The Rev. Cathlin Baker was staying a small hotel room in Cuba while attending an international women’s rights conference when she heard the call to the ministry.
It began with Yogi Bear and Boo Boo. Scooby-Doo helped, too.
The year was 1977 and Andy Heyward was in his early 20s working his first real job. Never mind that the job consisted entirely of sweeping out a warehouse and getting his boss sandwiches at the nearby deli. His boss was Joseph Barbera who with William Hanna was essentially the entire cartoon industry at the time.
Skim the record books for the past four years of high school soccer, basketball and baseball, and you’ll notice a recurring name. Skim the grade books at the high school and you’ll notice the name again, this time at the top of the class, in the valedictorian spot for the class of 2013. Who is this Jack Roberts guy?
He arrived when the Martha's Vineyard Commission was still in
its early years - not yet a decade old, not yet accepted as a full
member in the peculiar society known as Vineyard government. In fact,
when Charles W. Clifford took over as executive director of the
commission in 1982, if the commission was anything at all in the Island
community, it was a point of controversy.
It's hard to imagine a less inspiring genesis. But for Christy Phillipps and her burgeoning fashion empire, it started with a couple of old blankets.
Her basement had no heat, but it was her sole workplace for sewing pillows and slipcovers. What she needed was a way to keep warm.
So she boiled some wool blankets and started cutting them up and stitching pieces together until she had created a tight-fitting jacket and cozy pair of pants, work clothes perfectly suited for a day spent in a cold cellar.
When taken out of context, listening to Gustavo Simoes talk about
football can be quite confusing.
"I played football all the time as a kid in Brazil," the
high school senior and Vineyarders center said after practice Monday.
"And I had seen football on TV, too, but I never played it until I
came here."
Put in context, the confusion is easily sorted out.
Marie Allen is at home in the comfortable study that she built at her Munroe avenue house in Oak Bluffs: a place to read books and listen to the blues, where a carved wooden giraffe peers from behind the couch, African figurines line a tall bookcase and her granddaughter's stuffed toy dog rests on a cushion.
Mrs. Allen also is at home on Martha's Vineyard: an Island where she was married, where her children took their first steps, where her own daughter was married and where she retired about six years ago.
Michael J. Fox, television and movie star, has walked his share of
red carpets over the years. These days, though, he walks a more
nondescript bit of floor covering: a cheap sisal mat in the garage of
his Aquinnah house. Pacing, back and forth, doing laps of the pool table
trying to harness the involuntary energy of his illness. Hours upon
hours of pacing.
She grew up in Chilmark, the twelfth generation of an Island farming
family. He was raised in Brooklyn, N.Y., the grandson of Jewish
immigrants. He had never farmed and she was all set to move to Boston.
But life, horses and a flock of sheep intervened. Thirty-two years later
Mitchell Posin and Clarissa Allen talk about their relationship, while
inhabitants of the farm chime in with crows and bleats, contributing to
the tale.
When Warren Doty first moved the Vineyard in the late 1970s, the Menemsha harborfront was booming.
“Then there were five boats landing 10,000 pounds of sea scallops every three days,” he recalled. “There was a work force of ten shuckers in three different shucking shacks. That’s 30 Islanders working on the docks with about fifteen on boats. The season lasted from October to April every year. There were 45 to 50 jobs in Menemsha for six to eight months during the season.
