SSA Public Hearing Set Tuesday at Crucial Stage In Planning for Future

By JULIA WELLS

Gazette Senior Writer

The Steamship Authority will host a public hearing on the Vineyard early next week, marking a crucial juncture in a tangled discussion about the future of the boat line that was established to serve the two Islands - and about the role of expanded ferry service between the Vineyard and New Bedford.

The hearing begins at 7 p.m. on Tuesday in the Oak Bluffs School.

Survivors of Rape and Sexual Violence Speak to Dark Side of Vineyard Life

By MANDY LOCKE

She's the girl next door. She's the waitress who serves you at your favorite spot on Circuit avenue. She teaches your children. She dates your brother. She sits next to you in biology class.

She's your daughter, your sister, your mother, your wife.

Oak Bluffs selectman Todd Rebello this week all but admitted that town officials have done a lousy job making moped dealers abide by town regulations, and selectmen agreed Tuesday night to improve local enforcement.

Two middle school teachers from Florida, Judy and Barnard Lorence, should be back in their classrooms getting ready for a new school year, but there's no chance of that now.

His own story is told through the stories of others: A World War II aviator whose face and hands were burned beyond recognition; a young boy who was abandoned by his mother and locked away in an institution for 20 years because of a facial deformity; identical twins who were the first successful kidney transplant patients in history.

Eleven years ago, Dr. Joseph E. Murray won the Nobel Prize in Medicine for his pioneering kidney transplant work in the 1950s.

West Tisbury center may be a natural crossroads and the ideal hub for Vineyard transit buses to transfer riders, but West Tisbury selectmen said they have had enough of the buses converging on their narrow and historic main street.

There is no access for people with disabilities on the New Bedford passenger ferry Schamonchi, and a Cape Cod advocacy group recently filed a formal complaint with the U.S. Department of Transportation about the problem.

Spokesmen for the Cape Organization for the Rights of the Disabled (CORD) said yesterday they filed the complaint after months of unsuccessful attempts to communicate with the Steamship Authority about the problem.

Oak Bluffs fire chief Dennis P. Alley was especially pleased with the fireworks on Friday. The display in the night sky was the spectacle everyone has come to expect over the years. Below, Ocean Park was ready for the thousands of spectators who gathered to watch from its lush, grassy lawns.

The Soldiers’ Memorial Fountain at Ocean Park in Oak Bluffs was rededicated Friday afternoon in ceremonies celebrating the completion of an ambitious two-year restoration project.

Bagpipes, played by Tony Peak, began in the distance and came nearer as the Massachusetts 54th re-enactors and members of American Legion Post 257 marched to the foot of the memorial.

Clouds began to roll in, blocking the splendor of the sun but not the glory of the celebration.

There are moments that can only be captured at an agricultural fair — children toting balls of cotton candy larger than their heads, piglets resting peacefully across the midsection of a somnolent mother pig, and fathers being tugged to the Ferris wheel for the fifth time in an evening.