In public seminars this month, the Vineyard Conservation Society, using colorful and frightful maps, showed how we were on our way to becoming the next Atlantis. My wife and I just bought here and now they’re telling me “here” may not be here for long? Here I was enjoying my status as a washashore and now they have the audacity to inform me that life’s odyssey is destined to make me an out-at-sea? Why worry about securing my next appointment with the electrician or the plumber if my future is among flotsam and jetsam?

Annie and I spent a lot of time at the beach through the years. I stayed at the tide line. She took off for the dune grass looking for small mammals. There were plenty. If she caught a scent of something underground, she would crouch, her big plume of a tail wagging furiously, and leap straight up into the air like an Arctic fox. She was a border collie mix, big at 55 pounds, and the thrill of the chase was what engaged her.

One day at the beach I saw her in the distance trotting toward me and there was something in her mouth.

The other day I was looking at a photo taken from Pam Clark’s old house of Shenandoah, at anchor in back of the Black Dog, and waxing nostalgic. Then today I read about Shenandoah’s namesake, and the original Alabama. I had thought they had been Confederate blockade runners, sort of romantic vessels.

Tea Party member Peter Robb (letter, May 17) complains that “Barack Hussein Obama has done precious little to bring liberals and conservatives together.” Without suggesting any useful measures, Mr. Robb instead goes on to assert that the administration has done a whole list of bad things, and lied about them.

I’m always amused to see how information given to someone working for a newspaper can get turned around, and I normally just enjoy it. But when Skip Finley’s Oak Bluffs piece from the May 17 Gazette was pointed out to me, I knew it was time to correct some misinformation. I think my mother, Elizabeth Hilliard Stacy, would be very surprised to hear that she was the founder of Hilliard’s Kitch-in-vue Candies and that Marguerite Cook was one of her five daughters.

Oak Bluffs entered the summer season Tuesday with heated debate over issues from one end of Circuit avenue to the other. At the upper end of the avenue, unfinished construction on the Edgartown National Bank’s new building was a central point of contention. Later, selectmen grappled with whether to allow a stationary food truck on the lower end of the avenue.

Remembering Jack Howland — his wit, his wisdom, his way with words — his place at the round table at the ArtCliff Diner. The following, titled Snapshots, was written by Jack in November 2010, but he still had a few good miles to go. You are missed by many, Jack.

From the Vineyard Gazette editions of June, 1908: To those who have always loved the Vineyard, a pretty book by Charles Gilbert Hine of New York makes its appeal. First, because of its pictorial beauty; second, because of the interest of the story; third, because of the nuggets of real history so aptly and easily distributed through the pages comprised between the covers of the Story of Martha’s Vineyard now on sale.

It’s hard to miss the Astros. Dressed in blazing orange uniforms, the players would stand out in nearly any environment, but against the bright green grass of the regional high school field, the contrast seems all the more dramatic. The Astros, a squad of 14 and 15 year olds, are a bridge, the final stop in Island youth baseball on the way up to the big leagues of high school ball.

The Dukes County advisory board last week signed off on funding for a new emergency notification system aimed at summer visitors with smart phones. County emergency management director Chuck Cotnoir requested the use of county funds to put in place the Ping4 notification system as a way to help Island visitors receive emergency information. Ping4 is a smart phone application that allows a user to receive localized notifications. It is used by the Massachusetts Emergency Management Agency and the National Weather Service, and can be programmed to send out county-specific information.