Seismic Shifts, Trustees Too Silent

The announcement last week by The Trustees of Reservations of major staffing and organizational changes on the Island operation is unsettling less for what it said than for what it did not say. Ordinarily personnel changes may be taken as matters of ordinary business — a new manager is named here, a position is eliminated there. But the changes announced by the Trustees in a garden-variety press release that arrived by electronic mail are anything but ordinary.

Edgartown Drug Arrest

Edgartown police arrested David Hermann last Friday for possession with intent to distribute heroin and possession with intent to distribute prescription pills.

The other night, six men of a certain age walked into the restaurant Cook and Brown Public House at 959 Hope street in Providence, R.I. They all looked to be in their 50s, an assortment of working professionals, artists and academics. They had gathered for some drinks, a meal and to be together.

At the bar they caught up on one another’s lives. One man had just returned from Heidelberg, Germany. Another recently had surgery to remove some polyps. They raised their glasses and toasted the evening. It was all done as one might expect of men who had reached this point in their lives. Enjoyable but somewhat understated.

Quiet Island

The Island in winter is often a calm affair. But during this first week of March it has downshifted to a gear slower than walking, slower even than sitting on a stump and breathing in the landscape. It is as if the Island has been emptied of the last remnant of noise and rambunctiousness left.

It is winter break here on the Island. The schools are all closed.

Attention fans of the Martha’s Vineyard boys’ varsity basketball team: Watching the team’s state tournament run can cause hypertension, hoarseness of voice and excessive nail-biting; please consult your cardiologist before attending another Vineyarders game.

“I was the kid who always wanted to join the Peace Corps and live in a mud hut. Always.”

Little did Suzan Bellincampi know that at the age of 23, that’s exactly where she’d end up.

“Termites like to eat the straw off thatched roofs, so basically the whole roof of the mud hut was covered in termites,” Ms. Bellincampi said of her time in Niger, Africa. “I put on a huge straw hat, took a stick, and pounded on the roof and all the termites came down inside the hut.”

Jane R. Seagrave has been named publisher of the Vineyard Gazette, the newspaper’s owners, Jerome and Nancy Kohlberg, announced today.

Troubles in the Middle East and a sour national economy are not far from the minds of Vineyarders trying to make it through this cold winter. Home heating oil and propane prices went through the roof this week.

Yesterday the retail price for home heating oil was $4.199 a gallon, up 23 cents from Tuesday when the price was $3.969.

The Edgartown conservation commission has cited a pair of Chappaquiddick homeowners for improving their view of Katama Bay in violation of the Massachusetts Wetlands Protection Act and at the expense of the Sheriff’s Meadow Foundation, who owns the property where trees and other vegetation were cleared.

Although no longer a frequent sight on the Vineyard, James Taylor is still a frequent visitor in the hearts (and ears) of many Islanders. Over the past five decades he has been a staple of popular music winning two Grammy awards and being inducted into the Rock Hall of Fame in 2000.

And on Wednesday, March 3, Mr. Taylor was presented with a National Medal of Arts by President Barack Obama.