It was the best night in recent memory. That was the feedback Martha’s Vineyard Museum executive director David Nathans said he received following the annual Evening of Discovery fundraiser on Saturday night. Held at the site of the museum’s future home, the old marine hospital overlooking the Lagoon Pond in Vineyard Haven, the event sold out for the first time in recent years and the mood was festive and upbeat.

Arts Crawl

The Arts District on Dukes County avenue in Oak Bluffs invites everyone to crawl with them evert Thursday evenings in July. All the galleries will stay open late for lingering over art with the artists, gallery owners and friends.

First evening crawl is this Thursday, July 5.

On Saturday, at the bow of the historic schooner Alabama, Capt. Ian Ridgeway addressed a group of Martha’s Vineyard Public Charter School fifth and sixth grade students who had just returned from a five-day sail at sea.

“This is a bond that the 20 or so of us will all have together for the rest of our lives,” he said. “You are now ambassadors for this boat.”

Writers are everywhere, often hiding in plain sight. They’re under umbrellas in Oregon. They sit in the sweltering Georgia sun. They live across the ocean and in different continents. They are also on the Vineyard, and in greater number from July 15 to 20, thanks to the Martha’s Vineyard Institute of Creative Writing, which is about to begin its third year as a haven for developing writers.

Great music accompanies great pizza when singer/songwriter Scott Kirby comes to the Vineyard to play at Flatbread Pizza on July 5 and 6, both shows beginning at 9 p.m.

A group of middle school girls cautiously approached a pile of Dutch belted calves at the Farm Institute one morning last week, dodging large piles of dung and tiptoeing their way closer.

“They’re big,” one girl said of the seven-week-old calves.

“They’re cute,” said another.

“This one is especially friendly,” farm educator Emily Palena said. “The worst thing she’ll do is lick you.”

We saw a STORM. It was really faraway though. But we heard thunder and saw lightning. It was awesome. But then the waves got bigger. We started to pick up speed, then BAM! We were in the storm. The waves went over the boat and got people wet. After 45 minutes of people saying “my tummy hurts,” we got to the Nantucket harbor. Then we went swimming again and had dinner. (Oh, I almost forgot. We had BLTs for lunch.) We had chicken with broccoli with cheese on it and salad. Then we talked and played around. Now it’s time to go to sleep.

An eight to ten foot blue shark was spotted meandering the shallow waters of Dogfish Bar in Aquinnah on Saturday afternoon.

Because I could not stop for death —

He kindly stopped for me —

from Emily Dickinson #712

The tenth annual Vineyard Streetball Classic three-on-three
basketball tournament takes center court at Niantic Park in Oak Bluffs
on Tuesday, July 3, beginning at 10 a.m.

The tournament benefits the Boys and Girls Club by raising money to provide 10 summer camp scholarships for Island youth. Supporters in the
community can buy T-shirts, and local businesses can make donations to
sponsor the participating teams, which consist of students age 10 to 18
from across the Northeast.