Emergency Money

Dukes County was awarded $229,728 to support its 911 emergency dispatch communications center and enhance public safety. The grants came from the state Executive Office of Public Safety and Security and the 911 department.

Vineyard officials testified before the state legislature yesterday in support of a bill that would merge the Dukes County Sheriff’s Department into the state system and place it under control of the Executive Office of Public Safety.

Dukes County sheriff Michael McCormack, who would see a 27 per cent increase in his salary if the bill passes, appeared at the hearing, along with county manager Russell Smith and county treasurer Noreen Mavro Flanders.

Luther Tacknash Madison died peacefully at the Martha’s Vineyard Hospital on Thursday night, March 12, after a long illness, during which, as Medicine Man of the Wampanoag Tribe of Gay Head (Aquinnah) he never complained. His final happy words, according to his great-nephew Jason Baird, now Medicine Man, were that “My beautiful sunset is coming.”

Luther Madison was born at the Martha’s Vineyard Hospital on Nov. 9, 1924, the son of Napoleon Bonaparte and Nanetta Cassaundra Wilhelmina Vanderhoop Madison.

Can you imagine a structure almost 300 feet tall, just a mile or so outside Edgartown? Well, a couple of weeks from now, you won’t have to; you’ll be able to see the pictures.

Staff at the Massachusetts Technology Collaborative (MTC) are even now doctoring recent photos taken from various points on Martha’s Vineyard, superimposing the image of a 640-kilowatt wind turbine on them.

A proposal to turn the building that until last year housed the Vineyard’s only nightclub, Outerland, into a delicatessen and seasonal package store will go before the Edgartown zoning board of appeals April 8.

Alexis Garcia, who submitted the proposal last month, and who with her husband, Paul, owns Garcia’s in the former Back Alley’s store in West Tisbury, would not comment yesterday on the potential purchase of the premises at the airport in Edgartown.

Revetments, armories, groins, jetties, ripraps — the walls of stone built to protect a length of bluff from erosion go by many names, but in whatever guise they pose a growing threat to the Vineyard shoreline, according to several prominent Island environmentalists.

Some Island beaches are getting plenty of attention.

Over a hundred volunteers gathered on the Oak Bluffs side of the Joseph Sylvia State Beach on Saturday morning to plant beach grass, part of an ongoing effort to stabilize one of the most popular beaches on the Island.

Meanwhile, the Army Corps of Engineers has agreed to come back to South Beach and to Chappaquiddick for a large-scale cleanup of leftover World War I and World War II ordnance. Their work will begin April 1, according to Chris Kennedy of The Trustees of Reservations.

Today is the first day of spring. Last Saturday, Tom Hodgson of West Tisbury reports, he pulled back some leaf litter at the base of a white oak in his yard to find these mayflower blooms awaiting the light of day.

It’s a sure sign of spring when American Cancer Society volunteers take to the streets with bunches of daffodils in hand. Vineyarders buy bouquets for themselves or use them as gifts in order to support cancer research; some even make anonymous donations so flowers go to hospital patients, nursing homes, and senior centers.

Nationwide, the American Cancer Society reports that during the last 14 years, Daffodil Days has raised more than $240 million dollars. The flowers always arrive in March to coincide with the first day of spring.

The man in black, from his boots to bejewelled beret, was impeccably groomed on Tuesday as he stroked he neatly trimmed white beard and lamented how he’d been type-cast. He is usually the guy who gets beaten up — “the biker, the trucker, the redneck,” in his words. This experience in taking fake fisticuffs was what Broadway combat choreographer David Brimmer was passing on to an enthusiastic group of Vineyard students.