For the 20th consecutive year, Renaissance House will host a reading of Frederick Douglass’s 1852 speech What To The Slave Is The Fourth Of July on July 4. 

This summer, the Martha’s Vineyard Garden Club will be commemorating their centennial and honoring their founder, one of the early conservationists of the Island, Agnes D. Meikleham (1869-1953, pronounced “Meek-lam”).

Wendell Berry wrote: “If you don’t know where you are, you don’t know who you are.”

Anthony Holand wields a hammer in his Vineyard Haven studio as he works on a commemorative weathervane for the 50th anniversary of the filming of Jaws. The sound of copper clanging rings out as he repeatedly brings the hammer down on a chisel, slowly moving down the shape of a shark.

they’d never been there in the summer before
when the white morning sky
burns the mist like snowy cinders

When you lose your partner, tasks envelop you in that first year. Change your bank accounts, send death certificates to Social Security and some credit card issuers and, yes, you also have to get rid of things.

Great-grand-daughter of a Vineyard whaling captain, daughter of a West Tisbury poet and a New Jersey educator renowned for his Island linoleum block prints, longtime West Tisbury bed and breakfast proprietor, mystery book writer and writing teacher, Cynthia Riggs has now written not only of her Vineyard years but of much more.

They had an old-fashioned hearth-warming party at Tom’s Neck farm on Chappaquiddick on Sunday afternoon. It was a gathering of relatives and old Island friends. They lit a fire.

Beach BeFrienders has met monthly since its inception, gathering to clean different beaches with a rotating group of volunteers. This year’s summer season begins Saturday, June 29 in Aquinnah where from 8 to 10 a.m. volunteers will head out to Philbin, Lobsterville and Moshup’s Beach.

Complete Package LLC purchased 25 Old Farm Road in Chilmark from Hallett Lane LLC for $3,473,000 on June 21.