Dylan Thomas
The birds of the winged trees flying my name Above the farms and the white horses I rose in rainy autumn And walked abroad in a shower of all my days. – Dylan Thomas
June 27, 2008
Built on Stilts
Built on Stilts Built on Stilts, the Island’s own annual dance festival, will celebrate its 12th season with performances August 15 to 19 and 23 and 24, 2008. Submission guidelines and registration info can be found online at builtonstilts.org. Registration deadline is Monday, July 1.
Buddhist Teaching
Buddhist Teaching Khenpo Tsering Samdup will be at the Bodhi Path of Martha’s Vineyard for a weekend teaching series on Saturday and Sunday, June 28 and 29. He will teach on The Jewel Ornament of Liberation by Gampopa, the seminal handbook of the Kagyü Buddhist view and path. Teaching times are 10 a.m. to noon…
Classical Music Students Offer Sunday Recital
Martha’s Vineyard music students will display their violin, piano, viola and flute skills at a concert Sunday, June 29, at 4 p.m. in the Whaling Church on Main street in Edgartown. The program includes a flute and piano duet by sisters Rebekah and Kaija Nivala. Rebekah is the winner of this year’s Caroline Worthington Prize,…
Prickly Plant
Ouch — both literally and metaphorically. I will say pointedly that thistle has some sharp issues. To look at this plant, one might think of a pincushion due to its predilection for prickles. You can find them on its stem, leaves, bracts, and even the single bulbous flower head.
Homeowners Pay Fine For Wetland Violation
Two West Tisbury property owners have agreed to pay $6,760 in fines for violating the state Wetlands Protection Act. Stephen Rattner and Maureen White, who own property on Obed Daggett Road, were cited by the state Department of Environmental Protection for cutting violations in a vegetated wetland on the North Shore. The DEP issued a…
Peter Simon on Radio
Peter Simon on Radio Peter Simon and his Jamaica-inspired book Reggae Scrapbook will be featured this Sunday, June 29, at noon, on NBC Boston’s CityLine show. Peter will talk about his travels through Jamaica and the culture and music that make Jamaica known and loved throughout the world. CityLine airs on WCVB-TV, the NBC affiliate…
Aquinnah Music Festival Spotlights Island Lineup
Why didn’t anyone think of it sooner? The first annual Aquinnah Music Festival is shaping up for July 19, from noon to moonrise in the circle atop the cliffs of Gay Head, on Lighthouse Road.
The Vineyard Gardener
By LYNNE IRONS I am crazy about the Kousa dogwood. They seem to be everywhere. I have two just out of infancy and hope for them a long life as well as for me. The one in front of Morrice the Florist is particularly impressive. There is a violet rose bush on the State Road…
Vineyarders Vying in Race for State Seat
It’s been more than 30 years since a Vineyard resident represented the Island at the State House. This year, four Vineyard candidates are looking to end that drought. Daniel Larkosh of Vineyard Haven, Tim Lasker of Chilmark and Roger Wey of Oak Bluffs have announced plans to run in the Democratic primary this September. Jacob…
Chilmark
JANE N. SLATER 508-645-3378 (slaterjn@comcast.net) Wednesday’s nearly perfect sunset drew the first large summer crowd to Menemsha. The new summer Chilmark police patrolmen (actually, two are women) met the challenge and everyone enjoyed the moment. Earlier in the day, the beaches drew good crowds too as the sun and warmth seems here to stay. This…
Dance Classes
Dance Classes Vineyard Dance will offer a six-week summer dance course from Monday, June 30 to August 9, at the Oak Bluffs School on Tradewinds Road off Wing Road. Adults and teenagers may join at any time. Ballet, modern dance, modern jazz and floor barre classes will be taught by Kathy Joyce Costanza. For more…
Indigo Buntings
Indigo buntings must be the deepest and brightest blue of all the birds we are likely to see on the Island. A close-up view of a male in good lighting will inevitably invoke a gasp or a “Wow!” from the viewer. Their song is quite spectacular too. Books describe it in various ways: a musical…
Magazine Rewards Best of Vineyard
Beth Larsen was all dolled up Wednesday night. If she had only known, she might have worn shorts and running shoes. The proprietor of The Net Result kept winning Best of the Vineyard awards, one after another. Mrs. Larsen didn’t get off the stage until she had won four awards for excellence in her business.…
Edgartown
KATHIE CASE 508-627-5349 (kathleencase@comcast.net) Fourth of July is one week from today. After talking to a lot of people, most have agreed that it should be later in the summer. I think after the heat wave in May and the good weather in June we are confused at the time of summer it is. Anyway,…
Grab Your Tools, It’s Time: Hunky Carpenter Contest
Outerland is calling all male and female carpenters, builders, electricians, plumbers and other handy types to compete in its third annual hard-hatted hunky carpenter contest. The thrills begin Friday, June 27 when club doors open at 7:30 p.m. — the drills and skills tests begin at 9.
