Duplicate Bridge

North and South trumps East and West in a Grand Slam ending that slams the competition. Can’t pass on that, right?

Perhaps an explanation is in order.

The duplicate bridge summer season begins on Thursday, June 16 at 7 p.m. at the Culinary Arts Center at the Martha’s Vineyard Regional High School in Oak Bluffs. The cards will be dealt every Thursday night all summer long. Cost is $6 a session. Feel free to come alone or bring a partner.

Are they back? Captain Jen Clarke and her mother, Carol Miller, were coming through the Menemsha breakwaters on June 7 when they spotted a razorbill. You might remember that back in 2003, 2005 and 2006 several razorbills spent the summer in Menemsha Pond. These alcids are cousins to puffins and murres. All these species, including the razorbills, normally spend their summers breeding in the cooler waters off Maine, Newfoundland, Nova Scotia, Greenland and Iceland. Come winter they migrate south along the Atlantic Coast, including the Vineyard.

I hate to complain about the weather when it has been positively beautiful for the past week or so. I need rain. I know you nongardeners out there think we had plenty earlier this spring.

Acting over the objection of the director of the Martha’s Vineyard Hospital emergency room, Chilmark selectmen voted to appoint Paul (Zeke) Wilkins as permanent chief of the tri-town ambulance service on Tuesday night.

Dr. Jeffrey Zack expressed frank concerns about whether the new chief has enough experience to lead the rural ambulance squad that serves Chilmark, Aquinnah and West Tisbury.

A new $10,000 fund to subsidize pet health care for Island families is an unexpected bonus that will be part of the final transfer of the Edgartown animal shelter site originally donated by Katharine M. Foote.

The fund, which will be formally announced at a meeting of the Dukes County Commissioners today, is for Vineyarders who may not be able to afford care for their animals on their own.

The state Attorney General issued a severe reprimand to the town of Oak Bluffs Tuesday for a long list of violations of state public bidding laws between 2009 and 2011. Citing “a pattern of disregard and certain evidence of intentional avoidance of public construction bidding laws,” the attorney general upheld a protest that had been filed by a former town selectman, but stopped short of issuing any fines or penalties to the financially-troubled town.

The town of Edgartown’s decision to bar a sightseeing tour van charter business from its downtown streets is sound, the state Department of Public Utilities has ruled.

“The decision by the Edgartown selectmen that [tour van] service should be limited to two-way streets is reasonable,” the DPU wrote in a decision released this week. The ruling upholds the town in its dispute with businessman Ron Minkin, who wants to operate a summer sightseeing tour van business in all the Island towns using five 14-passenger vans.

Mary Harrington, tied for valedictorian of the class of 2011, the daughter of Pamela Logan of Vineyard Haven. She will attend Wellesley College in Wellesley in the fall.

Sarah Johnson, tied for valedictorian of the class of 2011, is the daughter of Debra Swanson and Richard Johnson of Oak Bluffs. She will attend Stanford University in Palo Alto, Calif., in the fall.

Among them sat an aspiring novelist, an award-winning poet, a future math teacher, budding music-producer, businesswoman and food aficionado. The class of 2011 at the Martha’s Vineyard Public Charter School graduated Sunday afternoon to the cheers of friends, family and teachers. With tears streaming down their cheeks and smiles on their faces, they accepted their diplomas and took in the atmosphere around them.

Featherstone Kicks Off Poetry Season

Be prepared to get word drunk on Thursday at 7 p.m. when poets Dawn Lundy Martin and Ronaldo V. Wilson read at Featherstone Center for the Arts in Oak Bluffs. The event is the kickoff to the summer poetry series at Featherstone which later in the summer will feature champion wordsmiths Billy Collins, Robert Pinsky, Tina Chang and Naomi Shihab Nye.