This time of year gets crazy. I think the whole true meaning of Christmas has been forgotten. This Black Friday was even more crazy than in the past. People were killed! It’s disgusting that for the greed of a deal on a gift, a Wal Mart employee lost his life.  Considering our economic issues, it is risky to be spending so much money. Christmas isn’t about presents, but it sure seems so. Before Thanksgiving, Christmas commercials about sales are playing. Christmas has become a commercial holiday.

Editors, Vineyard Gazette:

I was crushed to hear that David Flanders died over Thanksgiving. He was one of my heroes. Not only a man of honor, but the best baseball player Chilmark ever had. He had a try-out with the Boston Red Sox but turned down a lucrative career to play summer ball on the Vineyard. His home-run powers were legendary — swatting towering fly balls that disappeared forever in the pines at Toomey’s Field.

Fisheries management in New England is broken and here is just one small example of one of its glaring faults.

ROOM FOR ALL

Editors, Vineyard Gazette:

Round and Round

From the Gazette editions of December, 1983:

December Days

The weather has been nothing short of changeable since the calendar turned to the last month of the year. Bitter cold settled over the Island early this week, creeping into every corner of the house and office and sending us scurrying for extra layers — lots of extra layers. Then suddenly it was warm again with rain and wind and ferries cancelled, interrupting holiday shoppers and soaking school children as they stepped off yellow buses and made a mad dash for home.

The unmentionable odor that wafts from Ocean Park from time to time is being confronted by the town of Oak Bluffs. Whatever it is that is seeping to the surface, the state Department of Environmental Protection is not amused. Recently, wastewater commission chairman Hans von Steiger was quoted in the Gazette as saying, “Remember we are dealing with below-ground here. We can guess, but we don’t know what’s down there.”

The Meaning of Cheer

At this time, as the holidays approach and the days are at their shortest, almost everyone is feeling somehow battered by economic fallout.

The Garage That Became a House

On Dec. 3, seven Vineyarders traveled to Portland, Me., for the Northeast Aquaculture Conference and Exposition. The conference is held every two years and brings together leading marine biologists, government officials and commercial aquaculture specialists from Virginia to Maine.

Held in the Eastland Park Hotel in downtown Portland, the three-day conference was packed with over 70 presentations covering the areas of finfish aquaculture and shellfish cultivation.