Vineyard Seniors' Bus Services Are Subject of Call for Change

By ALEXIS TONTI

Faced with changes to what they say is already an inadequate
service, leaders within the Island Councils on Aging are now calling on
the Vineyard Transit Authority to reform its senior public
transportation program.

Nestled in the new clearing among fields, beech trees and ponds, across the road from Brine's Pond Preserve, the remodeled and expanded 1700s Chappaquiddick farmhouse bought by the late Robert Marshall and his wife Ruth more than 60 years ago can now be clearly seen from the road.

Just six weeks before the start of a new school year, principals at
both the West Tisbury School and Chilmark School have announced they are
quitting their jobs.

Letters of resignation from Elaine Pace and Carlos Colley forced the
Up Island Regional school committee into an unscheduled meeting Friday
to deal with the doubleheader of departures.

"It's fair to say this was unexpected," said Kathy
Logue, chairman of the regional school board.

Retail Heads Down; For Sale Signs Rise

What These, and Other Numbers, Say About the Future of the Vineyard
Is Subject of MVC Forum

By NIS KILDEGAARD

The Island economy is changing dramatically, a panel of business
leaders told a forum of the Martha's Vineyard Commission last
week, and in a discussion that was both frank and wide-ranging, they
shared numbers to back up their claims.

Milo Silva's name may not yet be familiar in most Island music circles, but that will change. Milo Silva, 17, is the son of Island blues musician Maynard Silva, and this week they will share a stage.

Maynard has performed for years as a top blues musician. Maynard is a hard beat, foot stomping performer with a raspy voice. He has put out several CDs and has a strong Island and off-Island following.

Milo's music is of another world - from Central Asia.

Grace S. Grossman, the diminutive and crusading Nantucket Steamship
Authority governor whose love and work for her island knew no
boundaries, died last Thursday after a brief illness. She was 80.

"It's about the Nantucket people. I represent what the
Nantucket people want," she said in an interview with the Gazette
in January.

Acting through their Boston attorney, the managing partners for the Vineyard Golf Club have been engaged in a series of quiet threats and maneuvers in recent weeks - all aimed at avoiding a Martha's Vineyard Commission review of a new plan to build 16 luxury houses for members at the golf club.

The commission expressly denied all member housing when it approved the golf club five years ago.

Ruling that the dire need for low-cost rental housing trumps traffic
concerns, the Martha's Vineyard Commission voted unanimously last
night to approve the Pennywise Path affordable housing project in
Edgartown.

New Land Bank Purchase Will Preserve 84 Acres on Chilmark's
Middle Road

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By ALEXIS TONTI

The Martha's Vineyard Land Bank announced this week that it
will buy 84 acres of land in Chilmark, a sprawling property that rises
nearly 200 feet from Middle Road to a ridgeline with views of the south
shore.

Now a genetic study of the skins of scores of heath hens, all of them from the Vineyard, shows that the Island bird, although it looked and behaved much like its supposed parent species in the Midwest, was a wholly distinctive creature. Genetically it was more different from the greater western prairie chicken - that supposed parent species - than the Midwestern bird is from any other family member in its genus, which includes the lesser prairie chicken, the endangered Attwater's prairie chicken of eastern Texas, and even the sharp-tailed grouse. It is possible that instead of being a subspecies of the prairie chicken - which scientists have considered it to be since it was first typed in the last years of the nineteenth century - the heath hen might have been a species unto itself.