Keeping Memories Afloat in Turbulent Waters
Will Monast

Gazette columnist Will Monast, who wrote Tales from Gosnold for the Gazette and had a devoted following, died on Feb. 18. What follows is a column by him first published in June 2013.

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Life's a Puzzle With a Couple of Pieces Gone
Will Monast

Charlie has a really good chance of becoming the first honest-to-goodness cancer survivor ever from this isolated little rock, which boasts absolutely no medical attention whatsoever.

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Soul Mining With a Bull Rake and Skiff
Will Monast

Robbie Tibbets came to the Island from the small town in Maine where he grew up. He had been sitting on his favorite bar stool drinking Heineken some years ago, which is what he did all summer until harvest time when a news program flashed pictures of a state police helicopter landing in a five-acre field of pot not too far away.

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Tales from Gosnold: When Being Left Behind Is Real Reward
Will Monast

Well, we had the “I’m Sorry I Called You That Terrible Name On Broadway In July But I Was Stressed Out Dinner” last Thursday. It’s an October thing, a let-down thing, a healing thing, slow, a little uneasy at first, and without energy.

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Journey Came and Went With the Tide
Will Monast

It was almost Labor Day and we were hoping to get through the summer without too much drama at least until we got to the annual I’m Sorry I Called You What I Called You on Broadway in July but I Was Stressed Out dinner, which would come right after. But that was not to be.
Every year we launch 92-year-old Jack Farnsworth’s little wooden skiff and tie it up to the dock so that he can sit down there and look at it and perhaps tell the summer tourists a few lies about his adventures in it some years ago.

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Cooking Up a Hawaiian Sound With Dash of Vineyard Groove
Will Monast

For the past five summers John Cruz has been coming to the Vineyard to sing on the schooner Alabama for three nights in August. The day after one of the cruises this year, John talked about his work, his music, his life and deep connections to the Vineyard. “The two things I love most to do are making music and cooking,” he said while preparing a lunch of striped bass for friends in the ramshackle red farmhouse across from Alley’s General Store in West Tisbury.

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Seeking a Silver Lining Among Dark Clouds
Will Monast

If you believe that Chilmark Store pizza costs more per square inch than Chilmark real estate, then it shouldn’t be hard to make the leap to the premise that inch for inch, the 75 acres that make up Penikese island have more history than any other place of its size in  the country.

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No Easy Fix for Broken Political Machine
Will Monast

Mark Leibovich’s new book This Town, a critical expose of the Washington power structure and New York Times best seller this summer, is as popular with the right as it is with the left. Or with anyone who believes that government is broken.

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When Beloved Icons Are on the Front Line
Will Monast

This is not just a story, it's a love story. In 1799 President John Adams commissioned the building of an eight-sided wooden lighthouse which marked the birth of the Gay Head Light.

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Plot Thickens When the Dirt Washes Away
Will Monast

Have you ever awakened with that FEELING of foreboding or the fear of death, and more important what will come after death? It usually lasts through the first cup of coffee then slowly goes away. Well it happened to me the other morning at about 3 a.m., so I got up and had that cup of coffee and came to the realization that Dickie Becker is completely to blame for it.

It all went down just the way he said it would.

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