Margaret Knight>

508 627-8894

(margaret02539@yahoo.com)

The Chappaquiddick Community Center has a new look. On the front lawn is a 10-foot-high sculpture made of crossed and curved timbers with a wide steel circle below in which five solid-looking bells hang. In a nook above the bells there’s a rough wooden mallet that the viewer can use to whack them – that might not be a musical term, but it’s very satisfying and makes an amazing amount of sound.

The sculpture, Memory’s Gate, is a gift from Murray (Mac) Dewart, whose family vacationed here for many years when he was a kid, staying at the Webquish cottage on Pimpneymouse Farm. Mac is a Boston-based sculptor and, as the Boston Globe’s Christine Temin wrote, his “works skirt trends in art; they reinforce tradition rather than breaking with it, harking back to sources including Japanese temple gates.” She calls his sculptures serene but not soporific — which means causing sleep; not likely so long as that mallet is there.

Before it came here, Memory’s Gate was installed outside the Boston Exhibition and Convention Center, and before that at Harvard University, at the Boston Common, and at the Weston Public Library. The plan is for it to live out the rest of its life span here.

Last week Mac came to Chappy to install it, which he did with the help of his childhood friend, Dick Knight. They set the supporting posts solidly onto some concrete footings. The last project the two of them worked on together was in the 1960s — the little A-frame house they built with two other friends when they were about 16. That house is where Dick and Daryl live now, several additions and renovations later.

Peter Wells and Roger Becker have been working out details of the final design for the next Chappy ferry, to be built this winter. Roger, a longtime builder who has built houses both on Chappy and off, will do the construction. Roger has also had lots of experience with boats and cars, and once designed and built an amphibious vehicle. The new ferry will be built in a hoop-type structure similar to the greenhouses at Morning Glory Farm.

Work continues at the Martha’s Vineyard Shipyard on the On Time II. Peter has had the Coast Guard inspecting every inch of the boat and suggesting ways to make it stronger. There have been many repairs to make, so it’s taken longer than originally expected.

If you haven’t ordered your 2009 Chappaquiddick Community Center calendar, with its beautiful pictures of Chappy in all seasons and important dates at the CCC and in the greater world, you can call 508-627-8222 or go online to chappycommunitycenter.org.