Islanders are honored by Jonas Lie, celebrated artist and president of the National Academy of Design, who has written the foreword for a new book of Vineyard poems and prints by Sidney N. Riggs and Joseph C. Allen. The foreword, as written by Mr. Lie, is deeply appreciative of the Vineyard scenery, and refers with understanding to the Island’s sturdy home folks, the theme of the artist and the writer of the book as well. Mr. Lie says:

“Although more than thirty years elapsed between my first and second visits to Martha’s Vineyard, I returned to find the Island little changed.

“There lies, still beckoning to the seafarer, providing snug harbors for fisherman protecting its old traditions and bringing to us its romantic past in vivid reality. Still the Algonquin inhabits the Gay Head section and Indian Hill stands as symbol of the noble tribe; Tisbury, snug Menemsha, the ponds like bits of heaven come to earth, the rolling hills and marsh lands still are there, and ever will be. East Chop, West Chop, Edgartown, Vineyard Haven and Holmes Hole. Josiah Hancock, Henry Cleaveland, Cap. Zebulon, what names to conjure with, and what memories are brought to mind. To know Martha’s Vineyard is indeed to love it.

“These Verses speak the Island spirit and the prints it’s charm”

Many of the poems and prints have appeared in the Vineyard Gazette. The binding is attractive, with the title and names of the authors embodied in a print which is pasted to the cover, and the whole is enclosed in a jacket upon which appears a linoleum print of a clipper ship under sail. The book will be off the press and is expected to be on sale here about July 5.

The contents are as follows: Foreword, Harking Back to Olden Times, Slushin’ and Scrapin’ Down, The Caulker, Yards Against the Skyline, White Duck and Pine, Holmes Hole, The Island’s Oldest Spire, The Custom House, The Harbor Light, Edgartown Yacht Club, The Niantic, Capigan Shrine, Old Grist Mill, The Brickyard, Stepping Stones, Sanderson’s, West Tisbury Church, Jimmy Green’s, Haying Time, Emblem of the Great Pond Folk, The Beach Comber, Quenames Woods, You Know Him Well, Beetlebung Corner, Menemsha.