JANE N. SLATER

508-645-3378

(slaterjn@comcast.net)

Chilmarkers can save gasoline and shop in town this holiday season. Many shops will remain open weekends. The kickoff for the holiday shopping will be a flea market at the community center on Dec. 8 from 9 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. Coco Adams asks all vendors of crafts and handmade items to come out and sell their holiday wares. There will be antiques and attic treasures, too. Ethel Sherman will be there with her favored jellies and jams. Please call Coco at 508-645-3414 for details.

Congratulations to Cheryl Andrews-Maltais on her victory in winning the seat as tribal council chairperson for the Wampanoag Tribe of Gay Head (Aquinnah). She will take office Jan. 5. Cheryl is the daughter of Joseph R. and Edith (Correia) Andrews of North Dartmouth. She is the wife of Daniel Maltais and the mother of 11-year-old Samantha Maltais.

Thanksgiving 2007

FOR NANCY WHITING

Editors, Vineyard Gazette:

I was saddened to learn of the recent death of Nancy Whiting, former librarian of the West Tisbury library. She made it classy to love books, and generations of up-Islanders benefitted from it.

I’m trying to be thankful, and that should be easy at this time of year. Here I am in Chilmark where I enjoy the legacy left by my parents, Henry and Peggy Scott. That legacy is our family house, facing south on South Road, set between old roadside stone walls, close to an open meadow and looking south toward Chilmark Pond and the sea. Known in the community as the Scott House, my dad had named it Pipe Down, after his days in the U.S. Navy, 1944-45, then stationed on Martha’s Vineyard.

Driving down Edgartown’s School street with lamp-maker Billy Hoff is like a scene from Men In Black — except that, instead of aliens, you see that lanterns handmade by Lamplighter Corner Inc., are right under your nose, and absolutely everywhere. “That’s a bullseye pane,” he says, steering his pickup past a blue-front glass piece on a three-foot high solid brass lamp. “There’s another couple . . . I made that one.

The Martha’s Vineyard Chamber Music Society, which has been bringing world-class music to the Island since 1971, presents its last concert of the year this Saturday evening in Edgartown.

After that Thanksgiving dinner settles, get outdoors and relax with family and friends at Felix Neck’s Fall Festival, set for Friday, Nov. 23, from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. at the wildlife sanctuary on the Edgartown-Vineyard Haven Road.

The third annual International Feast for Compassion Benefiting People Facing Devastation: Darfur is set for Saturday, Dec. 1, at 6 p.m. at the Martha’s Vineyard Hebrew Center on Centre street in Vineyard Haven.

All are welcome to come enjoy delicious international foods and music while helping the most challenged people on the planet. The musicians will be David Stanwood, as well as the trio of Greta Bro, Ricardo Frota and John Hicks.

Miracles at Christmas returns this year with traditional carols and drama to add warmth to the Christmas season — but with a change of location to St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church in Edgartown. This Island Theatre Workshop production takes you back to a traditional Christmas, combining medieval carols and St. Nicholas plays.