In every sense, last Tuesday was a perfect day for baseball on the Vineyard.

The sun shone brightly over the new baseball diamond at Martha’s Vineyard Regional High School, as a tangle of wispy clouds stubbornly refused to give way fully to the brilliant blue behind. The smell of hot dogs and hamburgers hung thick in the air, while dust kicked up on the infield floated by on a slight ocean breeze.

Last Tuesday marked the first-ever Cape Cod League baseball league played on the Vineyard. By any measure, the game was a runaway success.

Edgartown firefighters won Sunday’s annual Dukes County Firefighters’ Muster held in Oak Bluffs. Close to 100 firefighters and their friends participated in four competitive events that demonstrated skill and speed.

This is the second year in a row that Edgartown won. All Vineyard towns participated in the muster, and were joined by teams from Carver and Swansea in the muster’s firefighting event.

So a Jew and a Catholic go into a sushi restaurant . . . It sounds like the setup for a joke, but the first date for Arnie Reisman and Paula Lyons was not much fun. On the second date, though, he made her laugh. Now his jokes and her laugh have been features on the NPR program Says You for 12 years. They own a home in Menemsha.

Interviews by Mike Seccombe

Arnie: We met in at Channel Five in Boston. Paula started in there in 1978 and I got there in ’79. She was a consumer reporter — and remained one for 25 years — until 2003.

In its management of Norton Point Beach, which is owned by Dukes County, the Trustees of Reservations produced a net surplus of $16,785 in the last fiscal year.

The county will receive more than $3,000 of that money through an agreement with the conservation group. Two years ago, the county enlisted the help of the Trustees to manage Norton Point beach with an agreement that the county would receive 20 per cent of what the group earned at the public beach.

An empty Cheetos bag and a baby’s diaper found during a routine traffic stop in West Tisbury earlier this year led to a grand jury indictment this week for an Island man suspected of trafficking cocaine.

David A. Perez, 27, of West Tisbury, was indicted in Dukes County Superior Court last Tuesday. He is being held in the Edgartown house of correction on $100,000 bail.

Corrections

A story in Friday’s Gazette misreported the amount of money raised last year during the first annual Housing on the Tube telethon. The correct figure is $526,000.

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An story in last Tuesday’s Gazette mistakenly reported the type of tick which carries tularemia. It is the dog tick.

The Gazette regrets the errors.

Receives Degree

Parthenia H. Kiersted of Edgartown received a degree in English in May at St. Lawrence University in Canton, N.Y. She minored in film studies.

Vineyard Gazette editor Julia Wells announced this week that Lauren Martin has been named managing editor of the weekly newspaper. Ms. Martin, who is 41, came to the Gazette two and a half years ago from Canberra, Australia, where she was a reporter for the Sydney Morning Herald.

Originally from Ohio, Ms. Martin received her degree in journalism from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1989.

She began her career as a Washington-based political correspondent for Institutional Investor publications before heading off to sail into Australia.

Saving the sea from overfishing begins with paying attention to the forage fish. Tomorrow afternoon at 5:30, the author of an important environmental story will speak at the Chilmark Public Library as part of an ongoing series on fisheries and fishermen.

Author Bruce Franklin will give a free talk on the value of menhaden in America. Last year his book The Most Important Fish in the Sea was published and received high praise along the waterfront and amid fisheries managers along the coast.

It is the last Tuesday in July. The asparagus is long gone. Sugar snap peas have departed. Strawberry season has come and gone. But still there is much to look forward to. There are blueberries for sale and red, orange and even purple tomatoes ripening on Vineyard vines. There are cows to be milked, rains to be thankful for, sweet corn to eat by the dozen. August is just around the corner.

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