The Martha’s Vineyard Sharks, the Island’s new collegiate baseball team, signed their first Vineyarder to the team this week. Tad Gold will play center field for the inaugural 2011 season starting in June.

“I’m just excited to get started,” Tad said yesterday afternoon. “It’s exciting to be playing in front of my home fans again on the high school field . . . I don’t know what to expect. Go out there and win games is what it’s all about at this point.”

The Martha’s Vineyard Commission’s so-called DRI checklist — which determines what projects go to the commission for review as developments of regional impact — is under pressure from all sides.

Targeted recently by businessmen and elected leaders who feel it is chilling commercial growth in the down-Island towns, the checklist was the subject of lively discussion this week — but not only by those who would loosen the rules for referring development projects to the commission.

High winds, raging seas and strong currents have been hard on Chappaquiddick this winter. Large areas of beach down at Wasque have been moved and removed, lately at the rate of a foot a day. But the latest changes are at the other end of Chappy, where the post-Christmas northeaster cut a new opening on a barrier beach at Cape Pogue Pond.

Technology changes every day, there’s no getting around it. One day we’re sporting the latest flip phone and the next we’re having a video conference call on our smart phones. Young people grow agitated when Facebook changes profile settings, while many of their parents grow frustrated just trying to navigate online shopping.

Katie LeClerc Greer is working to bridge the gap and reassure kids, parents and teachers that technology is not so scary after all.

Acting well out of the public eye, Dukes County sheriff Michael McCormack quietly agreed last month to allow Kelly McCarron, the young woman who was drunk and driving the car the night 18-year-old Jena Pothier was killed in June 2009, to leave a Barnstable correctional facility for women less than seven months into a one-year term. Ms. McCarron has returned to the Vineyard to serve out the remainder of her sentence at home under electronic surveillance.

The Oak Bluffs selectmen kicked off their first meeting of the new year on a sour note as town officials scrambled to slash money from a budget that is already $238,000 in the red.

“The good times are not going to come for a couple years,” predicted selectman Ron DiOrio gloomily.

More than nine years after plans for a huge wind farm in Nantucket Sound were first revealed, the final regulatory approvals for Cape Wind have been granted.

The exhaustive review process began in 2001. It ended last Friday, with granting by the Environmental Protection Agency of a permit relating to potential effects on air quality of emissions from vessels engaged in operations to do with construction and operation of the 130-turbine development on Horseshoe Shoal.

Correction

A story in last week’s Gazette about the high school swim team was inaccurate in its history reporting. There was a swim team on the Vineyard in the 1970s that traveled off-Island for meets and practiced in the pool at the hotel that is today the Mansion House. The Gazette regrets the error.

Two Chilmark farms were recently granted permits for large-scale wind turbines under a presumed agricultural use exemption. Abutters have asked the zoning board of appeals to review the permits, calling for more thought and a public process.

Current Chilmark zoning bylaws prohibit the zoning board of appeals from issuing special permits for such turbines over an abutter’s objection — and/or if the turbine does not “preserve and enhance existing . . . natural features as well as vistas, water views and historic locations . . .”

By SUSAN KLEIN

Having lived a full life, Barbara Lipke was many things to many people. In addition to wife, mother, educator and author, she was also a storyteller. Her beguilingly gentle telling style would erupt into something bolder and humorous, delighting her listeners and showcasing her considerable skills.