BERLIN TO BEIJING

Editors, Vineyard Gazette:

REWARD OFFERED

Editors, Vineyard Gazette:

This is an open letter to the greater community on Martha’s Vineyard. Someone is repeatedly destroying a split rail fence with a chain saw and we need your help. We are offering a $1,000 reward for information leading to the arrest and successful prosecution of this person.

Editors, Vineyard Gazette:

The day was expected to draw a crowd in the thousands — and it did — but inside Ocean Park on Sunday, large swaths of grass were visible and vending booths were quiet at the second annual Martha’s Vineyard Festival. Outside the park, however, sidewalks and house porches were jammed.

Political commentator, George Mason University professor and author Michael Fauntroy will discuss his book, Republicans and the Black Vote, a historical look at the GOP and black voters, on Thursday, August 14, at 5 p.m. as part of the Chilmark Free Public Library adult evening series. The free talk is open to the public, hosted by the library and Friends of the Library. Books will be available for purchase at the event.

Storyteller Susan Klein comes to Featherstone Thursday, August 14, at 7:30 p.m. to share tales from her travels, her past and her take on the world around her.

Renowned for her memoir workshops. Ms. Klein’s storytelling material is at once historical and hysterical, engaging and amusing. Her tales encompass experiences from mundane adventures growing up in downtown Oak Bluffs to wider visions from Alaska to New Jersey.

Truth comes from the mouths of babes — or rather kids, or young adults, or the future of humanity. Whatever you label them, these pint-sized pulse-takers of youth culture are back this summer with their own reviews of movies for young viewers screening every Wednesday at the Chilmark Community Center.

The organizers of the Summer Film Series at the Martha’s Vineyard Film Festival teamed up with the Gazette to bring you reviews by Island kids, here for the summer or year-round, each Tuesday, before each Wednesday film presentation.

Authors Cynthia Riggs and Tom Dresser will celebrate their mysteries on Tuesday, August 12, at 5 p.m. at the West Tisbury library.

Ms. Riggs, a 13th-generation Islander, lives in West Tisbury in her family homestead, now a bed-and-breakfast for poets and writers. Double Murder on Martha’s Vineyard combines her first two books, Deadly Nightshade and The Cranefly Orchid Murders. Her ninth book is scheduled for release next year. All of her books feature 92-year-old Victoria Trumbull, a poet sleuth based on Cynthia’s mother, Dionis Coffin Riggs.

On Wednesday, August 13, at 7:30 p.m. the Polly Hill Arboretum welcomes Ellie Altman as guest speaker for the 11th annual David H. Smith Memorial Lecture. Her lecture, Gardening Earth’s Green Mantle, focuses on land stewardship practices that foster a healthier and more beautiful world for all living things. She expands the definition of gardening to embrace conservation concerns: ecological restoration, land development, agriculture, and habitat protection to inspire the adoption of a land ethic.

Cottage Park is a quiet 250-foot-long sidewalk lying just past the Circuit avenue entrance to the Martha’s Vineyard Camp Meeting Association. Tomorrow — Wednesday, August 13 — the public will have the chance to visit inside 10 Cottage Park homes during the 13th Annual Cottage Tour — the first time every cottage in a single Camp Ground neighborhood has been open to the public.