Temperatures
Temperature: Precip. Day Max. Min. Inches. Fº Fº June 20 75 56 .00 June 21 77 64 Trace June 22 81 63 .00 June 23 80 65 .00 June 24 78 65 Trace June 25 78 57 .18 June 26 80 63 .00
Water temperature in Edgartown harbor: 72º F.
Oak Bluffs Voters Quickly Okay Year-End Financial Transfers
Although it took 40 minutes to reach a quorum of Oak Bluffs voters at a special town meeting on Tuesday called to approve more than $200,000 in year-end transfers, the discussion and subsequent vote flew by in flash with no debate, discussion or questions. By all accounts, the town meeting was the fastest in town…
Disability Services Program Adds Activity Coordinator
Disability Services Program Adds Activity Coordinator Martha’s Vineyard Community Services is adding an activity and volunteer coordinator position that would address the need for enhanced services to older adolescents and adults with developmental disabilities. The coordinator will plan and implement social outings and recreational activities for the target population. A pool of qualified volunteers will…
Beauties from Barn Yard, and Skies at Field Gallery
The Field Gallery invites all to a free artists’ reception Sunday June 29, from 5 to 7 p.m. for an exhibition of new work by Ben Johnson and Janet Woodcock. Returning artist Ben Johnson’s paintings celebrate the natural world. Images of birds and their surroundings depict the landscape in a bold and colorful style. Mr.…
School Committee Wraps Up Year With Some Extra Spending
A point of purchase system for the cafeteria, two hybrid vans and a mobile language lab — these are some of the projects whose funding was approved Monday at the last Martha’s Vineyard Regional High School committee meeting of the fiscal year. An additional $100,000 for new football field bleachers also got a green light…
Town May Vote Again on Energy Bylaw
The Aquinnah selectmen will meet this morning to decide whether to call a special town meeting this summer to bring back the failed energy bylaw for another vote. Selectman Camille Rose said this week she hopes to resubmit the bylaw. “We need to explain the bylaw more simply. We had to use legal verbiage that…
Chappy
JO-ANN TILGHMAN 508-627-7669 (tilghmanjb@aol.com) There is something about this time of year that is so positive. There is so much hope and optimism — whether we are preparing our gardens for vegetables or flowers, getting our boats into the water for another summer of sailing or racing, fishing, or recommitting to exercise and eating healthy.…
Stunning Stewartia
Stunning Stewartia On Wednesday, July 2, from 10 a.m. to noon join Polly Hill Arboretum director Tim Boland for a look a stewartias, a stunning small flowering tree. Stewartias are notable for their multi-season appeal — sumptuous flowers, beautiful fall color, and attractive bark. Many types of stewartia thrive in abundance at the West Tisbury…
Under the Table
Under the Table Unreported, untaxed, underground income on the Island long has been seen as playing a significant role in the overall Vineyard economy. Now an Island economic profile prepared for the Martha’s Vineyard Commission and the Island Plan has taken a closer look at the Vineyard’s underground economy and its wider implications for Island…
Administrative Ideas Proposed for Government of County
Island voters will not decide whether to make minor modifications to Dukes County government until the fall, but the county commission has already taken the first steps toward change.
Oak Bluffs
BETTYE FOSTER BAKER 508-696-9983 (bdrbaker@comcast.net) It’s my time — that magical salute to summer that begins the moment I drive off the ferry, excited as a kid ready to blow out her birthday candles, down Sea View past the rolling sea and round the corner onto my street to see my home again. When I…
Music to Connect With, not to Categorize
Trying to define the musical blend of Citizen Cope is a difficult and perilous exploration into the depths of a nearby thesaurus. The musician’s voice often is described with frequent uses of the words soul and folk. His guitar has the whine of the blues as it slopes across the scale over the steady pulse…
Rose-Colored Fences
Rose-Colored Fences This is peak season for rose-viewing on the Vineyard, with pink wild roses in fields and on roadsides, rambler roses on Edgartown’s white picket fences, clusters of fragrant rosa multiflora tumbling everywhere in West Tisbury where, once, they were planted to be the borders of pastures.
