JOHN S. ALLEY

508-693-2950

(alleys@vineyard.net)

Last Thursday afternoon the temperature was 60 degrees; it was very pleasant and warm. However by Sunday morning it was downright cold. That was in Taunton where we had gone to spend a long Thanksgiving weekend. All the stores were decorated and playing Christmas music — Bing Crosby and Brenda Lee seemed to be the most popular. Well before Thanksgiving many homes also had trees in the windows and lawn decorations in place.

Louise Sweet Featured

Louise Sweet of Flowers On The Vineyard will featured for her work on the Style Network this month. It can be seen on cable channel 119 Tuesday nights at 9 p.m., or go to stylenetwork.com and click on weddings away, then destination weddings, then Martha’s Vineyard.

JANE N. SLATER

508-645-3378

(slaterjn@comcast.net)

We send condolences to the Vincent family on the recent death of Priscilla Vincent, wife of Bill Vincent and mother of Katie, all of Schenectady and Chilmark. The family is gathered this week at the family home on South Road for the internment at Abel’s Hill Cemetery at 2 p.m. today, Friday, Nov. 30.

Condolences to the family and friends of Orlie Alwardt. Services were held on Wednesday at the Methodist Church in the Camp Ground. It was a wonderful tribute to Orlie who had spent his adult life working for the town of Oak Bluffs in the highway department and as an Oak Bluffs firefighter.

Restoring Great Salt Pond

The draft Massachusetts Estuaries Project report on the Edgartown Great Pond obtained by the Gazette last week is required reading for all who live on the Vineyard. The conclusions of the report may be obvious, but no less startling on an Island with a long history of strictly protecting its pristine environment, and they extend well beyond the sandy perimeters of the Edgartown Great Pond: encroaching development and nitrogen escaping from septic systems are polluting Island ponds.

A Linotype Man to the End

Jonathan Sawyer, whose unexpected death Nov. 21 was reported in last Friday’s Gazette, was for twenty years a mainstay of this paper’s back shop printing staff.

Jon joined the Gazette staff part-time while he was still in school, following his frequent encounters on Pease’s Point Way with Elizabeth Bowie Hough, the paper’s late copublisher and editor with her husband the late Henry Beetle Hough. She would often give young Jon a ride, warning him that it was much too cold for walking.

If it weren’t for the war.

Fifty years ago this winter, in February, 1958, I began my journalistic career as editor of a fledgling monthly newspaper, the Springdale News. I had just turned eleven.

A key ingredient to increasing readership is a crackerjack staff. We engaged correspondents from New York, California and Scotland. And that’s where this story starts.

How does one find a pen pal from Scotland?

EXCELLENT SUMMARY

Editors, Vineyard Gazette:

The story about the Edgartown Great Pond Estuaries Study was an excellent summary of a problem that has been (visibly) developing for years. Omitted, however, is the contribution of acid rain to nitrogen loading (see Wilcox Report to the Martha’s Vineyard Commission circa 1998?).

50 Years Ago:

From the Vineyard Gazette editions of November, 1957:

Hi, I am the editor for this week’s Sophomores Speak Out. Students have chosen to write about a variety of topics this week about events happening all over the world. We have written about international tragedies like Darfur and Richard McAuliffe has written a response to Eric Fletcher’s piece that appeared on Nov. 16 asking why should we help Darfur. School shootings in Germany, stun guns that kill and the aftermath of a cyclone that swept through Bangladesh are all covered as we considered the state of the world while giving thanks in our own lives.