Russell H. Smith of Aquinnah has been named as the next Dukes County manager. In a special meeting Friday morning, the Dukes County Commission voted unanimously to appoint Mr. Smith to the position, which has been vacant since August.

Edgartown voters returned selectman Margaret Serpa to a third term Thursday and Oak Bluffs voters also decided to back incumbents, reelecting selectmen Duncan Ross and Ron DiOrio. But West Tisbury voters took a different path, electing Richard Knabel over two-term selectman Glenn Hearn. The vote was 380 to 294.

Complete election results will appear in the Friday morning Gazette.

HOLLY NADLER

508-693-3880

(sunporch@vineyard.net)

Because New Englanders are both clever and crazy, we’ve come up with ways to nudge spring along more quickly, at least in our own minds. One method is to coax friends in warm places to come home sooner than they’d planned (not that this ever works).

JANE N. SLATER

508-645-3378

(slaterjn@comcast.net)

Chilmark enjoyed a sunny Easter day but the temperature was cold and the winds were blowing . . . all typical of early spring, we have to remind ourselves. And I guess we can be happy that there will be no Easter this early again until 2223.

MARGARET KNIGHT

508-627-8894

(margaret02539@yahoo.com)

Early on Wednesday morning, Sidney called me from the charter school asking if I knew what had gone on last night while we were asleep. A car had driven off the Chappaquiddick ferry around 11 p.m. He had heard it from Claudia Ewing at the front desk, who’s married to Steve, who pulled the car out of the slip with his tow boat sometime after midnight.

KATHIE CASE

508-627-5349

(kathleencase@comcast.net)

I know what they mean about writer’s block. When I tried to start this article, I could not think of a way to start it without being repetitive. So when I woke up this morning, Mother Nature left me her sign by leaving a coat of frost on the roof. And the saying goes if we get three frosts in a row it is spring. So one down, two to go.

JUNE MANNING

508-645-2574

(lthslnks@gis.net)

The osprey have arrived — Bettina Malonson Washington photographed a pair at Lobsterville on Monday. While there, she was also delighted to get a close-up photograph of a rather plump grey seal. Just some of the first signs of spring in Aquinnah which will soon be followed by the blossoming of the shad, the running of the herring, and the buds of the mayflowers.

NANCY GARDELLA

508-693-3308

(vhavenvgazette@yahoo.com)

The gradual two-year decline of residential home sales now resembles a bobsled run: it’s picking up speed but has some interesting twists and turns.

Sales of residential homes were off 18 per cent in January, worsening in February with sales declining by 33 per cent and the value of sales that month off more than 70 per cent, according to LINK, a real estate reporting agency on the Island. Prices of houses that do sell are generally 10 per cent below asking price.

As many as 100 people attended an often emotional public hearing held by the Martha’s Vineyard Commission on Thursday, March 20 to hear a proposal to transform the old Bradley Memorial Church in Oak Bluffs into a multi-use building with affordable housing, artists’ workshops and a museum.