State Closes Eastern Nantucket Sound to Shellfishing
The state Division of Marine Fisheries yesterday expanded closed shellfish areas to include the eastern side of Nantucket Sound due to red tide. The closure does not affect fish or shellfish harvested and landed in Vineyard waters. The agency sent out the notification for the benefit of shellfishermen and fish markets that sell shellfish wholesale…
East Chop
RICK HERRICK 508-693-8065 herricklr@verizon.net It has been an exciting year for Jim Wilkerson and Christina Cinelli. They graduated together from Brown University’s School of Medicine this May, and soon thereafter announced their engagement. They have recently relocated to Baltimore, Md., where Jim will continue his training as a resident in orthopedics at the University of…
Hebrew Center Film
Hebrew Center Film At Home in Utopia, a documentary by Michal Goldman., screens Sunday, June 29, at 7:30 p.m. at the Hebrew Center in Vineyard Haven. As the Filmmakers Collaborative tells it, this film set in the mid-1920s tells of the thousands of Jewish immigrant garment factory workers managed to catapult themselves out of urban…
Letters to the Editor
MEMORIAL DESTROYED Editors, Vineyard Gazette:
Vineyard Man’s Laptop Computer Taken in England
The renowned English hospitality was nowhere to be found for one Vineyard man recently, when the laptop computer he was using to store research for a book he is writing about his family history was stolen from a parked car outside his family’s U.K. home.
Opening Reception Slated For Artists at Dragonfly
The opening reception for Elena De La Ville and Traeger diPietro will be held on Saturday, June 28 from 4 to 7 p.m. at the Dragonfly Gallery, 91 Dukes County avenue in Oak Bluffs. The show runs through July 6. Elena De La Ville is an artist, teacher and bee keeper. A former Island resident,…
History Lives on at Four Generations, As Gallery Continues Without Patriarch
“Art is a way of life in many ways for the family,” Michele Ortlip says. “My generation, the generation before me, the generation before them my grandfather’s father was an artist, my great uncle, my two aunts everybody.” It goes without saying that, included in the generation before her is Michele’s father, Paul Ortlip, the…
Gazette Chronicle : Taking the A Train
Taking the A Train From the Vineyard Gazette editions of June, 1958: Continued train service between Boston and Woods Hole until June 23 became assured last weekend when Judge Robert P. Anderson, in federal court at New Haven, ordered the present scale of operation continued until a further hearing which he set for that date.…
Hello, Stella
Hello, Stella Gina Heysek and Peter Breese of Vineyard Haven announce the birth of a daughter, Stella Vita Heysek-Breese, on June 24 at the Martha’s Vineyard Hospital. Stella weighed 6 pounds, 3 ounces at birth.
Warren Arrives
Warren Arrives Carolyn Warren and Gregory Cabana of Vineyard Haven announce the birth of a son, Warren Byrne Cabana, on June 22 at the Martha’s Vineyard Community Hospital. Warren weighed 7 pounds, 13 ounces at birth.
Heritage Trail Will Add Dorothy West’s Home
Heritage Trail Will Add Dorothy West’s Home The African American Heritage Trail of Martha’s Vineyard will add the former Oak Bluffs home of Harlem Renaissance writer Dorothy West as part of series of events on August 16. At 2 p.m., Ms. West’s home on Myrtle avenue in The Highlands will be dedicated as a site…
Peg Thayer Looks East and West for Inspiration
East Meets West: Recent Work by Peg Thayer opens at the Pebble Gallery at Featherstone Center for the Arts tomorrow, Saturday, June 28, with a reception from 4 to 6 p.m. Influenced by her studies in East-West psychology, Peg Thayer’s practice of painting reveals her spiritual connection with nature. This show brings images from the…
Conservation Future Lies With Landowners
Adapted from remarks made at the 43rd annual meeting of the board and membership of the Vineyard Conservation Society on June 24:
Fuel Prices Hit Watermen Hard
The worldwide oil price crisis is hitting Island commercial fishermen hard. Already struggling with more restrictive regulations and declining landings, Vineyard small-boat fishermen now face fuel prices that have doubled in a year. Capt. Wayne Iacono of Chilmark is a commercial lobsterman who fishes out of Menemsha. With the decline in lobsters in Vineyard waters,…
Louisa Gould Gallery Holds Artists’ Reception
