White Flower Island

Editor’s Note: What follows is an essay titled At the Turn of the Tide, taken from Salt Marsh Diary, a book by Mark Seth Lender, a writer and producer for the National Public Radio program Living on Earth. Mr. Lender will speak tonight upstairs at the Bunch of Grapes in Vineyard Haven at 7:30 p.m. At the Turn of the Tide is copyrighted by the author and appears here with permission of St. Martin’s Press, LLC. In an e-mail to the Gazette this week, the author explained the Vineyard story behind Turn of the Tide:

No Overtime for Tri-Town Resolution

The magnificent victory of the Bruins in the Stanley Cup finals this week had us talking about hockey and ice skating, and the conversation turned as these things will to the question of whether it is easier to skate forwards or backwards. This, it seems, is a matter of opinion, some of which can get quite vehement. Is it a function of the kind of skating you do or how you were trained? Or is there a right-brain, left-brain predisposition at work?

I’ve been carrying Gerry around for years. Trust me when I say he’s not heavy, not any more, he’s gone from 200 pounds to less than a pound at this point.

My friend and former coworker Gerry Kelly, a jovial, melancholy Irishman, died and was cremated in 1996. He had no known immediate family and although we were not all that close, we shared a love of cooking, the theatre and art.

Why would an Islander choose to ride our VTA bus system to circumnavigate the whole Island? Well, why did David Niven take a hot air balloon as part of his Around the World in 80 Days tour? Because there would have been no story if he hadn’t.

But there’s more to it than that, as far as riding the bus around the Island is concerned.

Halfway through a marathon Oak Bluffs selectmen’s meeting Tuesday where a ban on amplified music was under discussion, the board voted to go into an unusual executive session to discuss police union bargaining and a personnel matter.

Students Recognized

The Tisbury School held its Recognition Day for the fifth through eighth grades on Tuesday, June 14, 2011. During the ceremony, all students were recognized for their individual contributions towards a positive school environment. Students were honored for the strengths they bring. The following special awards were also given:

Jeffrey T. Goodale Memorial Award to Coralee LaRue – grade 5.

Dorothy Larkosh Roberts Award to Sienna Dice – grade 6.

All-American Sailor

Emily Reich of Oak Bluffs was named to the 2011 Intercollegiate Sailing Association All-American Team earlier this month. Ms. Reich, a crew member who competes in co-ed sailing, is a junior at Old Dominion College in Virginia. She is one of just 20 collegiate sailors to be selected as an All-American Crew member this year.

The mystery of the sudden crackdown in Tisbury on businesses flying “open” flags has taken on the air of a whodunit, with restaurant proprietors suspecting it was initiated to harm their trade.

Enforcement of a bylaw relating to signs for commercial premises, which was ignored for years if not decades and of which most town officials, including selectmen, were unaware, began suddenly a couple of weeks ago.

The town building and zoning inspector Kenneth Barwick was the man doing the enforcing.

In the Edgartown Triangle there is a store with boxes of compact discs labeled “$1” out front, crates of used CDs inside, and a sizeable collection of new and used vinyl. Aboveground Records is adapting to the 21st century.

The heart of the business is Vineyard-born Mike Barnes. At 36, he has owned Aboveground for 16 years. The store began before the mp3 existed and has seen what that technology has done to the music industry.