Falmouth Academy Honors

Seventy-nine students were named to the Falmouth Academy Headmaster’s List for the third trimester of the 2007-2008 academic year. To be named to the list, students must earn at least three As in their five core subjects and have no grade lower than a B minus.

Degrees

Two Oak Bluffs residents recently received degrees from Simmons College in Boston. They are Morning Star Tarter, who received a bachelor of science degree in nursing, and Whitney Burke, who received a master’s degree in library and information science.

Dean’s List

Emmeline C. Brown of Oak Bluffs has been named to second honors on the dean’s list at Clark University in Worcester.

Jupiter is the big man on campus in the August night sky. While not a star athlete, or even a star, it is certainly among the biggest and brightest.

By LYNNE IRONS

While sitting once again in traffic, I was developing a bad attitude. I began seeing weeds, dead flower heads, planters needing water, and general neglect all over town. I was thinking, in a darkly humored moment, of pointing out some of those places in next week’s column.

West Tisbury selectmen are considering a new bylaw that would prohibit registered sex offenders from living or loitering near public spaces like schools, bus stops, day care centers, parks and playgrounds.

Town resident Kelly Wilson presented an early version of the bylaw to selectmen on Wednesday, a five-page document she drafted along with police chief Beth Toomey. Ms. Wilson told selectmen she herself was a victim of sexual abuse when she was young, and urged selectmen to adopt the plan to prevent abuse in the future.

After more than two years of debate and planning at the local and state level, time literally ran out last week on a proposal to impose a one per cent tax increase on the sale of more expensive homes on the Vineyard to pay for affordable housing.

Two days before a special town meeting, Aquinnah selectmen are sharply divided over whether a pioneering energy bylaw should go to a vote, leaving the future uncertain for the Island’s first set of regulations on energy use.

A 16-page document, the energy bylaw remains largely unchanged from when it failed to achieve a needed two-thirds majority at the final session of the annual town meeting in June. A series of amendments to the bylaw were still being worked on at press time yesterday and were due in at the selectmen’s office this morning.

Greg Craig first came to the Vineyard at the invitation of his future wife, Derry Noyes, for the end of summer 1973. A year later they came back for their honeymoon. As you might expect, it was a time of high excitement.

“We were married on July 27,” he recalled on Sunday, sitting on the lawn of the family place at Menemsha, “Three or four of the guests couldn’t make it because they were staffing the judiciary committee, which was taking votes on the articles of [President Richard Nixon’s] impeachment.

How about this for an odd economic twist: the NASDAQ is down, gas is five dollars a gallon, and no one is buying anything except . . . art! Could that be? “Yes!” Vineyard artist Peg Thayer said yesterday at the All Island Art Show at the Camp Ground in Oak Bluffs. “We all enjoyed a brisk morning of sales. It was fantastic!”

For Mitchell Posin, who runs the Allen Sheep and Wool Company with his wife Clarissa Allen, the most exciting thing on the farm right now is compost.

“This compost tea has really got my juices flowing,” said the farmer, a stone-hard hand resting on the 50-gallon plastic drum he uses in his barn to brew the solution. One barrel is enough to fertilize an acre of land.

“In the space of a single period at the end of a sentence, there are 500,000 bacteria in this. You’re talking little critters,” Mr. Posin enthused.