Independence Day 2008

Small American flags flutter around the gravestones at the Westside Cemetery in Edgartown, where Bobby Hagerty has trimmed the old cedars and maples in time for the Fourth of July. The cemetery is a peaceful place to pass through on the short walk from uptown to downtown, all dusky grass and yellow sedum. The town superintendent doesn’t like the sedum and wants to get rid of it, but Bobby, who is a veteran tree and plant man, has told him he should leave it alone.

Bobby is right; the sedum is pretty.

FOUNDATION GONE ASTRAY

Editors, Vineyard Gazette:

As a great nephew of Caroline Tuthill and a longtime supporter of Sheriff’s Meadow, I am completely aghast that this once well-respected, august conservation organization could have lost its way by straying from its core mission of preservation and conservation. It saddens me greatly that the efforts of so many on the Island to preserve and protect has been undone by greed, negligence and naivete.

Ringing in the Fourth

From the Vineyard Gazette editions of July, 1983:

Church bells rang at midnight on the Fourth of July when Gratia Harrington was a little girl.

It was the Methodist Church in the village of Vineyard Haven that rang the bells, she remembers. She knows it wasn’t the Catholic Church, for those bells had a different tone. And it couldn’t have been the Episcopal Church, she says. “The Episcopalians weren’t that well organized in those days.”

The recent decision by the United States Supreme Court that will in essence allow all members of the country to arm themselves “to protect themselves” has been met in some quarters with gloomy portents of a nation that will be scarred by increasing gun fire and the dire results thereof. Others have taken a much more roseate view of the court’s action. Nowhere was the 5-4 pro-gun action met with more whooping and cheering than here on Martha’s Vineyard led by an exultant turkey population.

Today signifies the casting-off of the yoke of British oppression. The date we thumbed-off King George 3rd, denouncing his imperialist abuses and told him and his twit subjects to leave us alone.

I say us — I mean you. You see, I myself am English scum.

When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bonds which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

After tonight’s fireworks, there is still plenty to see in the night. The planets Saturn and Mars are a close couple in the western sky. Mars is a dull red and it appears right below the yellow ringed-planet Saturn. Both are in the zodiacal constellation Leo and they are the two brightest objects in the western sky. The constellation’s brightest star Regulus appears under the two planets.

Pass the peas please!

No one is happier than I am about the preponderance of peas. We are nearing legume lunacy — snap, sugar, English, snow and others adorn many gardens and many minds.

License Plate Auction

The online charitable auction for Cape and Islands license plate numbers 1 through 999 kicks off Tuesday, July 8 at capeandislandsplate.com. 

Bidding for the plates begins on Tuesday and continues through August 1, 2008.

Closing times will vary by plate, so bidders should note the ending time on the website.

The minimum bid for plate numbers 1-10 will be $10,000; the minimum bid for plate numbers 11 – 100 will be $1000; and the minimum bid for plates101 - 999 will be $100.

Army National Guard Pvt. Tony R. Cortez has graduated from basic combat training at Fort Jackson, Columbia, S.C.

Private Cortez is the son of Lisa Tilton of Oak Bluffs, He is a 2006 graduate of Martha’s Vineyard Regional High School.