Integrated Health

Acupuncturist and natural medicine doctor Dr. Iris Gold and chiropractic orthopedist Dr. Steven Katz both are back practicing at Integrated Health Center of Vineyard Haven.

He’s an academic and an adventurer, an Oxford-educated expert in Sanskrit who 50 years ago traveled overland from Damascus to Baghdad, then sailed across the Arabian Sea from Bombay to Aden in an untested boat with limited charts.

The Steamship Authority will lose the lease for its reservation office at the Martha’s Vineyard Airport, and is seriously considering closing the office.

The move is made necessary by the fact that the new owners of the so-called Beacon Building — Island Professional Realty LLC — have told the boat line they have other plans for the space, and will not extend the current lease beyond the end of January next year.

Beachgoers whisking their dogs onto Joseph Sylvia State Beach for a quick spin hoping no one notices may want to think twice this summer — the Dukes County commissioners are calling for a volunteer-based patrol program to help enforce the no-dogs policy.

Oak Bluffs raced to balance its current town budget at the finish line of the fiscal year, after voters at Tuesday’s special town meeting moved to transfer more than $216,000 to cover shortfalls.

About 100 residents appeared at the Oak Bluffs School on Tuesday to vote on the six-article warrant. It was the town’s third special town meeting since January.

The scramble included taking $106,000 from the town’s so-called “rainy day” fund to pay for unforeseen health insurance costs.

With a bonfire blazing in late afternoon sunlight behind them, eight women gathered to celebrate the summer solstice. These women have special reason to celebrate the passing of spring into summer and the new cycle of life it brings — they run Hospice of Martha’s Vineyard.

Under increasing pressure over his performance, Oak Bluffs town administrator Michael Dutton is now the subject of a disciplinary proceeding in front of the town selectmen.

Selectmen have held two closed-door sessions within the last week to discuss Mr. Dutton’s performance under a section of the state open meeting law that allows executive sessions to discuss and consider the discipline or dismissal of a town employee. A third executive session is scheduled for July 5.

All winter, my venerable sailboat, Blue beard , has sat on her trailer in my Music street backyard. But as spring turns to summer, I have been sensing from the stirrings of the tarp that has kept her cozy on snowy days, that Bluebeard is longing to return to the water. Not that she controls the actions of the tarp. The wind does. But in my years of tending Bluebeard, I have learned a bit about her temperament — and mine.

Clam chowder, bay scallops, fried oysters. Wampum bracelets. Shellfish are the grand bounty of the soft, sparkling salt ponds that ring the Island shore. We’d be hard pressed to find a local cultural symbol more significant than the water-worn purple and white quahaug shell. Purple — the Island color.

It’s hard to say which was more shocking, witnessing the near drowning of an elderly man and a young boy or the refusal of a couple on a nearby motorboat to help rescue them. Either way, it was an afternoon to remember.