2024 opened with a severe storm battering the Island, the third in just over a month, each one turning its unwavering attention on the south shore. It closed with the first snowfall of the season, bringing with it a white Christmas.

An Atlantic storm crashed over the eastern strip of Norton Point Beach in the last days of 2022, inundating Wasque wetlands and disconnecting Chappaquiddick once again. The breach created an old, yet new island to ring in 2023, a fitting start for a year in which many longstanding issues resurfaced.

September fourteenth. Summer was over and Martha’s Vineyard had already begun its annual downshift into fall. Children were back in school, the frenzy of August was a fast-fading memory.

With apologies to Red Sox fans, it would be easy to paraphrase the late, great Yankees catcher/philosopher Yogi Berra to describe the year 2021: déjà vu all over again.

A year unlike any other, 2020 brought with it sweeping change and challenges normally only felt on a geological time scale, all cast in a global pandemic.

The year that began with a historic, emergency birth would be characterized by crisis and history as well, as an Island that has long been immersed in its own past was time and again forced to confront it.