JANE N. SLATER

508-645-3378

(slaterjn@comcast.net)

Chilmark is managing just fine in spite of fears about road closings and delays created by the president’s vacation. Businesses and activities are doing well and only a limited few are truly inconvenienced. Fortunately, the situation is temporary. We congratulate Chris Fischer, chef at the Beach Plum Inn, on his evening with the first family. Surely, the rainbow that was over the town on Tuesday said it all.

We must open with a sad note. Jeff Kurth died this week at his home on Flanders Lane. He was a lifelong Chilmarker and a member of the class of 1962 at the Martha’s Vineyard Regional High School.

Stan and Marie Mercer are back at their home on the Menemsha Crossroad after an enjoyable drive to Newfoundland. They visited the birthplace of Stan’s dad and made stops at New Brunswick and Nova Scotia. They took a seven-hour ferry ride from North Sydney, Nova Scotia to Port Aux Basque. On the return trip, the ferry ran up on a dock and stranded them for eight hours while they waited for the tide to rise and free the ferry. They found Newfoundland to be a beautiful but sparsely populated place.

There will be several events on Sunday sponsored by the Tick Borne Disease Alliance to raise awareness about Lyme disease. A dinner fundraiser is scheduled for 8 p.m. at the Grange Hall and there will be a bike ride from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. Call Enid Heller at 508-560-1893 for more information.

Steve and Susan McGhee are entertaining Embree De Persiis Vona this week. She is a potter from Big Sur and an old friend of Susan’s. While here, she enjoyed rowing with Steve on Vineyard Sound.

John Jacobs is in from Littleton, Colo., and spending the rest of the month at his Menemsha home. He is happy to have his son Jake and family visiting from Hong Kong and his daughter Susan and her children are here from Portland, Ore.

The Simonsen family is preparing to hold a celebration of the life of Vibeke Andrea Simonsen on Sept. 21 from 4 to 6 p.m. at the family home on Flanders Lane. Vibeke died on September 14, 2012. She is fondly remembered by many in Chilmark.

Bobby Crosby tells us of a gathering of the grand and great-grandchildren of Albert and Janice Leventhal in Menemsha this month. Most have been coming every year and all have long associations with Chilmark. Peter Bruun and his wife Serafina, Tim Quinson and Bee, and Tom Ascheim and Lucy Goodhart are all gathering to celebrate 50th and 51st birthdays.

Jarvis Kellogg and Betsy Munnell are back at their summer home off Tea Lane. They were happy to have daughter Annie visit for a week in June before she moved to Boulder, Colo. Daughters Catherine and Molly came for their annual run in the Chilmark Road Race. Jarvis’s siblings Seathrun, James, Marj Christina and Hannah have visited, as have Molly’s friends Nina, Attabelle, Kori and Caroline. They are now looking forward to a visit with Louise Olson and Scott Kistenberger.

We all send congratulations to Charles and Lucille Plotz, longtime seasonal residents of Flanders Lane who will be celebrating their 68th wedding and 45th Menemsha anniversary with visits from their children, grandchildren and great-granddaughter, Rose Ingols. Lucille, a botanist, has been active at the world-renowned Brooklyn Botanic Garden for 75 years. Charles is the country’s first rheumatologist. Cheers from us all!

The conch fishermen will be the subject of the Wednesday program on August 21 from 5 to 6 p.m. at the Chilmark Library. They will tell us about the conch industry and treat us to samples of dishes made with conch. The program is sponsored by the Menemsha Fishermen’s Development Fund.

An upcoming talk by Henry Adams may be of interest to some Chilmarkers. His biography of Thomas Hart Benton is known to many. He will talk on August 22 at the Federated Church in Edgartown about his recent book, Tom and Jack: The Intertwined Lives of Thomas Hart Benton and Jackson Pollock. The talk is presented by the Martha’s Vineyard Museum and begins at 5:30 p.m. And Henry Adams has most recently written a biography of Adolf Dehn, which will be published in September. This artist, a contemporary of Thomas Hart Benton, is of interest here because of the many works he did in the 1930s of Chilmark and Menemsha. We look forward to the biography.