Top Runner

Amory Salem of Edgartown, who has won the women’s division of the Annual Thanksgiving Day 5K Race in Oak Bluffs several times, was the top finisher overall in this year’s Thanksgiving race. Mrs. Salem also was the female winner in the Chilmark Road Race this past summer.

JOHN S. ALLEY

508-693-2950

(alleys@vineyard.net)

Phyllis Meras of Music street reports that we did not have any snow on Christmas Day as the temperature reached 46 degrees. The automobile traffic in town was nearly non-existent most of the day as families gathered around their tree to exchange gifts and enjoy a family dinner. Relatives and friends came by to visit in the lat e afternoon. The church was well attended at the two services held on Christmas Eve.

JUNE D. MANNING

508-645-2574

(lthslnks@gis.net)

The Rev. David Berube will be the guest minister at Community Baptist Church on Sunday. Reverend Berube is a member of the Oak Bluffs Police Department and serves as chaplain for at Otis Air Force Base.

Of Bells and a Thousand

Years of Peace

The calendar points to the moment of Monday midnight, to the tolling of the Island bells, to that time in our lives when old becomes new and we wonder what lies ahead. These are the days just before and just after the first bell strikes that we find most appropriate for that old and familiar greeting spoken so comfortably and without rancor. Happy New Year is the refrain now heard across the Island, in every corner of every Vineyard township.

STRANDED WITHOUT CAUSE

Editors, Vineyard Gazette:

This is an open letter to the board of governors, management and unions of the SSA.

Conflict and Turmoil

From the Vineyard Gazette editions of December 1982:

Martha’s Vineyard Community Services is the largest human service provider on the Island with roots established in 1961, when a community mental health center was formed to serve the Island population. Today, we employ more than 120 full and part-time employees and serve approximately 6,000 residents and visitors each year through our Early Childhood Programs, Island Counseling and Disability Services, the Visiting Nurse Service and Women’s Support Services.

Editor’s note: On Dec. 5, Lanny McDowell and Sam Low (aka The Two Cousins) went to Art Basel Miami Beach — the huge art fair that in sheer size trumps everything on the annual art circuit (Paris, Shanghai, Tokyo, London, everything) They filed this report.

“Vineyard Gazette? What’s that?” said someone checking our press credentials at the Art Basel fair in Miami — “some kind of wine magazine?”

There I was on the steps of the Tower of London where Anne Boleyn and Lady Jane Grey and Sir Thomas More, among others, lost their heads — and I lost my wallet.

There’s no comparison, of course, but history buff that I am — their names couldn’t help but pass through my mind as I reached into my handbag for my wallet on a recent trip to London — and found it gone.

Late-night revelers will be out on New Year’s Eve celebrating under a Last Quarter Moon. The moon rises in the eastern sky, less than an hour after the arrival of the New Year. The moon is in the zodiacal constellation Leo, a constellation most often associated with spring and summer.