Protecting the Herring

More than one hundred fifty years ago, Henry David Thoreau noted the many rivers on Cape Cod named for herring. The day could come, he mused in his book Cape Cod, when people might find more Herring Rivers on the Cape than herring.

While that day has yet to come, the scarcity of herring in recent years from runs throughout Massachusetts, including on the Vineyard, has endowed Thoreau’s observation with an eerie prophecy.

If I had covered all bets on whether the Tisbury liquor question would wind up in a flat-footed tie, the drinks would certainly be on me. The rare outcome of a 690 to 690 pro and con vote is such as to drive one to drink, unless of course one resides in Tisbury where the question is still moot.

What follows is the text of recent remarks made by Captain Vanderhoop of Aquinnah before the New England Fisheries Management Council.

My name is Captain Buddy Vanderhoop and I am a Wampanoag Native American charter captain and commercial fisherman. I have run the Aquinnah Wampanoag herring run for 35 years.

Remarkable Americans: > The Washburn Family. By Kerck Kelsey. Illustrated. Tilbury House Publishers. 402 pages. $25.95.

Since the 1950s, the Washburn name has been a familiar one in Edgartown, with the late Stanley Washburn living on South Water street in summer and C. Langhorne Washburn summering on Pease’s Point Way. This fact-filled volume tells the story of their 19th-century forebears from northern Maine.

FOOD FOR THE HUNGRY

Editors, Vineyard Gazette:

Incumbent Aquinnah selectman Camille Rose easily won reelection to a second term Wednesday. Ms. Rose received 112 of the 195 votes cast in the annual town election. Challengers Roxanne Ackerman and John Walsh received 53 votes and 26 votes respectively in the only contested race on the ballot.

In ballot questions, voters also said yes to allow the sale of beer and wine in town restaurants, rejected a Proposition 2 1/2 override for a $50,000 addition to the fire station and accepted an override to pay past debt on the Vanderhoop Homestead.

Three Island teenagers who reportedly stole a car from the Tisbury Park and Ride for a late-night joy ride were apprehended by Edgartown police following a high-speed pursuit in Katama early Saturday morning that ended when their vehicle collided with a police cruiser on Clevelandtown Road.

Get Island musicians riffing about what makes a chord-sparring, memory-jarring, above-par, raise-the-bar jam session here, and the name Maynard Silva inevitably comes into the conversation.

It was Sunday afternoon, deep underground in the sub-basement studio of community radio WVVY, and they were having what one of the flustered on-air staff called “real extreme technical difficulties.”

The monitor outside the studio, an ancient Aiwa radio cassette, was not picking up any signal. Hurried phone calls were made and the suspicion was confirmed: the station was not broadcasting the program, although it was apparently going out okay to a small number of online listeners.