Tisbury selectmen voted to set a tax rate of $8.46 for the coming year, slightly above last year’s rate of $8.01.

And after discussion at the public tax classification hearing Tuesday, a majority of the board agreed that the town should take steps to gradually shift away from the practice of allowing a residential tax exemption for year-round homeowners.

For this year the residential tax exemption will be lowered from 20 to 18 per cent.

Robert S. Marshall, the Steamship Authority governor representing Falmouth, resigned from the board last week. He sent his resignation to the Falmouth selectmen late Thursday evening, following a public meeting in Woods Hole about the proposed terminal redesign there.

Change is planned for the Martha’s Vineyard Museum, and the museum wants community feedback. That was the thinking behind a series of community forums recently held in Chilmark, Vineyard Haven, West Tisbury, Edgartown and Oak Bluffs.

Speaking to a crowd of two dozen people attending the Tuesday night meeting at the Federated Church in Edgartown, museum executive director David Nathans thanked everyone for coming. “It’s important to all of us that we get feedback from you. We really, really want feedback,” he said.

Fifty years ago today, an unspeakable tragedy occurred, one that left a generation scarred with memories of where they were when President John Fitzgerald Kennedy was assassinated.

Members of the Wampanoag Tribe of Gay Head (Aquinnah) sent a strong message about their desire for change last week, voting by a wide margin to elect Tobias Vanderhoop as the new chairman of the tribal council.

At dusk, one by one,
hundreds of gulls fall
out of the leaden sky
onto the lake, already
beginning to close
its lid for winter.

We call them
by their names,
recognize bill color,
molt, age, species —
see everything
but living beings —
finding their spots
for the night, calling out
to kin, to neighbors.
Afloat on freezing waves,
they turn together
into the north wind.

A large green binder rested on Lorraine Clark’s kitchen counter this week, the pages filled with requests for bicycles, toys, books, art supplies and blankets.

Ten years ago this week, the Massachusetts 
 Supreme Judicial Court ruled in Goodridge versus Department of Public Health, effectively setting off a marriage revolution that today appears to have reached some sort of tipping point even as the effort continues state by state.

I was 23, a senior at CCNY in New York city, on that Friday — again this year the date falls on a Friday — and had come home to our apartment after my morning classes for a quick lunch. The television was on in the background as I made myself a sandwich.

For 50 years the smoking of marijuana has been a major issue in our country. The idea that marijuana should be considered a medication is a fairly recent addition to the debate. It is a clever addition, however, because “medicines” are good and should be available to those who need them.