Less than three per cent of the earth’s water is fresh, the water that sustains us. As the oceans rise due to global warming salt water is creeping into coastal aquifers, underground reservoirs where drinking water is stored. This is called saltwater intrusion.

In 1998 the Environmental Protection Agency designated the entire Vineyard as a sole source aquifer, which means our groundwater is the sole source of drinking water for “the Island’s residents and visitors; there is no viable alternative source of sufficient supply.”

Woods Hole, 1910: idling steam trains exhale vapor at regular intervals, buoys clang out in the channel. An 11-year-old boy from Oak Park, Ill., wanders about the dockside. It is the first time he has seen the ocean. A sidewheel steamer is docked perpendicular to the rail terminus — its superstructure casts shadows across the kiosks and cottage industries of the wharf. The New Bedford, Martha’s Vineyard, and Nantucket Steamboat Company, consolidated from several small companies when the railroad arrived in 1873, has an office at the dockside.

MONSTER SPECTACLE

Editors, Vineyard Gazette:

Public spectacles like the annual monster shark tournament have much in common with the gladiator games conducted in the Coliseum during ancient Roman festivals. Large, adoring crowds immersed in a circuslike atmosphere amid unbridled commercial activity, awaiting the extravaganza of torture, execution and the eventual display of victims.

Save Our Farmland

An acre a minute. That’s how much farmland is currently being lost to development and other causes in America, according to a report written by the American Farmland Trust titled Farming on the Edge.

Vinnie sits at the table in the lounge. He wears, as always, a cap. A big pin in his shirt says I’m The Boss. He’s singing Roll Out The Barrel in a thin tenor. He’s also making me keep to the regular four-four time on the piano. Sometimes I miss the right chord but Vinnie sings on. I’m taking lessons from Ed Wise. Ed tells me it’s good for me to play in front of an audience.

Edgartown House Tour

The Edgartown House Tour, sponsored by the Federated Church, is on Tuesday, August 9. Lunch will be served on the lawn at 75 South Water street from noon until 1:30 p.m. Then historian Mary Jane Carpenter will speak about the homes which are included on the tour, at 1:30 p.m. in the church at the corner of Cooke and South Summer streets. Four houses, all within three blocks of the church, are open from 2 to 4:30 p.m. Tea and homemade cookies will be served all afternoon on the parsonage lawn.

Pan-Martha Bike Ride

The Pan-Martha Challenge, 50-mile bike-a-thon around Martha’s Vineyard on August 27, will benefit life-saving cancer research charities.

Beginning in Oak Bluffs, pedaling through Edgartown, out to Chilmark and Aquinnah, and back through Vineyard Haven, the Pan-Martha Challenge is not only a beautiful was to experience Martha’s Vineyard, 100 per cent of every rider-raised dollar is donated directly to local cancer research charities.

On the face of it, Suellen Lazarus might seem an odd person to have started a book festival. She was a banker, not a professional bibliophile or bookstore owner or writer.

But in a way, it was her other busy life which led her to start such an event on the Vineyard six years ago. For she associates reading with downtime.

She is one of those people who always packs five or six books when she goes on vacation. Even if she doesn’t get around to reading them all, their mere presence is a happy indicator of leisure, a calming thing.

Island farmers were alarmed this week to learn of the possible presence of a visitor from the mainland: a coyote.

Out in the middle of Meshacket Cove on the Edgartown Great Pond on Wednesday morning, David Schlezinger was going down for the third time, in nine feet of water.

He wasn’t drowning, though. It was quite the reverse. Dr. Schlezinger’s problem was his buoyancy. It’s hard to insert a long stake into the bottom of a pond when you can’t bring a lot of weight to bear on it.