Eat more shellfish. Your mother might not have told you that, but she could have, at least on the Vineyard. Here shellfish is a readily-available and abundant source of inexpensive protein. You can buy it at your favorite fish market or go get it yourself in your favorite pond (shellfish permit required). And if you don’t eat shellfish you can still love them. These filter feeders, especially oysters, are known for their ability to remove pollutants such as nitrogen from saltwater ponds.

So is Vineyard Haven now the Taos of the East? I knew two years ago there was something very special about what lured us to permanent living in Vineyard Haven, but who knew it would be nationally noted?

Our Chamber of Commerce announced on April 3 that Vineyard Haven was named one of America’s best small town art places for 2013. In fact, it’s in the top 12.

When courage comes knocking

Open the door

Although your mind screams

how can it be
And your heart cries
why me?

Vineyard roots run strong and deep and I never have imagined calling anywhere else on earth home. I grew up on the Island, but plenty of people grow up plenty of places. They move, they call other cities, other towns their own. What has always rooted me to Martha’s Vineyard is what roots so many people here — a community with a heart much larger than the Island’s 100 square miles would suggest.

Two years ago my wife and I moved from Pensacola, Fla. to Oklahoma avenue in Vineyard Haven. One afternoon as I was riding my bicycle around the state forest, close to the Vineyard Youth Tennis club, I saw a big red rooster standing in the middle of the path. Having grown up in rural South Carolina I notice animals and have been doing animal rescue for years. The rooster was a magnificent sight, standing tall with his chest out. His feathers, full of incredible colors, sparkled in the sunlight.

Every time I went bicycling in that area I saw the rooster.

This morning going through the 20 mile-per-hour zone in front of my town’s grade school I watched the little kids walking along the sidewalk with their enormous backpacks. Little kids, first graders; what on earth is in those bags? And the older kids look like they are setting out on a serious trek, and they are just going to school. Maybe it is full of sports equipment; it can’t all be books. There were a few kids with bikes; besides the packs on their backs there was a bag fixed over their back fender. It looked stuffed too. (It must be sneakers).

Next Monday night voters in Chilmark will have the opportunity to decide whether the town should better protect the community’s character by regulating the size of new residential construction.

I have lived in Chilmark since the early 1970s. I have been a member and chairman of the board of appeals as well as a selectman. In addition I am a licensed contractor and real estate broker. I do not mean to bang my drum but simply to state my long years of involvement with the town of Chilmark.

The average house size in America in the 1960s was 1,200 square feet. Two thousand square feet of house is big, 5,000 square feet is huge, yet 10,000 and bigger is becoming commonplace. If everyone builds out to zoning capacity not only will the bird and other animal populations dwindle because of habitat destruction but the middle class would get priced out too (not to mention the drain on natural resources).

Our thorniest national problems — climate change, environmental degradation and an economy in which one per cent of the population holds more than 90 per cent of all assets — are the result of the empowerment of individuals to abuse the commons we all share.