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Greece has been on the minds of many people recently. The world sat on pins and needles waiting for the results of the June 17 election. Thankfully the New Democracy party won, and Greece will remain in the European Union—at least for the time being.

Even though the humidity is still around, we have had a few nice days with a nice breeze. The moon has been at its fullest and we can expect another one at the end of the month. Plus the Perseid meteor showers are this weekend. We just hope the sky is clear so we can see some great meteors.

An Edgartown woman was arrested on drunken driving charges Tuesday after she was involved in a two-car crash in West Tisbury that sent two to the hospital with minor injuries, police said.

Jennifer Brown, 33, of Edgartown was headed south on State Road Tuesday just after 4 p.m. when she rear-ended a car driven by Joseph Spinelli, 72, West Tisbury police Cpl. Garrison Vieira said.

There are three places where you can check up on the schedule of Chappy Community Center activities and events: their very thorough website, chappycommunitycenter.org, their gigantic chalk board on the outside wall of the CCC and the bulletin board at the ferry point. You would need a whole page of the Gazette to tell it all, but I’ll mention just a couple of events.

Candidates to Meet

On Saturday, August 11, the The Martha’s Vineyard Democrats will host both candidates for the ninth congressional district of Massachusetts. The candidates are William Keating, who is running for re-election, and Sam Sutter, the district attorney for Bristol County.

The meeting takes place at 9 a.m. at Howes House in West Tisbury.

From Vineyard Gazette editions of July and August 1888:

Edgartown is now entertaining quite a number of summer visitors at hotels and private residences. Every train brings the stranger and returning Vineyarder, all rejoicing in the prospect of a week’s outing at this charming seaport town. All in all, Edgartown is enjoying a fair share of the Island’s prosperity, and the visitors always depart with a reluctance that speaks well for the hospitality and attractions to which the town has treated them.

"Nature abhors a vacuum." Aristotle said that or something like that in the original ancient Greek, observing that nature requires every space to be filled with something, even if that something is colorless, odorless air or house guests.

The flip side of this observation is that empty spaces are unnatural as they go against the laws of nature and physics. So kindly fill your chairs, sofas and beds with people whose company is compatible. You don’t want the science police knocking on your door and inquiring about unfilled spaces.

My architecture firm has designed about a dozen houses on Martha’s Vineyard in addition to the Middle Line affordable housing project in Chilmark. Some of these houses are large, so I have frequently been asked what I think about the discussion now taking place, not only about large houses, but also about the future of the Vineyard in general.

Just like the rest of America, health care on Martha’s Vineyard is in trouble — too often fragmented, unsafe, variable, hard to access and far too costly. Poor system designs are the cause, designs sustained by a fee-for-service payment system that pays for volume (how much you do), not value (how well the patient does). Doctors, nurses, other clinicians, staff, and managers do their very best to help, but they are often fighting upstream against systems that make their work harder.

The July 30 shark attack at Ballston Beach in Truro has focused national attention on the seasonal occurrence of white sharks in waters close to Cape Cod and Island beaches. White sharks are no strangers to residents here; I certainly won’t forget kayaking with friends to see a female white shark trapped in a coastal pond on Naushon island in September 2004. There seems little doubt that we have witnessed more white sharks in areas frequented by swimmers along the eastern shore of the Cape over the past few years.