The Vineyard Gazette can provide an enormous public service in helping to increase understanding and awareness by Island residents about the bacterial problems in Sengekontacket Pond. The recent Gazette article Sengekontacket from Nov. 30, however, makes several errors of fact that fuel public misconceptions.

It is early winter in the year 1942. The United States has just been attacked by a foreign power and the annihilation of our Pacific fleet is complete; the fence-sitting is over and the U.S. has officially entered the war. We will no longer simultaneously send humanitarian aid to the Chinese, and scrap metal and petroleum to Japan. Our country is shaken and enraged. And aroused. Our monumental defense production will soon pull us the rest of the way out of the Great Depression.

Temperature: Precip.

Day Max. Min. Inches.

Fº Fº

Nov. 30 54 34 .00

Dec. 1 45 31 .00

Dec. 2 35 20 .00

Dec. 3 44 22 .71

Dec. 4 49 25 .00

Dec. 5 32 18 .00

Dec. 6 36 22 Trace

Water temperature in Edgartown harbor: 41º F.

Families and music lovers from across the Island will gather on Wednesday, Dec. 12 at 7:30 p.m. at Our Lady Star of the Sea Church in Oak Bluffs for the 11th annual Reflections of Peace concert. This holiday tradition celebrates and benefits Hospice of Martha’s Vineyard.

Songs of the season will be performed by a cappella group Novum, Shelley Brown, Brad Austin and Kevin Ryan, and the West Tisbury Congregational Choir.

Instrumental offerings will be performed by the Katama Trio, the Vineyard Handbell Choir, and organist Wesley Brown.

Courtney Sullivan and David Luce of Edgartown announce the birth of a daughter, Jayden Marie Luce, born on Nov. 28 at the Martha’s Vineyard Community Hospital. She weighed 8 pounds, 6 ounces at birth.

Bankers are supposed to be flinty eyed. Evidently, Paul J. Watts didn’t get the memo.

The Island Rotarian looked a tad teary eyed last Friday as he described some of the 280 Peruvian villagers who were given the gift of mobility, some for the first times in their lives, as the result of the Martha’s Vineyard Rotary Club’s wheelchair mercy mission.

Mr. Watts, senior vice president of Bank of Martha’s Vineyard, was back in Vineyard Haven with seven other Island residents who spent a restful two weeks vacationing in Peru.

Reduce the number of birds and leash the dogs.

That's the translation of a technical study released this week by a leading marine biologist which concludes that a flock of invasive cormorants and - to a lesser extent - a group of domesticated dogs are responsible for the high levels of fecal contamination in Sengekontacket Pond.

None of the houses on North Water street in Edgartown are small. But tucked among the old whaling captains’ homes, with their broad lawns stretching down to private docks on the outer harbor is a comparatively diminutive Greek revival building known as the library. The fate of this home has hung in the balance since September, when plans for its demolition were first presented to the Edgartown historic district commission in the wake of strong neighborhood opposition to the project.

A leading opponent is neighbor John Connors.

In a move that has outraged Island homeowners and their elected state representatives alike, the Massachusetts Division of Insurance, with only scant publicity, recently agreed to hike to the roof certain deductibles for people insured under the FAIR plan.

Two leading Island recreational fishing organizations have called on the state Division of Marine Fisheries to end the controversial practice known as yo-yoing, which laces bait fish with lead that ends up in the bellies of striped bass.