same day, the Steamboat Company has decided to leave Edgartown 9.15 A.M. Cottage City 9.45 A.M. Vineyard Haven 10.00 A.M. Connecting at New Bedford with 1.30 P.M. train arriving in Boston 3.20 P.M., Providence 3.30 P.M.

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Loved the Tom Dunlop article in the Nov. 1 edition of the Gazette on Islander ex Hackensack.

The Hack was a Vineyard ferry first both in appearance, as your photo shows, and in type of service, the two port shuttle, which any vessel could perform. In 1947 only the Hack shuttled; all the others did the New Bedford-Nantucket circle dance until 1959, when the Islands got the city dropped, and no more deficits for the SSA!

W.R. Deeble
West Tisbury

Recently my wife experienced a medical emergency, the outcome of which we feel merits sharing. On the pitch black early morning of August 23, my wife fell at our home, suffering severe damage to her hip.