After years without a contract for on-Island medical care for veterans, officials are reporting that “considerable progress” has been made, news that was met with skepticism by the Island veterans agent.

The original contract between the Providence VA Medical Center and the Martha’s Vineyard Hospital lapsed several years ago, and in the meantime, Island veterans have had to go off-Island for most medical care.

I received the omen in the Catskill Mountains. It was made manifest on a postcard that arrived at summer camp. A little plastic lobster was chained to the corner: Dear Shelley, We’re having a wonderful time in Martha’s Vineyard. You would love it here. Next summer, we’ll bring you. Words to that effect. Why were my parents in a vineyard? Who is Martha? Long after those questions were answered, I wondered how the lobster survived the postal system all the way to upstate New York.

Last Sunday, while chasing waves in the Atlantic Ocean at Philbin Beach with my 11-year old granddaughter, I noticed the surf, which had been crashing in, had suddenly disappeared. The ocean I was standing in up to my waist seemed eerily calm. The sandy shore behind me lay perfectly flat, like a sheet of paper. How peculiar.

I spent the first 12 years of my medical career taking care of poor people in a teaching hospital in Providence, R.I. In the early 1990s health care was rather different than it is now. If a person had private insurance, they generally had ready access to both primary care doctors and specialists. For my clinic patients, it was another matter. Many had no insurance or Medicaid, were disabled, homeless, poorly educated or didn’t speak English. Working there required tremendous patience and a level of dogged determination that I did not realize I possessed.

Not enough swimming. Too little time with summer friends. Clamming, kayaking, sailing: see swimming.

Summer’s on the wane, outgoing ferries are full, incoming ferries less so, and the sun sets earlier these days. It’s time to look around and say where did the summer go? It went the way all summers do, too fast.

Imagine a fully-accredited environmental studies program where as many as two hundred college students, faculty and graduate students would spend the academic year using the Island as a science laboratory and boosting the off-season economy with a meal plan supported by local restaurants.

A pilot project with those estimable objectives is now on the drawing board for next year. One important detail: it’s happening on Nantucket.

On Wednesday night at the Cinema Circus, one of the short films shown was an animated adaptation of the book Edwina, The Dinosaur Who Didn’t Know She Was Extinct, written by Mo Willems. In the words and artistry of Mr. Willems, Edwina the dinosaur is very much alive.

A generation ago, Angela Lansbury spent 264 television episodes as Jessica Fletcher, an Agatha Christie-style detective who solved murders for the most part right in her own backyard, the sleepy rural town of Cabot Cove, Me. Two observations occurred to me: why would anyone hang out with Jessica once you realize that wherever she is someone gets murdered? And what’s the matter with Cabot Cove, a little fishing village that has a violent crime wave commensurate with Chicago?

From the Vineyard Gazette editions of August, 1983:

West Tisbury salvager and treasure hunter Barry Clifford says he’s found proof, at least to his own satisfaction, that he’s discovered the pirate ship Whidah, sunk with its vast treasure, off the coast of Cape Cod in 1717.

When the Sharks come for the summer, they need a place to stay.

“Host families are our backbone,” general manager Jerry Murphy said. “Without them, we don’t have a team.”