We finally sold our son’s handicapped van to a WOMAN who was flying in from Wisconsin to pick it up and drive it back. The plan was that she would hand over the money and we would hand over the keys.

When my husband came home with the check, he said: “It’s too late to get it into the bank and as I saw her driving off into the sunset I had a weird moment of, ‘I wonder if we were just scammed?’”

It’s 3:15 a.m. again and Denise Guest is still awake trying TO comfort her daughter Jillian. Jay and Denise Guest have been taking turns at Jillian’s bedside for the past 100 days at Boston Children’s Hospital. It is a labor of love, what else can they do? They only want their beautiful daughter to recover and be able to resume her life again.

On March 28 of this year Jillian suffered a broken femur which was inoperable, resulting in Jillian having to have pins in her knee and placed in traction.

Over the years I have wondered what form the end will take for our Camp Ground cottage. Since I began seeing the cottage through adult eyes, I’ve eyed it with the trepidation of watching a truck turn off Main street in Vineyard Haven. It’s not going to make it.

Thanks to the patriotism and courage of people lining the route of Edgartown’s July Fourth parade, the Martha’s Vineyard Peace Council had many marchers this year.

Thank you so much to the honest, hardworking, helpful people of the Vineyard Transit Authority. You are heroes. You saved me seven years ago and again on Monday.

Oak Bluffs should not permit food trucks to compete with storefront businesses. Prices are high on Martha’s Vineyard because of real estate values and related high rental fees.

Allowing food trucks will damage existing businesses and drive them away.

We can’t punish these businesspeople, who are the lifeblood of our town.

We have only to see what a new Walmart store can do to a community to understand what unfair competition can do to local businesses.

I thought you might like a little history of Benny’s Barbershop in Oak Bluffs. My husband Mark decided that the Island needed another barbershop, so in the winter of 1991 he went to the co-op bank for a loan. Mr. Knight would not give it to him because he said it would never make it. So we took our life savings of $20,000 and found the building on Circuit avenue, rented it from Kim Cyrs (owner of Our Market) and went shopping. We shopped for vintage items, as we wanted it to resemble an old-fashioned shop.

From a story published May 6, 1966, by G. William Arnold: About fifteen years ago, not so very long ago, I grew up a boy in Edgartown. And part of the remembering of it all (at the ripe rip-snorting old age of 28) comes when I remember what isn’t anymore.

Once there was a different steamboat wharf in Edgartown, one that had a low peaked roof with grey gulls on it — and not that thing with a flat, boarded, picket-fenced, widow’s walk atop.

Well I thought we were melting but I guess it was just my imagination. It was one of the hottest Fourth of Julys I can remember. Now it is a little cooler but not by much. Wasn’t it yesterday that we were just complaining about how cold it was and we couldn’t wait for the warm weather?

I’ve been up very early these past few days but I still can’t beat the birds to the punch. Must be many worms to be had. I moved my coffee maker to our version of a clubhouse with the hope being that I might be dissuaded from consuming my first cup of cups before 5 a.m. I’m too smart to trick myself so I’ve taken to sitting on the small deck overlooking Cape Pogue’s tidal marsh, a fresh brew in hand, watching the air gain color and listening to the competing conversations of crows, robins and other feathery chit-chatters.