Housing Bank Comes to Rest

Advocates for the housing bank, who have worked long and hard for their cause, lost the battle last week when a bill to create a new tax on real estate sales — with the money intended to go into an affordable housing fund — died as a piece of unfinished business on Beacon Hill. The Massachusetts legislature is now in summer recess.

And the housing bank, first filed three years ago, has run out its string.

Always Prepared

For many Island residents, the Coast Guard is a comfortable, innocuous presence. Coast Guard vessels and boats, usually painted a cheerful white, red and blue, are commonly seen in Vineyard waters. The service’s lighthouses provide guidance for mariners at night, and thousands of photo opportunities for tourists during the day.

In large part, though, the Coast Guard tends to be taken for granted. When out of sight, they are out of mind.

Vineyard Purple

Joe-Pye Weed is blooming around the swamps and streams and in the moist woodlands of the Vineyard, a certain sign of late summer. An Eastern North American native, there are three varieties: coastal plain, spotted and hollow. Of course the coastal plain variety is found most commonly on the Island.

Estelle Suprenant of 41 Nashawena Park, Oak Bluffs, is pleased to announce the marriage of her daughter, René Hartford Surprenant, to James J. Nolan of 37 Nashawena Park, Oak Bluffs, and formerly Jamaica Plain.

René and Jim were married in The Villages, Fla., on June 27, at the home of Keith and Jeffrey Polmanteer.

Attendants were Jeffrey Polmanteer and Helen Pope, the aunt of James. René’s children, Emily, Liz and Jake, welcome Jim into their family. René and Jim live in Middleborough and Oak Bluffs.

It’s August and summer’s bounty is reaching its peak. I head to the West Tisbury Farmers’ Market with an empty straw basket and an open mind. A full wallet helps as well.

POPS PREMIER SEATS

Editors, Vineyard Gazette:

As one member of the Friends of Oak Bluffs, I have been working with folks from the YMCA and the Vineyard House to sell premier seating for the Gladys Knight and the Pops concert this coming Sunday, August 10.

It will be a remarkable event that we are proud and pleased to be associated with and the funds we raise will go to benefit three wonderful and worthy Island charities.

In for a Penny

From the Vineyard Gazette editions of August, 1933:

A relic of times when Edgartown was a port under the jurisdiction of the British king came to light last week in the form of an old coin found by an employee of James Lineaweaver, summer resident of Edgartown. The Lineaweaver summer home at Tower Hill is near the site of the old landing where, doubtless, merchant vessels of two centuries and more ago often discharged and fitted.

As I pulled up to the pump last weekend and emptied my wallet for $4.35-a-gallon gas, I thought what a shame it is that we aren’t doing more to lessen our dependence on imported oil. For almost 40 years we have been talking — but not doing — anything significant to solve the problem. Alternate energy is clearly one answer. What about projects like Cape Wind in Nantucket Sound? Shouldn’t we allow it to be built to help us become energy independent? On reflection, the answer is a resounding no.

Although the Monster Shark Tourna ment is over until the same massacre occurs next July, please read on. My husband and I, the two protestors aside from the Humane Society, spent the hours during the weigh-in with signs stating our stance. We have heard many of the arguments that tournament participants and supporters mindlessly rattle off. If those people would do some research, they would uncover the truth about what we are doing to the oceans and the ecosystems within it.

How do Jules Feiffer’s early comic strips hold up after half a century? For over 40 years, beginning in 1956, his provocative, often ironic cartoons appeared weekly in the Village Voice. Fantagraphics Books has just published Explainers ($28.99 hardcover), a complete collection of the first 10 years’ worth, from 1956 to 1966. The strips deal with politics and the battle of the sexes in an era when intellectuals obsessed about Marx and Freud and when humor might arise from observing hypocrisy in people’s politics and their intimate relationships.