The sky’s the limit!

Well, up to now, the Milky Way galaxy has been the limit. Humans have never gone into space beyond our Milky Way galaxy. This is not surprising, as to breach the diameter of our barred spiral galaxy would take a space explorer 100,000 light years in travel time.

I am happy to be back on the Vineyard. Thank you all for your kind words regarding the loss of my father.

By REMY TUMIN

Buffalo, teriyaki, sweet and sour, hot as fire, deep-fried. Whichever way you prefer your chicken wings, finger-licking is always involved. A washcloth for your face might also be necessary.

Chicken wings may be reserved for Sunday afternoon football, but all bets are off on Saturday as town departments and organizations from across the Vineyard compete for the best wing recipe on the Island at the second annual Wingfest at Sharky’s Cantina in Edgartown.

Beetlebung Corner is really the center of Chilmark. The library, the school, the community center, the town hall, two banks, a restaurant, a general store, a real estate office and the post office are all within a few steps. This is all well and good for humans. However, for the birds Beetlebung Farm, which provides fresh vegetables and flowers in the summer, is their main attraction. By now the vegetables have been harvested and most of the flowers gone. Luckily there are still a few hardy nasturtiums blooming and a very late visitor arrived on Nov. 2 to enjoy the nectar of these nasturtiums. Marie Scott and Suzie Bunker, both daughters of Ozzie and Rena Fischer, spotted the hummingbird and alerted their father and their brother, Bert.

Leigh Cormie searched the voter rolls at the American Legion in Vineyard Haven.

“There I am!” he said as a volunteer thumbed through the pages.

Taking his ballot into the voting booth, he officially exercised his democratic privilege for the first time — in this country at least.

“This is a big thing for me,” he told the volunteers in his vestigial Down Under accent as he affixed an “I voted” sticker to his lapel.

The Permanent Endowment for Martha’s Vineyard has awarded grants totaling $25,176 this fall to 14 Island nonprofit organizations. “It was wonderful to be able to provide financial support to almost two-thirds of the organizations who approached us for funding this cycle,” said endowment chairman Anne Williamson.

VNA Coordinator

April McCarty has joined Vineyard Nursing Association as the nurse intake coordinator, the bridge between physicians and hospitals and the VNA’s home health care services.

“Having a nurse in this position is a shift for the VNA, in response to the growth in demand for services and the level of complications that many cases present,” said chief executive Bob Tonti.

The red pine plantations of the Manuel F. Correllus State Forest have been described as recently as 1998 by this paper as a “pine cathedral,” with evenly spaced rows of the northern evergreen towering above a forest floor nearly barren except for a carpet of needles. Now that cathedral has been all but sacked by fungal barbarians known as diplodia pinea which infect the trees from the shoots and rot them to the core.

A blast reverberated around the Island on Wednesday night as an off-Island team of Naval explosives experts detonated five potentially dangerous World War II-era bombs on the beach near Quansoo in West Tisbury.

On Wednesday morning a couple walking the beach near the cut between Tisbury Great Pond and the Atlantic Ocean discovered a suspicious object in the water and contacted the police.

The All-Island School Committee approved a $3.85 million 2012 shared services budget for Vineyard schools presented by superintendent Dr. James H. Weiss last Thursday.

The budget is up 7.65 per cent over last year, mainly due to three new programs. The superintendent’s office will expand the Bridge Program for children with autism, add an at-large physical therapist and expand the summer school program.