IN THE NEWS

Spring will arrive on Martha's Vineyard March 17 at 11 am. This is when the Dairy Queen opens for business. We Vineyarders know what time of the year it is, not by the weather, but by the event. I'm waiting for the 4th of July parade because I know it will be summer.

IN THE NEWS

Vineyard newspapers are a different breed from big city papers like the Boston Globe or New York Times. Our news is intimate. It’s about neighbors, local institutions. Events that are both life changing and mundane. Things that are happening in our back yards. Things that would be in your local paper whether or not the rest of the world existed.

Basically we read the paper to confirm the rumors we’ve been hearing all week. Sometimes the Island is like a great big kindergarden playing a game of telephone. The accuracy of the rumor one hears depends on how close to the source you are.

Even if they didn’t put the date on the masthead you can tell what month it is by reading the Gazette or Times. Sometimes even the week. For instance, as I write this it is March. The paper is filled with Pinkletinks and Osprey sightings. These are things that wouldn’t get a mention in the Globe or even the Cape Cod Times but after a gloomy winter they set the Islander’s heart singing. Why Islanders look forward to summer and all its problems is beyond me, but they do. In fact it is the third week of March. I know this because the Dairy Queen just opened. Most places that wouldn’t be a big deal but here it is almost occasion for a school holiday.

Most Islanders can tell the exact date (give or take seven days) by looking at the front page. Town meetings? Second week in April. Ag Fair and Illumination night? Third week in August.

We don’t cheat by looking at the calendar. The restaurant ads help. The week before any holiday you can see the menu for buffet dinners. The food itself will tell you what holiday. Spring lamb? Easter. Roast beef and Yorkshire pudding? Christmas, of course.

The stories in the newspaper have become predictable. A lot of people would find this boring. Not I. I take a lot of comfort in knowing what next week’s big story will be. I’m at an age where shocks are unwelcome. Even good surprises can create stress. But that’s not necessarily so for the young, which is why many kids raised on Martha’s Vineyard can’t wait to grow up and move off Island. The predictability, while comforting for young and old, is stifling to those looking for adventure.

I’ve always gotten a kick out of the letters to the editor. They can be amusing or mean. It’s too bad that people don’t pick up the phone and call their neighbor with a complaint instead of the police, which always leads to a verbal battle on the op ed page. Though it does serve to keep the blood flowing during the depths of a grim winter.

We have two Island newspapers. One is free. Guess which one most people read? I used to read both but the redundancy became too much. I would even suspect the journalists are the same people except frequently, if not always, the political stories take opposing views. The letters are even the same. God forbid you take the time to bare your soul in print and someone misses it because they read that ‘other’ paper.

My favorite part of the paper is the gossip column. I don’t just read the one from my town. I read them all. I find myself reading with glee about people I don’t know. “Oh isn’t that nice,” I say to my husband. “The Oliver’s daughter was home for a visit.” “Who’s that?” he asks. “Someone Janice knows,” I reply. My friend Janice knows everyone. I’ve always hoped if I read enough gossip eventually I’ll know everyone too. I think it’s working because I know more people on the Island that I did where I lived before. And I lived there for fifty years!

Things don’t change much in our papers. The advertisements look the same year after year. The issues change (from secession to golf courses to wind farms) but the method of dealing with them stays pretty much the same. We talk, argue, write letters and some even protest at Five Corners, but once it’s a done deal we shrug and learn to live with it.

Some problems are never solved. Like the blinker light intersection. That could have been solved so easily with a red light, but Vineyarders are stubborn New Englanders and don’t take kindly to having their traditions challenged. Have you ever been anywhere else in the world that brags about not having traffic lights? The trouble with solving problems is that a new one always crops up. But I guess that’s good. Otherwise we wouldn’t need newspapers.