I moved to the Vineyard in 2006 and still feel like a washashore. But over the past year or so, I’ve begun exhibiting symptoms I associate with longtime residence of the Island. So here’s a list, composed while sitting in traffic this week, which I’ll call, “You know you’re a year-rounder when…”

• You put not one but two “Feel the Pride” stickers on your car and realize you should have done this years ago, because half the cops on the Island are ex football players.

A 19-year-old Oak Bluffs man was arraigned Monday morning on a charge of assault and battery on a child with substantial injury after his infant daughter allegedly sustained a severe brain injury.

According to Cape and Islands assistant district attorney Laura Marshard, Shaun Sicsico’s 12-week-old daughter was brought to the Martha’s Vineyard Hospital Saturday evening with a severe brain injury. The child was later airlifted to Boston Children’s Hospital.

I have a fondness for yellow houses. They are not very common in Edgartown right now. Years ago they were more prevalent. If you can imagine it, the Doctor Daniel Fisher house was once painted yellow! Hard to believe its wedding cake splendor was covered in yellow icing.

Oak Bluffs selectman Walter Vail called it a perfect Vineyard day. Kites hung in the clear blue sky over Ocean Park and a light breeze blew in off Nantucket Sound on Saturday. A crowd had gathered beneath a peaked tent to celebrate the memory of Della Hardman, a leader in the Island African American community and in the Island community as a whole.

A 17-month-old girl was in good condition at a Boston hospital Wednesday and her mother had been released after being airlifted from the Vineyard Sunday morning following a one-car accident.

The Island community raised more than $450,000 for Martha’s Vineyard Community Services at the Art Buchwald Possible Dreams Auction Sunday night, an amount expected to increase still by the end of the week. The total surpasses last year’s amount by at least $50,000.

A pint of beer is a science class in a glass. On the macro level, there are the biology and chemistry lessons: fungi and plants collide to kick-start the fermentation process that produces alcohol. And the individual characteristics of those fungi (yeast) and plants (hops and malt) each affect how a beer will taste.

About a year ago, closed boxes filled with computer tablets were left in two villages in Ethiopia. 

The villages had no literacy and no cellular service or electricity. One adult in each village was taught how to configure a solar panel.

Eighty-seven year old Shirley Mayhew grew up in the Depression, remembers two wars, lived on Martha’s Vineyard in the good old days, and has traveled by herself to 27 different countries.

“None of my friends and family remember half the things I have experienced,” she said. “The Vietnam War is ancient history to my grandchildren.”

But one thing she hasn’t experienced? Telling a story on stage to 2,000 people.

It’s time for tap to take its seat at the contemporary dance table, and it starts in Chilmark.
Artists colony the Yard began its second annual Tap the Yard festival on Thursday night, July 25, bringing together a host of rhythm and percussive-based dancers that go beyond the standard tap steps to include hiphop, Irish step dancing, body percussion and modern dance.