Of Bells and a Thousand

Years of Peace

The calendar points to the moment of Monday midnight, to the tolling of the Island bells, to that time in our lives when old becomes new and we wonder what lies ahead. These are the days just before and just after the first bell strikes that we find most appropriate for that old and familiar greeting spoken so comfortably and without rancor. Happy New Year is the refrain now heard across the Island, in every corner of every Vineyard township.

STRANDED WITHOUT CAUSE

Editors, Vineyard Gazette:

This is an open letter to the board of governors, management and unions of the SSA.

Conflict and Turmoil

From the Vineyard Gazette editions of December 1982:

Martha’s Vineyard Community Services is the largest human service provider on the Island with roots established in 1961, when a community mental health center was formed to serve the Island population. Today, we employ more than 120 full and part-time employees and serve approximately 6,000 residents and visitors each year through our Early Childhood Programs, Island Counseling and Disability Services, the Visiting Nurse Service and Women’s Support Services.

Editor’s note: On Dec. 5, Lanny McDowell and Sam Low (aka The Two Cousins) went to Art Basel Miami Beach — the huge art fair that in sheer size trumps everything on the annual art circuit (Paris, Shanghai, Tokyo, London, everything) They filed this report.

“Vineyard Gazette? What’s that?” said someone checking our press credentials at the Art Basel fair in Miami — “some kind of wine magazine?”

There I was on the steps of the Tower of London where Anne Boleyn and Lady Jane Grey and Sir Thomas More, among others, lost their heads — and I lost my wallet.

There’s no comparison, of course, but history buff that I am — their names couldn’t help but pass through my mind as I reached into my handbag for my wallet on a recent trip to London — and found it gone.

Late-night revelers will be out on New Year’s Eve celebrating under a Last Quarter Moon. The moon rises in the eastern sky, less than an hour after the arrival of the New Year. The moon is in the zodiacal constellation Leo, a constellation most often associated with spring and summer.

By LYNNE IRONS

I like rain and don’t even mind the cold, but this hardened snow/ice/treacherous footing is totally irritating. Never being one to stay indoors, I still attempt to do outside activities. I have been using a pitchfork to keep myself upright while tending to my chores. I trudged to my pigs carrying a five-gallon bucket of hot water to melt the ice in their water trough. They took one sip and promptly spilled it. I resorted to name-calling.

Hippie, beatnik, bohemian are all words that have been used to describe someone who is different than the norm. Other definitions of the adjective bohemian are wanderer or vagabond. And that is exactly what is occurring in Massachusetts with a particular bird which was given a perfect name: bohemian waxwing.

Two plants that merge into one, growing together to the benefit of each other. Sounds strange, but lichens are unique combinations of fungi and algae growing together, yet they are distinct from either of their components. They are abundant in nature, occurring just about everywhere: silvery gray flat patches growing on tree trunks, rocks, roofs and other flat surfaces. Well, most of the time that is what they are.