JANE N. SLATER

508-645-3378

(slaterjn@comcast.net)

Fall may officially arrive Sunday but travelers are still visiting Chilmark . . . this time the Monarch butterflies. Have you noticed that they are increasing in number as they gather for their annual trip south?

Congratulations to Bob and Carol Merry who greeted a new grandson, Charles Tomas Koenig, born on Sept. 10 in Duxbury. Charles weighed in at 9 pounds, 10 ounces. He is the first child of Jessica Merry and Matt Koenig.

RICK HERRICK

508-693-8065

herricklr@verizon.net

He loved a great party, said his old friend Stuart Richter. That’s exactly what wife Joan, and daughters Betsy, Lynnie and Allie provided in honor of Pete Perrine on Saturday night. Pete died of pancreatic cancer this past spring.

Danielle Ewart

Danielle Ewart of Edgartown graduated from Westfield State College this past spring with a bachelor of science degree in biology.

HOLLY NADLER

508-693-3880

(sunporch@vineyard.net)

It’s been confirmed by study after study: Praecox dementia, which seems to be a fancy term for losing your mind a good twenty or thirty years before you’re scheduled for Social Security, can be brought on super-extra early by trying to earn virtually all your annual income in the two months allotted you in a classic American resort town.

Like ours.

NANCY GARDELLA

508-693-3308

(vhavenvgazette@yahoo.com)

I am writing from my Old Country. I returned Nonna last Thursday so she could prepare for her Italian classes which begin next week. Iole really enjoyed spending her summer on the Vineyard, visiting numerous art openings, and seeing all her Island friends. We brought her three granddogs with us as they, like their mother, hadn’t been off-Island all summer. The weather has been beautiful here, they are enjoying their many walks.

JOHN S. ALLEY

508-693-2950

(alleys@vineyard.net)

Last Saturday we received less than an inch of rain but it was welcome. It was the second such rainfall in less than a week. Sunday was magnificent but on the cool side. People were doing a lot of outside chores and home improvements.

Faced with a potential million-dollar increase in fuel costs, the Steamship Authority will rework its budget for next year, examining cost cuts, fare rises or a fuel surcharge.

Doubt was cast on the estimates for fuel costs contained in a draft budget presented to the SSA board at its meeting on Tuesday by Robert S. Marshall, the Falmouth member of the Authority board of governors, who noted the document assumed oil prices of $70 per barrel in 2008, which is about $10 lower than current world prices.

The Wampanoag Tribe of Gay Head (Aquinnah) has quietly developed a partnership with a successful Native American casino developer/operator, perhaps based in the northeastern United States, and is ready to re-enter the Massachusetts casino derby with a different approach.

The tribe has been engaged in gaming-related proposals for 15 years without opening a casino, but has remained in the background during the recent surge of interest in gaming in Massachusetts.

For the casual fisherman, fishing the Martha’s Vineyard Striped Bass and Bluefish Derby is like going from sandlot baseball to the major leagues.

He realizes that a welter of customs, laws of natures, tips and superstitions have developed over centuries of Island fishing and more than six decades of derby competition to create a mind-boggling fishing culture.

This casual fisherman felt that it would take an act of God to prepare him to compete with the best.

On Sunday afternoon, a plaque will be unveiled in West Tisbury in celebration of a small group of town women who, nearly 50 years ago, took a little risk to play a part in a glorious, heroic and sweeping change in our national history.