Anglers and Their Fish

By Red Smith, Pulitzer Prize-winning sports columnist for the New York Times and a Chilmark seasonal visitor for nearly three decades. From the October, 1982 files of the Vineyard Gazette, originally appearing in the September 23, 1974 edition of the New York Times.

Beginning Wednesday, Oct. 10, the main parking lot currently in use in front of the Martha’s Vineyard Hospital and Windemere will be closed and relocated to the parking area closer to the Beach Road entrance.

Parking for people with handicaps will be available off the doctors’ wing main entrance, and parking for cardiopulmonary and dialysis patients will continue to be conveniently located near the entrance to those departments.

The hospital administration and staff wish to thank everyone for their patience while they build the new hospital.

A Middlesex superior court judge ruled late last month that the town of Newton may not renovate two large recreational parks using funds from the Community Preservation Act (CPA) because the parklands were not acquired with CPA funds.

Steamship Authority governors will consider a reworked budget for next year, possibly including some fare increases to offset high fuel costs, when they meet on the Vineyard next week.

A draft budget at last month’s meeting was sent back to the drawing board after doubts were expressed about fuel cost estimates. The document assumed oil prices of $70 per barrel in 2008, about $10 lower than world prices at the time.

A Maine naturalist named Norm Famous, whom I mentioned in this past week’s column, recently sent me another e-mail about birds. This one contained a report from a researcher named Ron Pittaway up in Ontario, who issues an annual prediction for what various species of North American finches and some other non-finch species will be doing this coming winter.

Following are some much-edited excerpts from this forecast concerning northern species for the winter of 2007-2008:

JOHN S. ALLEY

508-693-2950

(alleys@vineyard.net)

NANCY GARDELLA

508-693-3308

(vhavenvgazette@yahoo.com)

HOLLY NADLER

508-693-3880

(sunporch@vineyard.net)

Once again the Nobel Prize Committee has ignored the Oak Bluffs community. And what’s up with awarding the physics jackpot to those two microchip guys? We’ve got to start asking ourselves a key question, just as we do when we’re shopping in a frivolous manner: Do we really need this? Well, do we? Do we really need another microchip that helps us access information even quicker?

It’s show time.

No, not the NBC special on the Vineyard high school football team that will air nationally twice next month, though the Island football community got a kick out of NBC camera crews trailing every facet of practice, the locker room, then filming a solid 35-20 win over bulky Hull High School last Friday.

“Preseason’s over. The league starts on Friday,” said junior inside linebacker Cody Brewer while organizing his derby fishing gear on Saturday morning after the game.

By LYNNE IRONS

I am enjoying a big glass of grape juice at this moment. If I could have a do-over in the gardening world, I would not have constructed a grape arbor, however pleasing to the eye. Mine is made from locust posts and very attractive. I would have to be 4 feet, 5 inches tall to comfortably pick the grapes. I think I am going to tear it down, cut the vines within an inch of their lives, and string some wire along the posts like they do in the big wineries.