Community Services at Half-Century Mark

Union Chapel

Rev. Kate Braestrup, New York Times best-selling author of Here If You Need Me and one of the first chaplains appointed to the Maine Warden Service, will preach this Sunday, at 10 a.m. in Union Chapel, Oak Bluffs The widely-known writer and author’s sermon title is Hope Is a Thing With Fangs.

The Wampanoag water testing lab has a clean bill of health this week after a visit from the state Department of Public Health. The lab has been under scrutiny after test results for beaches in Edgartown and Oak Bluffs last week showed levels of the bacteria enterococcus at levels high enough to close South Beach in Edgartown and Inkwell Beach in Oak Bluffs, results that were not duplicated by water testing facilities in Tisbury and Chatham.

Some children want to grow up to be ballerinas or astronauts, maybe a firefighter or a zookeeper, but then life takes a different path and the dream floats away. There’s one night of the year when the young at heart are celebrated and an important Vineyard institution benefits, a night when dreams are no longer deferred.

That night is Monday evening, when Martha’s Vineyard Community services hosts the 33rd annual Possible Dreams Auction.

If there is one statistic that attests to the way in which Martha’s Vineyard Community Services has become crucial to the to the well-being of Islanders, it is the one board president Wiet Bacheller now recites.

Some 6,000 people — a number equal to about one-third of the resident population — come into contact with Community Services each year.

Fifty years ago, when the organization first started its helping work, the year-round population of the Vineyard was less than that.

As soon as he rounded the corner to walk down to the dock, dozens of blue lights began to flash, sirens wailed and trumpets, nearly silent by comparison, tootled those age-old American anthems. Sgt. James (Chris) Brown had just returned to the Island from a nine-month tour of duty as a member of the Army 181st Infantry as part of a Provincial Reconstruction Team in Afghanistan’s Kunar province, and the community marked it as only they could.

West Nile Virus has arrived on the Vineyard. On Thursday the Massachusetts Department of Health announced that a single mosquito collected in Tisbury tested positive for the disease and health officials are asking Islanders to take reasonable preventive measures.

This month scientists from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution will descend on Edgartown with a sonar-equipped waverunner to map, in unprecedented resolution, the ever-shifting sands and currents of Katama Bay. While the bathymetry of the body of water, where change is a constant feature, is of special scientific interest to the Woods Hole scientists, the information is even more valuable for the surprising underwriter of the project: the U.S. Department of Defense.

A state government plan to open waters close to the south shore of Martha’s Vineyard to industrial-scale wind power generation now appears unlikely to proceed, following the release of a draft wind energy plan by the Martha’s Vineyard Commission.

Good morning! The Gazette is being sent to every postal box on the Vineyard this morning. The subscriber sections of the newspaper Web site (mvgazette.com) are also free until Tuesday. We hope you enjoy the read; tell us what you think.