Staring east from Chappaquiddick on a clear day, if you know where to look, a tiny white sliver peeks over the horizon. It’s the Nantucket water tower. Otherwise “the other island,” at only 12 miles away and barely over the curvature of the earth, might as well not exist to Vineyarders. And vice versa.
On a recent sparkling morning at Inkwell Beach, summer resident and retired Boston judge Ed Redd emerged from his daily swim and carefully considered a question: Does Martha’s Vineyard still retain a certain magic for African Americans — longtime residents and new visitors alike? Judge Redd, a barrel-chested, affable ambassador for the Polar Bears, the historic group that finds invigoration and spirituality in morning swims at the Inkwell from July 4 to Labor Day, didn’t pause for long.
Only carry from place to place what can fit in your car, or if you’re lucky, a friend’s pickup truck. Pack your clothes in garbage bags and carefully stack them so they don’t tumble over on the drive. Leave the cabinets completely empty, tuck the plates and dishes in between your clothes, and lock the door behind you as though you were never there.
When my wife Cathlin and I were married the ceremony was part tradition and part theatre. The wedding was held at Judson Church in New York city. Cathlin wore a red dress for the occasion and we walked down the aisle together, entering the church already as a couple.
About halfway through the service, a very tall man stood up in the back row and began waving his arms and yelling, “Wait. Wait. What about the objections part? What about giving our reasons why this couple can’t get married?”
When it comes to athletic opportunities, students at Martha’s Vineyard Public Charter School face some tough barriers: too few charter school students to field a team of their own, and a host of logistical issues that largely prevent charter would-be athletes from playing for Martha’s Vineyard Regional High School teams.
The issue resurfaced this week when high school principal Steve Nixon reiterated his previous decision to turn down a request from a charter student to play for the regional high school girls’ ice hockey team.
Assignments included making French toast, building a robot, taking a yoga class and spray-painting stencil graffiti. For homework: chopping wood for the fire. The tests, voluntarily taken, were those of the imagination — how to fashion an outfit of candy wrappers, what color to paint the clay figurine, how best to build a shelter in the Vermont woods.
Welcome to project period at the Martha’s Vineyard Public Charter School.
Testifying in a crowded makeshift courtroom Thursday, the pilot in a 2005 plane crash at Katama airfield gave his account of the accident that left him confined to a wheelchair without the use of his legs.
“I remember at first my morale was very high,” Alec Naiman — who is deaf and was communicating through a sign-language interpreter — said of his subsequent hospitalization. “I was teasing everybody and flirting with all the nurses.”
The Harbor View Hotel closes down during the last two weeks of the year. But notice the lights blazing in the penthouse apartment. This is the home of Bob Carroll and has been ever since he sold the hotel in 1986. It was part of the contract that Mr. Carroll could build this penthouse and live in it until he died. And for two weeks each winter, during the holidays, he is the only soul alive in the hotel.
