A dedicated fishing pier off of the North Bluff in Oak Bluffs has cleared its final local hurdle.

Chilmark selectmen will hire an engineering consultant to review two wind turbine projects planned for working farms on South Road.

The town selectmen voted to hire the consultant at their meeting Tuesday night after discussion about an appeal by neighbors of building permits issued recently for the Allen Farm and Grey Barn to put up wind turbines.

The Chilmark zoning board of appeals will hold a public hearing on the appeal on Jan. 19.

Edgartown selectmen will ask voters to agree to sell the historic Warren House at the annual town meeting in April.

The decision comes as the town struggles to settle on a plan for its library. A committee charged with developing the plan decided last week to again consider building a new library at the site of the former school. The other option is to renovate and rebuild at the current Carnegie building library on North Water street.

A bookkeeper for the Steamship Authority who embezzled almost $145,000 over some eight years has been sentenced to a year in prison and ordered to make full restitution to the boat line.

Armine Estelle Sabatini was sentenced last Friday by chief U.S. District Court Judge Mark L. Wolf. She also will have to pay an additional $4,000 fine and be subject to three years’ parole after release from prison. Ms. Sabatini will report to prison at noon on Jan. 25, 2011, to begin her time.

Work on Tisbury’s new $7.4 million emergency services building is expected to be delayed at least a month so a botched job of laying the concrete floor can be fixed.

The floor in the apparatus bay was designed to have a slight fall, allowing it to drain. But the concrete workers failed to follow the specifications, so water drains the wrong way and forms pools, a potential danger to emergency services workers.

Atlantic: Great Sea Battles, Heroic Discoveries, Titanic Storms, and a Vast Ocean of a Million Stories, by Simon Winchester, HarperCollins Publishers, 496 pages, illustrated. $27.99.

It would be hard to live on the Vineyard and not have an interest in the Atlantic Ocean. So much of the Island has been colored and shaped by the sea. You can smell the ocean here and feel it all around you.

A new book, Atlantic, is a biography of the ocean. What is most striking about this long book is its scope.

Vineyard lobstermen face a drastic cut in what they are able to land, and that cut could come as early as next year. The focus on fast action follows new expert endorsements of a report describing a fishery on the verge of collapse and in need of closure.

It is unlikely to affect lobster consumers, as nearly all the lobsters sold on the Island, especially this time of year, come from Maine and Canada, which would be unaffected by the proposed cuts of up to 75 per cent or by any moratorium.

Announcing Amanda

Buffie Gaspar DeSouza and Wesley DeSouza of Tisbury announce the birth of a daughter, Amanda Roselene Jean DeSouza, born on Dec. 20, 2010, at the Martha’s Vineyard Hospital. Amanda weighed 6 pounds, 9 ounces at birth and was 20 inches long. Amanda also is welcomed by big sister Juliana DeSouza and cousin Jaylin Johnson.

Temperature: Precip.

Day Max. Min. Inches.

Fº Fº

Dec. 17 34 20 Trace*

Dec. 18 34 18 .00

Dec. 19 41 21 .00

Dec. 20 40 30 .49*

Dec. 21 32 26 .30

Dec. 22 39 31 .00

Dec. 23 39 31 .02*

*Melted Precipitation

JOHN S. ALLEY

508-693-2950

(alleys@vineyard.net)

All is ready for Christmas tomorrow. After a month of shopping and a lot of decorating inside and out, families will soon begin to gather together to celebrate this most blessed day. The boats were packed with people going to and from the mainland to shop for Christmas last weekend; some got a head start traveling off-Island for the holiday to be with their families.