Writing about food, which I’ve done now for just a few months shy of a decade, was never something I set out to do. And, especially at the beginning of my career, it was anything but trendy or glitzy. It was dirty, gritty, and messy – at times quite literally.
It was after spending the holidays back home on the Island that I made the decision to tackle Dry January: an aptly-named, specialty cleanse in which one gives up booze for 31 days at the start of the new year.
Vineyard roots run strong and deep and I never have imagined calling anywhere else on earth home. I grew up on the Island, but plenty of people grow up plenty of places. They move, they call other cities, other towns their own. What has always rooted me to Martha’s Vineyard is what roots so many people here — a community with a heart much larger than the Island’s 100 square miles would suggest.
MCAS test results, budget concerns, professional development and student enrollment were all topics for discussion at the first all-Island school committee meeting of the new school year.
It was the day tropical storm Hanna was supposed to hit and, as luck would have it, Michael Domitrovich was stuck inside with a chest cold. Despite the weather and the nagging cough, Mr. Domitrovich declared himself a lucky man.
Tonight is an evening for turning lemons into lemonade.
Islander Joyce Garde, a 14-year cancer survivor, was recently diagnosed with another cancer. Rather than fight the battle alone, she is celebrating with friends and is doing it in style — at a benefit held tonight in her honor at Lola’s restaurant in Oak Bluffs. All are invited to join her from 7 p.m. until 12:30 a.m. for free finger food, live deejay music, dancing, and a silent auction. The suggested donation is $20 at the door.
“That was the only way to go,” Chilmarker David Flanders said this week. Mr. Flanders has Vineyard roots which extend back generations and are deeply tied to the land. “The whole thing was always like that to be very honest,” he continued. “It’s an old-time solution.” This weekend a two-day celebration of the local, the sustainable and the renewable is putting that old Island tradition back into the spotlight.
