The news that the Bunch of Grapes Bookstore would be moving hit me hard. Granted, it’s only to a space across the street. And I shouldn’t have been surprised. For years now, I’ve seen the great independent bookstores of New York and the Bay Area downsize or close up shop. Whether you blame mega-stores, the digital era of e-books in general or Amazon in particular, it’s an undeniable truth that the way that people are reading and buying books has changed.

I grew up in a very small town in Connecticut. There was one babysitter, Mrs. Shepard, an older woman who lived on a farm, and many kids in town were in her care. We walked to and from our small school, and after school we fed the horses, ran in the fields and splashed in the stream. I remember catching salamanders under rocks — fascinated by their yellow spots or orange stripes. We watched tadpoles grow in stale water and we learned, the hard way, that when chickens peck, they mean business.

The Obama campaign’s recently released online documentary, The Road We’ve Traveled, opens by evoking the plight of the economy when Obama took office: “This will be as deep as anything we’ve experienced since the Great Depression,” and “not since the days of Franklin Roosevelt had so much fallen on the shoulders of one president.” It mixes a photograph of the Depression — “Unemployed — will take any job” reads one placard carried by a man — with a shot of suited office workers on the streets, presumably out o

Nearly ten years ago a small shed went up on the Cook Lands in Aquinnah fronting Menemsha Pond, property owned by the Wampanoag Tribe of Gay Head (Aquinnah). It seemed an innocuous enough little building, but there was one glitch: the tribe had not obtained a building permit for it.

The brightest planet in the sky tonight is Venus, high in the western sky. Venus is moving through the zodiacal constellation Taurus. It is a short distance away from the star cluster Pleiades, which through a pair of binoculars looks like a small dipper. The Pleiades, also nicknamed the Seven Sisters, is a short distance west of the planet.

From time to time, whenever inspiration aligns with respiration, I will be contributing a column to this paper. It will cover some aspect of moving to and living on this Island, trekking toward retirement while reducing stress and making mole hills out of former mountains. Welcome to the Washashore Chronicles.

You need a lot of money to sell a house. And you need a little more than that if you’re selling two. That’s because it’s a privilege to live in Massachusetts, and you have to pay for that privilege.

From Gazette editions of April, 1987: A monster lobster was landed this week by the 75-foot fishing boat Unicorn out of Menemsha. Capt. Gregory Mayhew and his mate Dominique Penicaud came ashore with a 17-pound male lobster

FREE THE BEACHES

Editors, Vineyard Gazette:

I find it embarrassing to reside in a town where the issue of dogs walking on a private town beach is discussed in length, yet at the same time we do not discuss and continue to exclude from our beaches all outside members of our community.

JUNE D. MANNING

508-645-2574

(lthslnks2004@yahoo.com)

Sarah and Oberon York of Vineyard Haven announce the birth of a son, Silas Kano York, born on March 26 at the Martha’s Vineyard Hospital. Silas weighed 7 pounds, 8.5 ounces at birth and joins big sister Lilah.