Louisa Gould Gallery opens the Vineyard Painting show today with an artists’ reception from 5 to 7 p.m. at its Main street, Vineyard Haven location. The exhibition features Lynette Goric with seascapes, Christopher Pendergast’s portraits of buoys, seashell paintings on masonite by Donna Blackburn, and, reminding us of inland Island moments, Caryn King’s farm animals
Vineyard Haven
NANCY GARDELLA 508-693-3308 (vhavenvgazette@yahoo.com)
America’s Middle Class, Listen Up
The litany of complaints of the squeezed middle class is familiar. Three million jobs gone overseas this decade. People working all their lives on the promise of pensions they don’t get. Declining availability of health care. Parents believing, for the first time in U.S. history, that their children will not do as well as they…
Summer Donors Find Their Calendars Have Grown a Little Too Crowded
We’re off and running! The summer fund- raising circuit is underway we’ll attend some truly memorable evenings, bid on incredible auction items and enjoy great food, entertainment and company. We’ll also test our athletic prowess on the links, roads and waters, all in the support of our nonprofit community. These events are a fun and…
Oyster Rafts Float Ashore
Five workers from the Wampanoag Tribe of Gay Head (Aquinnah) yesterday began cleaning up Menemsha Pond and its waterfront, picking up stray oyster breeding bags owned by the tribe, according to Tobias Vanderhoop, who this week began working as tribal administrator. The black plastic bags, left untended since the tribe’s oyster hatchery program on the…
Mars and Regulus
The red planet Mars appears close to the bright star Regulus tonight and the nights ahead. The two are in the zodiacal constellation Leo and in the western sky after sunset. The glow of twilight will still be in the west.
West Tisbury
JOHN S. ALLEY 508-693-2950 (alleys@vineyard.net) Our weather last weekend was delightful and summery. It is getting busier each day as more people continue to arrive for their vacation. Starting on Wednesday, the crunch will be upon us as some folks will get a head start on the long holiday weekend as Independence Day is next…
Chowder for Charity Suppers, Songs for Dessert
The Federated Church of Edgartown again will hold clam chowder suppers this summer. Last year the church raised over $1,600 for the Island Food Pantry during these events, which are held Thursday evenings in the church Parish House prior to the Thursday evening concerts by The Vineyard Sound held in the Federated Church Meetinghouse on…
Caps Off to the Graduates In Practical Nursing
Four years ago we began our quest for a licensed practical nurse program for the Island to help staff Windemere and the hospital. Our dream was to provide an opportunity for our incredible staff in their educational pursuits.
Conservation Forecast: Cloudy, Some Sun
There are times when it’s hard to see the environment for the trees. Look across the Martha’s Vineyard landscape and that mantle of woods, growing where once the land was substantially denuded, and things look pretty good. But beneath that green canopy, as Vineyard Conservation Society executive director Brendan O’Neill points out, are 78 parcels…
Chilmark Selectmen Asked to Tighten Waterways Rules
Amid claims of illicit permit trading and concern over a packed waiting list for mooring slips in Chilmark, town leaders were asked to tighten areas of the town waterways regulations at a public hearing last week. Susan Murphy, who operates Menemsha marine repair with her husband and rents out multiple moorings in town, argued that…
Aquinnah
JUNE D. MANNING 508-645-2574 (lthslnks@gis.net) The Aquinnah Public Library book sale on the porch will have the final sale for this month of $1 books on Saturday from 10:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. There will be a continuing sale during library hours. Please stop by and sign up for the summer reading program and to…
Kids Can Have Their Books and Fudge, Too
Finding space in the shade to read, under a tree or a beach umbrella, is really its own reward. But there are even more rewards for kids who join the Vineyard Haven Public Library’s annual summer reading program. The program is now officially on for children of all ages. The theme this year is Wild…
Joins Staff
Joins Staff Vineyard Complementary Medicine is adding Iris Gold to its team this summer. Ms. Gold has practiced integrative medicine in Mill Valley, Calif., for 25 years, Her specialty is in women’s health. Iris is available in the acupuncture community clinic, and for private consultation and treatment. More information is available by calling 508-693-3800.
