Subprime Lending in West Tisbury

Fallout from the many-headed monster otherwise known as the subprime mortgage crisis certainly seems to have no end, and now the crisis which is national and growing has landed — of all places — in West Tisbury.

A Place for Planning

More than thirty five years ago, an engineering firm looked at the six towns on the Vineyard and envisioned a possible seventh town carved into the Island’s center, around the regional high school and along the Edgartown-Vineyard Haven Road.

The firm, Metcalf and Eddy, saw the area as a social and economic center, a place for larger development not appropriate for the down-Island downtowns or the ecologically sensitive up-Island towns.

He was a first generation Portuguese American who was a member of the Oak Bluffs fire department for more than forty years, a widely loved unsung hero.

FORMULA FAIRNESS

Editors, Vineyard Gazette:

The Tisbury lawsuit about the assessment formulas for the high school is just one more attempt to deal with a difficult situation, when the situation itself is based on an antiquated system of paying for the school.

The high school was established through a regional agreement among the six towns of the Island 50 years ago. In retrospect, it seems like a reasonable way to have cooperated toward achieving a valued goal.

One day, when I was bemoaning my quality problem of missing the Vineyard when I went home to Honolulu and missing Honolulu when I returned to my Island home on the Vineyard, a good friend said to me, “Dana, why don’t you look on this as your having two beautiful rooms in a very large house and you are just moving from one room to the other?“ No one ever said a wiser thing to me; no one ever reminded me quite so simply and clearly of how fortunate I am and of the gratitude I should bring to my days.

On Being Black

From the Vineyard Gazette editions of January, 1983:

The old America I knew took a hike last week and a new America emerged before my unbelieving eyes at approximately 9:30 in the evening. That was the hour my belief system was turned upside-down, when Barack Obama was projected to win the Iowa caucuses and it was extraordinary.

Hi and welcome to this week’s edition of Sophomores Speak Out. This week we have a lot of interesting articles on a variety of topics. They are fun and interesting to read and they show you how many things are going on in the world. Sometimes it makes you think, how can I help?

— Troy (85) Small

Editor

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A Passion for Hockey

By Breanne Russell>

The good thing about January is that it isn’t December. December, of course, is when we spend too much money on presents, stress out that we’re compelled to send cards and letters, attend parties and fundraisers, and string up tired decorations. Or we’re feeling guilty that we’re not doing any of those things. But on occasions during each Christmas season, we’re bound to partake of an event that makes it all worth while. A performance of Amahl and the Night Visitors is one of those occasions.

When Akira Kurosawa’s Rashomon, the story of a rape and murder told from three perspectives, was released in 1950, it won the Gold Lion at the Venice Film Festival and has since received some of the most gushing reviews of all time from Western critics. But the head of the Japanese production company which had coughed up just $5,000 for the film’s budget disliked what he saw so much, he took his name off the credits. Japanese critics called it complicated and boring, and they worried about the swear words.