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 19, 2012
News Update: Wednesday, June 20 – Dock Changes Planned for Menemsha; Chilmark Calls Special Town Meeting
A sweeping harbor improvement plan is now in the works for Menemsha thanks to a hefty grant awarded to the town of Chilmark this spring from the Massachusetts Seaport Advisory Council.
Chilmark selectmen discussed the plan at their weekly meeting Tuesday night, which calls for building new concrete and wooden docks throughout the…
Health Hazard
The following letter was sent to the Edgartown conservation commission, other town boards and the board for the Farm Institute and the Katama Association.
I have been a resident of Edgartown for 28 years and live adjacent to the Katama Farm. I am writing you on an important issue concerning the proposed installation of a…
Play Ball!
Hello, softball fans! Do you realize this is probably the 75th season of our Sunday softball games in Chilmark? What started in the back lot off the Menemsha Inn Road, and then found a home for awhile at Toomey’s, is now played at Flanders Fields off Tabor House Road. You can go there any Sunday…
Warm Weather, High Ozone Levels Predicted
The first days of summer are expected to be a warm ones for the Vineyard, with temperatures predicted to touch 80 degrees on Wednesday and 90 degrees on Thursday. The Environmental Protection Agency is forecasting unhealthy air quality during that time based on projected levels of ground-level ozone. The area affected includes portions of Connecticut,…
News Update: Tuesday, June 19 – Camp Jabberwocky Makes Jubilant Return
The campers are back, and they were greeted by plenty of jumping and cheering. On Monday morning, the 10:45 ferry brought the campers of Camp Jabberwocky, Martha’s Vineyard Cerebral Palsy camp, back to the Island for the 2012 season. In a mass of sparkling fabrics and bright colors, the counselors greeted this summer’s crew with…
Author Richard North Patterson at Speakeasy
A prominent New England patriarch has died violently, exposing a nest of dark family secrets. That’s the plot of Richard North Patterson’s recently released family drama. The novel, Fall From Grace, set on Martha’s Vineyard, is the first in what is to be a series of three novels. Mr. Patterson, a part-time Island resident, will…
Johnny Cupcakes: An Overnight Success
Want cupcakes? Well, you won’t find any at Johnny Cupcakes, the new store that opened last Saturday on Circuit avenue in Oak Bluffs.
The store may smell like frosting, and the décor may include a giant whisk and a stack of cupcake tins, but the pastry display cases aren’t refrigerated because they contain…
Revitalized Edgartown Shops Beckon New Customers
Coming on the heels of a successful Memorial Day weekend, new Edgartown business owners expressed excitement for the coming season and the hope that they are helping to breathe new life into a downtown that has seen a good deal of commercial space turnover in recent years. The trend has not translated to empty storefronts;…
Main Street Vineyard Haven Redecorates
Faces are lit up — store faces, that is. Main street Vineyard Haven has filled up for the 2012 summer season, complete with a handful of new shops that add some previously missing color to the harborside village. And the new stores are hard to miss.
Big-Ticket Painting Ensures Success For Taste of the Vineyard Fundraiser
Thanks in large part to a Ray Ellis painting of Edgartown harbor that was auctioned for $120,000, the Martha’s Vineyard Preservation Trust raised $350,000 for the conservation of its historic buildings and properties across the Island at the annual Taste of the Vineyard fundraiser this past weekend.
Six Island Chiefs Speak of Cooperation As They Look to Busy Summer Ahead
Tisbury police chief Daniel Hanavan is bracing for the thousands of cars and visitors that will disembark daily from ferries into Vineyard Haven streets this summer. Edgartown police chief Antone Bettencourt is taking special note of the rise of underage alcohol purchases, while his Oak Bluffs counterpart, Erik Blake, is getting ready for summer bar…
At the Bridge Table
New Zealand is the westernmost corner of the Polynesian triangle with Hawaii on top and Easter Island anchoring the east. Incredibly large portions of the north and south islands are uninhabited, with preserved glacier formations, breathtaking mountains and sky-blue waters, making the commonwealth monarchy perhaps the last friendly frontier on earth.
