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So heist the sails

And cast her off

We’re free

As we can be

Leave the mainland

Far behind

And head her

Out to sea

Forget the stragglers

Let ’em stay

Set the course

In stone

Do not waver

Do not stray

Steer her straight

For home

— Steve Ewing, Edgartown Poet Laureate

Editor’s Note: Mike Wallace wrote the following piece for Peter Simon’s book On the Vineyard II, published in 1990. It appears here with permission. Mr. Wallace died on April 7 at the age of 93.

Something extraordinary happens each time I leave my “real” life in New York city and arrive at home in Vineyard Haven. All the magic of my schoolboy excursions to the Vineyard comes flooding back, all the early memories.

The little village of Lahardan in the parish of Addergoole, built on the banks of Lough Conn and nestled at the foot of Mount Nephin in County Mayo, Ireland, seems an unlikely place to be chosen as Ireland’s Titanic Village. But 100 years ago 14 young men and women left the village to travel to America together to seek their fortune.They traveled by horse and cart and then took several trains across Ireland to reach what was then known as Queenstown in County Cork and boarded the world’s most famous ship, the Titanic.

Shiretown

I see the Island

As a tall

Sailing ship

In open sea

Each of the six towns

Is a mast

Rising mightily

Above the listing deck

Canvas billowing

Before the

Stiffening breeze

I see you

The citizens

At the helm

Steering this massive

Yet sleek craft

Into the future

I look aft

Over the high

And broad stern

To see

The boiling frothing wake

West Tisbury will allow the sale of beer and wine in restaurants for the first time in modern history, Oak Bluffs saw a vote of confidence in town government, with two incumbent selectmen reelected, and spending was approved for two major public library construction projects, one in West Tisbury, the other in Edgartown.

And public opinion is running strongly against the roundabout in at least two towns.

These were the highlights of the annual town elections held yesterday in three Island towns.

The extraordinary longevity of the CBS news magazine 60 Minutes made Mike Wallace feel familiar to Americans of every stripe who planned their Sunday night suppers around the show. On the Vineyard, his familiarity was more than an illusion, and his death last week was a genuine loss to the Island.

You have to go out of your way to see the Arabian oryxes at the Phoenix Zoo.

The paved loop that circles the zoo splits slightly after you leave the giraffes behind. If you go straight, you go by the lions and tigers, the zebras and cheetahs. This is what most people come to the zoo for, and this is the path that most people take.

If you walk off to the left, on the dusty trail that has only three animal enclosures on it, you can find the oryxes. They’re a type of desert antelope, off-white with humped backs and long, straight horns.

MORNING AFTER

Editors, Vineyard Gazette:

There were some disturbingly undemocratic elements at last night’s West Tisbury town meeting. I wasn’t able to clearly articulate them as the hour grew late, so I didn’t speak.

The Liberty Oak of West Tisbury

This old oak tree in West Tisbury has stood so long

in the center of its field close to the center of its town

close to the center of its Island off center of its

country, but certainly center of its known universe.

It stretches roots in each direction toward every town.

It has plumbed the earth below and balances a crown,

leafy, windblown, waving to the all unseeing people,

who pass by in cars or bikes, walk or stroll.

There were no harsh cuts this year, and little of the tense, prolonged debate that has come to epitomize recent annual town meetings in Oak Bluffs. Instead, voters in the financially-strapped town worked quickly this week to pass a modest $24.1 million operating budget for the coming fiscal year and approve 24 articles that will restore some much-needed town services.

A total of 207 voters attended the back-to-back special and annual town meetings Tuesday night, held in the performing arts center of Martha’s Vineyard Regional High School.