NANCY GARDELLA

508-693-3308

(vhavenvgazette@yahoo.com)

HOLLY NADLER

508-693-3880

(sunporch@vineyard.net)

Once again the Nobel Prize Committee has ignored the Oak Bluffs community. And what’s up with awarding the physics jackpot to those two microchip guys? We’ve got to start asking ourselves a key question, just as we do when we’re shopping in a frivolous manner: Do we really need this? Well, do we? Do we really need another microchip that helps us access information even quicker?

It’s show time.

No, not the NBC special on the Vineyard high school football team that will air nationally twice next month, though the Island football community got a kick out of NBC camera crews trailing every facet of practice, the locker room, then filming a solid 35-20 win over bulky Hull High School last Friday.

“Preseason’s over. The league starts on Friday,” said junior inside linebacker Cody Brewer while organizing his derby fishing gear on Saturday morning after the game.

By LYNNE IRONS

I am enjoying a big glass of grape juice at this moment. If I could have a do-over in the gardening world, I would not have constructed a grape arbor, however pleasing to the eye. Mine is made from locust posts and very attractive. I would have to be 4 feet, 5 inches tall to comfortably pick the grapes. I think I am going to tear it down, cut the vines within an inch of their lives, and string some wire along the posts like they do in the big wineries.

For the Wampanoag Tribe of Gay Head (Aquinnah) on Tuesday, Cranberry Day was more about culture and heritage than the pragmatic crop-gathering aspects of 100 years ago. Several dozen tribal members gathered around a fire all day on a sandy spot in the dunes at Lobsterville beach for communal and historic sharing,

That’s an appropriate use for the fall harvest Wampanoag national holiday, according to Cheryl Andrews-Maltain, tribal historic preservation officer and a candidate for tribal chairman in the upcoming elections next month.

By MARK ALAN LOVEWELL

Rick Karney, director of the Martha’s Vineyard Shellfish Group, returned last week from an international conference on invasive sea squirts, where he and one of his staff were both speakers and participants.

There has been plenty of discussion on the Vineyard about invasive foreign plants in the Island landscape; offshore, the ocean bottom and the water column are also in a state of change. New plants and animals are taking up residence in coastal waters that may have a long-term impact.

Chloris is having her last hurrah and it is quite a party.

No, Chloris is not a bride-to-be during the busy fall Vineyard wedding season having a bachelorette party in Oak Bluffs. She is the Greek goddess of flowers and while she has given us a showy summer and fall, her reign of blossoms is coming to an abrupt end.

In one fast-moving day, the Smith house on the corner of South Summer and High streets in Edgartown was torn down and trucked away. A new house will take its place.

The tired old house was built after the Civil War around 1870, give or take a year.

In the days before the demolition, paint peeled inside and outside the house. Window panes over a hundred years old were wavy. Wallpaper almost as old draped off the walls.

Studying Abroad

Alyssa Fitzpatrick, daughter of Thomas R. and Lisa Fitzpatrick of Oak Bluffs, is spending the fall 2007 semester studying abroad in Turks and Caicos, British West Indies through a program run by Saint Michael’s College in Colchester, Vt.

Ms. Fitzpatrick, a graduate of Martha’s Vineyard Regional High School, is a senior biology major at Saint Michael’s.

Still On Time

The Chappaquiddick Ferry, that tidy, profitable and often forgotten enterprise which plies the tideswept entrance to the Edgartown harbor and is the lifeline for a hundred-odd families who call the outpost of Chappaquiddick home, is due for a change in ownership soon.