Students Debut Scholarship Winning Work at Gallery Show
Last Sunday evening at the Old Sculpin Gallery, as the Chappaquiddick ferry shuttled back and forth and fishermen dangled their lines off the boardwalk, art enthusiasts and passersby contemplated the artistic expertise of three recent high school graduates, Noelle Nelson and Courtney Mussell, winners of the Martha’s Vineyard Art Association 2012 Scholarship, and alternate Christine…
Fall from Grace Explained
A prominent New England patriarch has died violently, exposing a nest of dark family secrets. That’s the plot of Richard North Patterson’s recently released family drama. The novel, Fall From Grace, set on Martha’s Vineyard, is the first in what is to be a series of three novels.
Mr. Patterson, a part-time Island…
Another Letter to My Love
Another Letter to My Love
First it was a book, then a movie and now a play being staged by the folks at Island Theatre Workshop. The story in question is I Sent a Letter to My Love, written in 1975 by Bernice Rubens, a Welsh writer who won the Booker Prize in…
No Snake Oil, Just Island Herbal Cures
Holly Bellebuono is well known for the informative workshops and walks she leads on the Vineyard, educating people about herbs both native and cultivated, and how to use them in various ways.
Home Bird Book
Laura Wainwright, previously a teacher and children’s librarian, turned her senses toward the natural world to produce her first book, Home Bird: Four Seasons on Martha’s Vineyard (Vineyard Stories 2012). The book is composed of essays that adopt the voice of a home bird — someone who simply likes to be home and hear all…
Library Open House
Library Open House
On June 29 from 2 to 5 p.m., the Edgartown library trustees and staff will host an open house to thank the community for approving plans to build a new library facility. On hand will be a special guest of honor: the library’s new director, Jill Hughes, who begins her…
Moonlight Movies
Moonlight Movies
Take a bite out of the sky this weekend, Saturday, June 23, when the Tisbury Business Association, Jawsfest and the Martha’s Vineyard Film Society host an outdoor Moonlight Movies event at Owen Park in Vineyard Haven. The movie is Blue Water, White Death, a 1971 documentary, one of the first of…
Independence Day Arrives For Vineyard’s Small Farmers
The wind whistling across the Great Plains of Katama is music to the ears of Lily Walter as she works her one-acre plot at the Farm Institute. A few short miles away in Oak Bluffs, Molly Flam is turning her love of flowers into a business plan. And up in West Tisbury where the…
Vineyard Vistas Forever Wild Thanks To Henry Beetle Hough
Monday, June seventh marked 25 years since Henry Beetle Hough, the founder of Sheriff’s Meadow, and for 45 years the editor and publisher of this paper, died at his Edgartown home. From the window of his upstairs study, he had looked out for decades onto Sheriff’s Meadow Pond gleaming in the sun. And most days,…
Martha, But Which One?
From the Vineyard Gazette editions of June, 1945:
The naming of Martha’s Vineyard remains one of the most fascinating of mysteries, although on the gentler side, and now comes George R. Stewart, in his excellent book, Names On the Land, with a new explanation. He recounts how Gabriel Archer, gentleman, accompanied Gosnold to…
In Polly’s Garden: The Mysterious, Majestic Magnolia
Its beauty is so mysterious, so rare, it stops you in your tracks. The big leaf magnolia, with its expansive white flowers and foot-wide leaves the size of canoe paddles, has captivated visitors to Polly Hill Arboretum for years. Polly Hill grew it from seed and was so awestruck that she named the tree after…
Students Well-Schooled in Driver’s Ed
The class is optional. And yet 162 students signed up to take driver’s education at the high school this year, seizing the opportunity to learn the basics of driving at school, at no cost.
This is exactly what Tom and Barbara Furino hoped for.
The high school driver’s education program is…
Man Accused of Rape Will Stand Trial on Vineyard
A Dukes County superior court judge Friday denied a change of venue for the upcoming trial of a Vineyard Haven man accused of rape and soliciting the murder of a prosecutor, with the defendant’s lawyer arguing that news coverage of the case would prevent a fair trial.
Oak Bluffs Man Guilty Of Indecent Assault
An Oak Bluffs man was found guilty last week in Edgartown district court of indecent assault and battery on a child under 14.
Raymond E. Dauphinais, 69, was ordered to spend a year at the Edgartown house of correction for an August 6, 2011 incident at his Oak Bluffs home in which he…
