MVOL.com Adds Staff

MVOL.com, an Internet-based business in Vineyard Haven, has added several employees to its staff.

Ezra Sherman has been named managing editor. Among his primary responsibilities will be the production of news content for both MVOL.com and MVYradio. Megan Sokolowski and Abigail Southard have joined MVOL.com as account managers.

Welcome Isabel

Jenny and David Littlejohn of Menemsha announce the birth of a daughter, Isabel Susan Littlejohn, born on April 21 at the Martha’s Vineyard Community Hospital. Isabel weighed 7 pounds, 2 ounces at birth.

Holding the Sheriff Accountable

If the state takes over the Dukes County sheriff’s department — and it appears that this will eventually be the case — Islanders likely will not notice the difference. The Edgartown house of correction will still be run as the local jail and the communications center, which is so integral to the Island emergency response system, will remain the same.

What will change is the sheriff will become more accountable for his budget. This is long overdue.

Protecting the Herring

More than one hundred fifty years ago, Henry David Thoreau noted the many rivers on Cape Cod named for herring. The day could come, he mused in his book Cape Cod, when people might find more Herring Rivers on the Cape than herring.

While that day has yet to come, the scarcity of herring in recent years from runs throughout Massachusetts, including on the Vineyard, has endowed Thoreau’s observation with an eerie prophecy.

If I had covered all bets on whether the Tisbury liquor question would wind up in a flat-footed tie, the drinks would certainly be on me. The rare outcome of a 690 to 690 pro and con vote is such as to drive one to drink, unless of course one resides in Tisbury where the question is still moot.

What follows is the text of recent remarks made by Captain Vanderhoop of Aquinnah before the New England Fisheries Management Council.

My name is Captain Buddy Vanderhoop and I am a Wampanoag Native American charter captain and commercial fisherman. I have run the Aquinnah Wampanoag herring run for 35 years.

Remarkable Americans: > The Washburn Family. By Kerck Kelsey. Illustrated. Tilbury House Publishers. 402 pages. $25.95.

Since the 1950s, the Washburn name has been a familiar one in Edgartown, with the late Stanley Washburn living on South Water street in summer and C. Langhorne Washburn summering on Pease’s Point Way. This fact-filled volume tells the story of their 19th-century forebears from northern Maine.

FOOD FOR THE HUNGRY

Editors, Vineyard Gazette:

Incumbent Aquinnah selectman Camille Rose easily won reelection to a second term Wednesday. Ms. Rose received 112 of the 195 votes cast in the annual town election. Challengers Roxanne Ackerman and John Walsh received 53 votes and 26 votes respectively in the only contested race on the ballot.

In ballot questions, voters also said yes to allow the sale of beer and wine in town restaurants, rejected a Proposition 2 1/2 override for a $50,000 addition to the fire station and accepted an override to pay past debt on the Vanderhoop Homestead.