As organizations across the United States mark Cover the Uninsured Week (April 27-May 3), so will the five community health centers of Cape Cod and Martha’s Vineyard, which are working to implement the state’s landmark health care reform legislation. As a result of this legislation, approximately 340,000 individuals are newly insured statewide. Yet, 18.4 per cent of all Cape Codders are without health insurance coverage, according to The Human Condition Report 2007.

The Oak Bluffs shoreline is a busy place these days.

ALL WELCOME HERE

Editors, Vineyard Gazette:

From the Vineyard Gazette editions of May, 1983:

There is no true analogy between the migration of birds and the comings and goings of seasonal vacationers on Martha’s Vineyard, the regular ones, the ones who have been coming for years and years, yet in both cases there is a design, and maybe an appropriate relevance of the stars in the heavens. An unforgotten grandmother who owned a cottage on the Camp Ground in Oak Bluffs always planned her arrival to take place just after “the cold May storm.”

I was hoping for beginner’s luck when a friend introduced me to the rites of surf casting on South Beach one morning. It was a very early morning, by this retiree’s standards, anyway — barely rise and no shine. Are fish clear-eyed at this time of day? Would the early worm get the fish?

Garage With a View

The controversy over Joseph G. Moujabber’s illegal garage in Oak Bluffs has gone on for a long time — too long — and that may be the only point on which Mr. Moujabber and his neighbors can agree.

But the neighbors have good reason to be upset, and indeed, this conflict has struck a chord that has rung out around the Island, far beyond the North Bluff neighborhood of modest bungalows situated about a nine-iron shot from Nantucket Sound.

Spring Litter

Last week on Earth Day, 26 Island beaches were cleared of empty bottles and cans, plastic odds and ends and other debris. The beaches are much the better for it; 250 volunteers filled 250 bags.

It is fun to find an occasional treasure on a Vineyard beach after the long winter, but such treasures are few and far between. So the annual Earth Day Cleanup sponsored by the Vineyard Conservation Society is welcome each spring.

Museum in Limbo

Less than two years ago, the board and staff of the Martha’s Vineyard Historical Society, now called the Martha’s Vineyard Museum, were brimming with optimism about their chances for raising twenty-five million or more dollars to pay for an extensive new campus in West Tisbury. The time had come, they said, to give the society’s extensive historical collection the display that it had long deserved, in a beautiful and spacious setting on property along the Panhandle Road.

Boycotting The Olympics

By Jesse Shayne>

The issue of boycotting the Beijing Olympics has been raised to a whole new level. Recently, when asked if he would attend the opening ceremony of the Olympics, President George W. Bush said he is not sure yet.

Warm temperatures may have shaken some Vineyarders out of their winter slump last week, but for Islanders who came across the kids enjoying Safe Haven camp, the surest sign of vitality was the joy on their faces.