It’s Memorial Day weekend and sometimes I think we forget what that’s about. First, it’s about our war dead. No matter how you feel about war, we all hurt for the sons and daughters who don’t come back or come home damaged, and how that reverberates through the psyche of our society. It is also about people missing from our lives leaving that permanent, empty and personal sense of loss. All through life, things and people fall away, reminding us that we are all going to have a turn. It’s the ultimate equal opportunity.

The Edgartown fire department has received a grant of more than $475,000 from the Federal Emergency Management Agency. The money will go toward upgrading the current cardiac monitoring equipment for all of the Island emergency medical services. The ambulances will now be supplied with advanced cardiac defibrillator monitors, he said, which will assist in transmitting patients who are having active heart attacks.

In the cemeteries in Oak
Bluffs, Oak Grove and Sacred Heart, stars and stripes mark the graves of veterans, men and women who fought and served in wars ranging from the Civil War to the World Wars and up to Afghanistan.

Last Saturday morning, Patryck Nascimento, a Brazilian student at the Martha’s Vineyard Regional High School, volunteered to plant American flags and replace old ones at the two cemeteries.

It was not until I cleared the underbrush

I saw unfurling monk-like bodies of ferns

It was not until I walked the lonely pond

forsythia fronds and red bud bloomed in the water

We wish to express our heartfelt thanks and gratitude for everyone in this very special community who called, wrote a personal note or expressed their concern in the Gazette over the fatal attack on our mini-horse, Majik. Majik is greatly missed by all whose lives she touched. She never missed a chance for a hug and a scratch, her tiny neck and head bowing to fully benefit from a human’s or Chance’s (her constant companion’s) affection.

Last fall you published a letter from me thanking our Island community for their support of the American Heroes Fishing Challenge. Now in its fifth year and organized by the Nixon family and Beach Plum Inn, the heroes challenge is a tournament within the Annual Martha’s Vineyard Striped Bass and Bluefish Derby.

Martha’s Vineyard Community Services’ Chicken Alley Thrift Shop would like to thank the Troy Neuenburg and the Sand Bar in Oak Bluffs, Deejay Ricky Prime and Dukes County Love Affair (DCLA) for the very successful and fabulous good time had by all at the Mad Men party to benefit Community Services last Friday night.

Platters of gratitude and bowlfuls of appreciation should be served up to the town of Edgartown police department for the delicious and entertaining lunch its members provided at the Edgartown firehouse last Friday afternoon. Delicious lobster rolls, stuffed quahaug, chowder and chicken salad were on the menu together with introductions to, and presentations from the men and women who serve.

From the May 22, 1992 Just a Thought column by Arthur Railton: I watch birds. But I’m not a bird watcher. Bird watchers don’t watch birds, they go birding, looking for rare birds. They don’t mess with backyard birds that I watch. Most keep a record of every species they’ve seen. It’s their Life List. They travel miles, sit motionless for hours, staring through binoculars, to get a glimpse of a rare species, a bird they can add to their list. Once they’ve spotted a bird, they lose interest in it.

The halo over the sun this past weekend was meteorological, more associated with our atmosphere than astronomical. The halo was caused by high altitude ice crystals which reside from three to six miles in the air. When there is an over abundance of ice crystals in the atmosphere, a halo forms over the sun.

These ice crystals can also create a sun dog, an event very similar to a halo.

Extreme Tides