Chappaquiddick Homes Allowed

Appeals Court Backs Edgartown in Affordable Homesite Case; Attorney
for Town Blasts Ten Suing Neighbors

By JULIA WELLS

Without reservation, the Massachusetts Court of Appeals upheld the
town of Edgartown last week in the Chappaquiddick affordable homesite
case that has attracted attention throughout the Cape and Islands
region.

Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton on Saturday called the Bush administration incompetent, the federal Katrina response an embarrassment and the national health care crisis a moral imperative.

Amid compliments and congratulations, the Martha's Vineyard
Commission on Thursday unanimously approved the 35,000-square-foot YMCA
building to be built across from the regional high school on
Edgartown-Vineyard Haven Road following a whirlwind session of
deliberations that wrapped up in under ninety minutes.

Boat Line Reports Summer Traffic Is Up

By MIKE SECCOMBE

If the traffic on Vineyard roads seems worse this summer and the
straggling crowds more numerous, it's not an illusion. The most
recent figures on ferry traffic prove it.

Numbers released by the Steamship Authority this week show more than
230,000 passengers and almost 40,000 cars were carried for the month of
June alone, a six per cent increase in people and almost three per cent
increase in cars compared with last June.

For the second time in his life, Dr. Kenneth Edelin on Tuesday
evening stood at the Shearer Cottage in Oak Bluffs plagued by
uncertainty. Thirty-two years and six days earlier, a group of Oak
Bluffs women had organized a benefit dance at the cottage to help raise
funds for the young doctor's legal fees. He had just been
convicted of manslaughter for performing a late-term abortion.

A crowd of about 120 year-round and seasonal residents sat before a
large screen at the new agricultural hall in West Tisbury on Wednesday
to witness an eye-opening computer simulation which chronicled the
history of development on the Vineyard over the past 400 years.

Judy Blume loves to read. She has stacks of books piled around her
house. They fill bookshelves, clutter the kitchen counter and sit
precariously on coffee tables, leaving no room for coffee cups. "I
wrote to Dave Eggers this winter," she said, gesturing to his
book, The What of the What, which sat at the top of one pile. "He
e-mailed back!"

She confessed that she still gets nervous around other writers,
particularly if she has not yet met them.

Island Escapes Mortgage Crisis

Vineyard Bankers Say Mortgages Stay at Home for Most Part; But
Telephones Are Ringing From National Meltdown

By JACK SHEA

Your mortgage is safe if you borrowed locally, and credit-worthy
customers can obtain a local mortgage as easily as last year, Vineyard
bankers said this week.

Whistle Stop Weekend Begins

Two Presidential Hopefuls Stage Fundraisers This Weekend; Hillary
Clinton Will Take Tabernacle Center Stage

By MIKE SECCOMBE

In the three-way contest for the hearts, minds and wallets of
Democratic Party supporters on the Vineyard, Hillary Clinton, it is now
clear, is way out in front.

Over the next six days, the three front runners for the
party's Presidential nomination will hold events on the Island:
John Edwards this evening, Mrs. Clinton on Saturday and Barack Obama
next Wednesday.

It is a familiar site in the Vineyard in the summer going back
hundreds of years: shellfishermen at low tide in the mornings raking the
sandy bottom of Sengekontacket Pond and filling wire bushel baskets with
quahaugs.