Waxing Poetic

Chilmark resident Donald Nitchie and Oak Bluffs resident Barbara Peckham will read their poems in honor of Ms. Peckham’s new book A Jar of Summer and Other Poems. The reading will take place on Saturday, Feb. 26 at 4 p.m. at the West Tisbury Free Public Library.

Before settling permanently on Martha’s Vineyard, Barbara Peckham served as the Society and Women’s Page Editor of the Journal Courier in New Haven, Conn. She has written radio and television commercials and was an English teacher for many years.

It rained recently and the snow and ice, for the moment, are nowhere to be seen. The grass is a bit forlorn, brownish and sagging under the weight of winter’s residue. But soon the Island will turn green again. And while that can foretell many things, it definitely means spring and summer camp are not far away.

The Farm Institute has just opened up their camp registration for all those young farmers who have been stuck in the house growling about the lack of cows and piggies in their lives.

New Year’s resolutions seem to come at the wrong time. It’s the middle of a dark and dreary Island winter. Who wants to turn over a new leaf when just smiling seems to require an extra burst of energy?

But how about a spring resolution? The sun is getting friendlier, feeling a bit warmer and not retiring to bed so early. Crocuses will be pushing their way into the party soon. It’s just easier to embrace a change of direction when birdsongs rather than cold north winds wake us from our slumber.

The shocker of the TV series Mad Men, about a Manhattan advertising agency in the early 1960s, is the freedom, the elan, the absolute je ne sais quoi with which people smoked. And not just some people — everyone.

Dr. Gerry Yukevich, a partner in Dr. Michael Jacob’s Walk-In Clinic on State Road in Vineyard Haven, is often called upon to help patients quit smoking.

He said in a recent interview, “Our job is easier these days because smoking is so frowned upon publicly, peer pressure eliminates it for most people.”

Now the medical community is targeting the hard-core smokers who still refuse to budge from the habit.

Tony Lombardi, director of the YMCA’s teen center, stood in the doorway of an office at the Y on the Edgartown-Vineyard Haven Road last Thursday afternoon as members and staff filed through the wide, clean and bright hallway behind him. Every other person seemed to tap his back and say, “Hey, Tony.” Mr. Lombardi waved to them all like old friends and continued talking.

The Vineyard Gazette office will be closed on Monday, Feb. 21, in observance of the national holiday. The office will reopen on Tuesday at the usual time.

If there is great satisfaction in having success at home, there is an even greater reward sharing the gift with others — especially halfway around the world.

Calling it an inappropriate use of prime agricultural land, the Martha’s Vineyard Agricultural Society appealed to the Edgartown selectmen this week to reconsider a plan to use five acres at Katama Farm for a solar panel project that is not yet built. Town leaders responded that they intend to stay the course with the project.

In a letter sent to the selectmen this week, agricultural society president Dale McClure urged to the town to find alternative sites for the photovoltaic panels.

A Martha’s Vineyard Hospital plan to create two new large parking lots has residents of the surrounding Oak Bluffs neighborhood on edge over the institution’s continued expansion.