Menemsha businesses have reopened after a Monday afternoon fire destroyed the Coast Guard boathouse and wooden pier and forced the evacuation of the village.

Menemsha Texaco, Larsen’s and Menemsha Fish Market, the Galley restaurant and the Home Port restaurant returned to normal hours of operation Tuesday morning.

The United States will likely remain stuck in the war in Afghanistan well past President Obama’s nominated date next year for beginning to pull troops out, one of the architects of the President’s Afghan policy says.

In an address on the Vineyard on Thursday night, Bruce Riedel, the former CIA officer and current senior fellow at the Brookings Institution who chaired last year’s review of policy in Afghanistan and Pakistan, gave a generally pessimistic assessment of the state of the Afghan war.

At 10 o’clock in the evening on June 30, Theodore (Tod) and Kate Sedgwick had just turned out the lights of their shoreside colonial summer home in Vineyard Haven, ready to settle into their first night of vacation when the phone rang with an unusual insistence.

“I said don’t answer it, we know where our children are,” recalled Mrs. Sedgwick.

On the phone was Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia calling Mr. Sedgwick to inform him that he had been confirmed as the United States Ambassador to Slovakia.

With tears in his eyes, an emotional Fred B. (Ted) Morgan Jr. stood at a podium to thank his number one supporter through the past 65 years of his life. The hundreds of people gathered to honor Mr. Morgan with a 2010 lifetime achievement award from the Edgartown Library Foundation sat silently as the guest of honor graciously acknowledged his wife, Floss, for seeing him through thick and thin for the better part of a century.

After a weekend long July Fourth celebration, the party continued in Vineyard Haven last Thursday night to celebrate Tisbury’s 339th birthday at the annual Tisbury street fair. It was all food, games, music and dance as families packed Main street to enjoy a night out of fun.

Gary Sylvia was standing next to Tisbury engine number 13 at the head of Main street, helping to sell T-shirts to raise money for the fire department as well as troops overseas through the Red Shirt Friday fund.

Policemen were giving drivers two options at Beetlebung corner on Monday afternoon after the Coast Guard boathouse in Menemsha caught fire. They could either turn onto Middle Road or South Road. Menemsha Crossroad remained closed.

A huge fire erupted in the U.S. Coast Guard boathouse in Menemsha yesterday afternoon, completely destroying the 68-year-old building along with an extended wooden pier that leads to the west dock on the Menemsha harbor. Also destroyed in the blaze were at least one truck and an unknown number of small boats nearby. Miraculously there were no injuries save one minor injury to a volunteer fireman, a Coast Guard public affairs spokesman confirmed last night.

Spirituals Enlightenment

The songs sung by slaves to send messages to each other will be decoded by the teaching choir led by Jim Thomas, president of the U.S. Slave Song Project, on Saturday at 7 p.m. at Union Chapel in Oak Bluffs. The concert, Songs from the Field: The Mystery of Spirituals, with guest Lavert Stuart, is family-friendly. Tickets are $15.

A fatal accident in downtown Vineyard Haven last Tuesday left a young mother dead, and her family and friends devastated; it also has badly distressed many Islanders who witnessed the sudden tragedy.

Services were held yesterday in Melrose for Dina DeCecca, the mother of two young children who died while bicycling with her family and friends from the ferry on State Road, when she fell under an 18-wheel tractor-trailer.

This is a big week for sailing on Martha’s Vineyard.

It begins with the 87th annual Edgartown Yacht Club Regatta, which starts on Thursday and continues through Saturday.

And this weekend the Vineyard Cup, the popular annual regatta sponsored by Sail Martha’s Vineyard, gets under way in Vineyard Haven with racing on Friday, Saturday and Sunday.