Twelve-year-old Liam F. McCarthy of Vineyard Haven was honored last Saturday at a fundraising dinner at the Holy Ghost Society in Oak Bluffs. Through the efforts of many, the dinner raised $5,000.

Liam and his family were seeking financial help to cover the cost of a walking aid, a device that will make movement easier, plus a three-wheeled bicycle. Neither purchases are covered by insurance, his mother Kelly McGuiggin said. For her, the evening dinner offered hope.

Martha’s Vineyard could be viewed as having a split personality. Regular folk live here year-round, going about the business of making a living and raising a family just like in any community, and they do it mostly anonymously, at least as far as the rest of the world is concerned.

Big uber-conventional weddings aren’t for everyone. Or are they? I mean, they seem to be. All the young couples I know have a rigmarole they follow because . . . because why? Is it superstition?

When George Santayana wrote “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it” he was not envisioning people repeating their own mistakes. But that is what is transpiring at Wasque Point on Chappaquiddick this spring. In 2007 the Schifter family completed a large house about 300 feet from the bluff edge. Six years later, with the house poised to fall into the ocean, they are proposing to move it about 300 feet from the edge while damaging the environment and native artifacts and disrupting users of this magnificent landscape.

I renounce your right to my head.

Proudly, I wore the hat in ’78 in spite

of Bucky Dent. Your brim capped

my headache when Buckner booted it

in ’86 and shaded my eyes after Grady

left Pedro on the mound in ’03. But now

I’ve thrown it off, stomped it and hung it

at the back of the rack.

Despite patches of snow still on the ground, spring has finally arrived! Ospreys are flying over Poucha Pond collecting sticks for their nests, American oystercatchers are back bobbing through the marsh grass, and everyone — particularly staff and volunteers at The Trustees of Reservations

So I got new glasses. And it’s just amazing what it’s like to read again and see the words, to drive again and see the road, to look at a label on coconut milk and see the actual ingredients.
But peering into the mirror is a whole other thing. The new prescription has given my wrinkles identities. This deep groove in the middle of my forehead is my father‘s heart attack. He is 50 and I am 15 and he keels over and is gone in less than a minute leaving my mother, a 44 year old widow with no money and no career.

March 13, 2013. To most Americans this is just another day. To a kid on the Vineyard, it might as well be Christmas. Except there’s no eggnog on the menu today. There are, however, a plethora of frozen delicacies. Soft-serve frozen yogurt, fruit smoothies and, of course, the almighty Blizzard. Yes, ladies and gentleman, today is the day that Dairy Queen is officially open for business.

From the Gazette editions of April 1976: Some businessmen likened it to Memorial Day weekend. Others compared it to the middle of July. All appearances and temperatures last Saturday seemed to mark the beginning of summer, and on Easter Sunday the sun was hot with the low haze of a smoky sou’wester hanging across the horizon.

Tom Dunlop wrote an excellent article on trap fishing for the March 8, 2013 Gazette. It had an extraordinary amount of interesting factual information in it and I noticed that he carefully referenced anecdotal material as the opinions of particular people, which is very helpful for understanding history.