Southern Woodlands Housing Project Stalls, Left Unfinished
It was once a battleground for one of the most heated and divisive fights in the history of Oak Bluffs. It has been five years since the dust settled over the proposal by Connecticut developer Corey Kupersmith to build a private 18-hole golf course in the Southern Woodlands, the largest tract of undeveloped forest left…
SSA Sells Ferry to Venezuelan Company in $3.9 Million Deal
The Steamship Authority has sold the long-troubled ferry Flying Cloud to a Venezuelan company for $3.9 million. Boat line general manager Wayne C. Lamson announced Wednesday that Gran Cacique II bought the high-speed vessel, which ran on the Hyannis-Nantucket route from 2000 to 2006. The SSA paid nearly $8 million for the Flying Cloud, which…
Old Love Runs Like Water Over Levees
The lights go out and the theatre is dark for a preternaturally long time. The sound of gushing water engulfs us, and we’re savvy enough about the events of August 30, 2005, in New Orleans to know that this is the 18-foot wall of water funneling down the streets of all the neighborhoods fanning out…
Two Artists Bring Texture to Shaw Cramer
Perhaps everyone with an overflowing inbox needs a basket. Kari Lønning, the nationally recognized and collected artist who makes contemporary baskets, explains: “Though many contemporary baskets still suggest a vessel form, often these forms no longer have openings or bottoms — they suggest use rather offer one. As we no longer feel the need to…
The Fishermen
By MARK ALAN LOVEWELL Recreational anglers are seeing the best fishing for early summer. Water temperatures remain on the cool side, so stripers and bluefish are still within reach for shoreside angling. Doug Asselin at Dick’s Bait and Tackle Shop, a store in Oak Bluffs, said bluefish were caught during the day at the beach…
Jean Wexler Is Fourth Edition Kitchen Marvel
It is what you read when you don’t have to that determines what you will be when you can’t help it. So said the Irish playwright Oscar Wilde.
Seamus and Aaron Arrive
Seamus and Aaron Arrive Sarah Ward Callahan and James Callahan of Rutland, Vt., announce the birth of twin boys, Seamus Ward Callahan and Aaron Walter Callahan, on May 13.
New Love Meets Old in the Middle
Einstein alluded to it, and the quantum physicist and 1-800 medium alike declare it openly: linear time is way less real than we think it is. In Tony Award-winning composer Jason Robert Brown’s song-cycle musical, The Last Five Years, chronological time goes by the board as, in a clever device that turns the love story…
Read Easy: In the Sea, at the Beach House
A SURVIVAL GUIDE FOR LANDLOCKED MERMAIDS by Margot Datz, Beyond Words, $16. Vineyard artist and writer Margot Datz posits a universe where men, taking a page from Darwin, descended as apes from the trees, whereas women “rose up from the frothy sea, as resplendent as Aphrodite on her scalloped chariot.” But the mating call is…
June 20: A Large Gibbous Moon Hangs Low
Friday, June 20: A large gibbous moon hangs low over the western sky at dawn on the first day of summer. Mostly sunny afternoon. Bicycles speed past Ocean Park towards Edgartown. A small fleet of sailboats crosses Nantucket Sound. Light chop. Orange and red beach towels hang from a Camp Ground backyard clothes line. Light…
West Tisbury Housing Hearing Draws Neighbors’ Concerns
A plan to build eight affordable homes on eight acres off State Road in West Tisbury drew a number of neighborhood critics at a public hearing Monday night. The Island Housing Trust is the applicant for the plan, which calls for clustering eight single family homes on three of the eight acres, situated on the…
Monks Spread Sand, Good Karma Across Island
Twelve monks from the Drepung Loseling Monastery in southern India visited the Vineyard for five days last week to spread good karma and raise money for their monastery. Cris Mayhew of Edgartown was instrumental in bringing the monks to the Island. “The five days started with me going over to Woods Hole to greet them…
Chapter Six: On Commerce, Insular
In this serialized novel set on the Vineyard in real time, a native Islander (“Call me Becca”) returns home after many years in Manhattan. Her uncle Abe requires assistance to keep their landscaping business, Pequot, afloat. Through Mott (Pequot’s general manager) she’s met Quincas (a Brazilian) and the rest of Pequot’s staff. Her Uncle Abe…
Editors’ Choices
Editors’ Choices Yankee Magazine’s New England travel issue has named four Vineyard establishments as editors’ choice winners for 2008. The magazine named Détente and Once in a Blue Moon in Edgartown, Iroquois Cottage in Oak Bluffs and Mediterranean in Vineyard Haven.
Mondays at Vineyard Playhouse Begin With Some Tony Reading
Vineyard Playhouse artistic director M.J. Bruder Munafo kicks off the theater’s popular summer series of new work — the Monday Night Special — with Expatriate, a new play by Bill C. Davis and starring Tony award-winning actress Frances Sternhagen. The staged reading of Expatriate, directed by Mr. Davis, will be held on Monday, June 30…
