TOM DRESSER

508-693-1050

(tomdresser@aol.com)

Oak Bluffs library will host a technology fair on Saturday, March 21, from 2 to 4 p.m. Reference librarian Mat Bose says anyone can come and learn about a variety of technologies related to business, entertainment, energy, personal computers and home networks. Programs range from Vineyard Energy to WiFi update and a video-discussion with Valerie Becker.

KATHIE CASE

508-627-5349

(kathleencase@comcast.net)

I don’t know about anyone else but I think every year it takes me a little longer to get used to the time change. I love that there is light at the end of the day but I like the light in the morning; it helps getting up easier, but oh well this too shall pass.

Just before February vacation, my class went to Edgartown Cinema and saw the film  Defiance. It was a movie about the Bielski brothers who survived the Holocaust by building a community in the forest. They lived in hard conditions, but they saved 1,200 people. Even though this number seems small when you consider that six million Jews died in the Holocaust, if they had only save d one person it would have been worth it. One life is still so much. “Our revenge will be our survival,” said the Bielski brothers, and this is so true.

For every disaster, there is a survivor and I am he,” declares Matt Flynn, stepping towards the three spirits listening as he speaks the ancient words of Tuan McCarrill. This is the Irish Creation story, and Matt is playing the part of Tuan, the shapeshifter who witnesses each race of invaders as they conquer and then lose the land of Ireland.

Tisbury has a warrant article for the annual town meeting to see whether the town will appropriate $1,566,000 to start setting aside money to pay for retirement benefits for town employees. We have been funding our pension plan, but we have not been funding promised health insurance and other benefits.

Cast Your Ballots!

From the Gazette editions of March, 1909:

Call me Tossu. Two and a half years ago I embarked upon a watery voyage that brought me to an Island in the Atlantic. After some land travel I arrived at a small dwelling in the woods wherein resided a giant beast. Although it outweighed me 20 times I leapt upon it; at eight weeks old I had the courage of eight mountain lions. The leviathan finally succumbed and it now knew I would rule the roost — not just her but my new brother, Cat Trap (Cho), and our critter sitter, T.

A Light in the Gloom

President Obama this week presented his first budget in Washington, D.C., a spending plan crafted to address not only the nation’s economic crisis but also its yawning inequality. Here on the Vineyard — where we have as bipolar an economy as you’re likely to find — we were presented with good news about closer-to-home efforts to bridge the gaps between us.

Foremost of these was the announcement that construction will begin next month on a long-awaited community YMCA.

Closing the Gap

Such is the unpredictability of the season: last Saturday’s sunshine prompted a Tisbury man to shed his shirt and go bare-chested at the task at hand: shovelling snow from the sidewalk. The season’s economic climate has been likewise unpredictable, the only regularity being bad news piling up in drifts. Between the diving Dow and the rising unemployment lines, most of us on the Island try simply to forge ahead as steadily as we can, trying to keep the shirts on our backs.

A project to sewer the Island Grove subdivison will be delayed for a lack of funding, Edgartown wastewater facilities manager Joseph Alosso confirmed yesterday.

Meanwhile the wastewater department is seeking $3.4 million in federal grants for a larger sewering project in the Edgartown Great Pond watershed area, which would include the subdivision.

The project was originally expected to be voted on at next month’s annual town meeting after voters approved $70,000 to design the sewer lines at a special town meeting last December.