Tisbury fire officials have determined that the devastating Independence Day fire that destroyed Café Moxie and badly damaged the Bunch of Grapes bookstore was accidental in nature and started inside a gas-fed water burner in the basement of the restaurant.

Assistant fire chief James Rogers, a state-certified fire investigator, said yesterday that the fire started in a gas-fired water heater in the basement of Café Moxie. Mr. Rogers said a work crew last Thursday used heavy equipment to dig out the cellar of the restaurant to better assess the damages.

While the bullet-riddled corpse of a feral turkey lies stiff in a Chilmark police freezer, a fuller picture of its violent past on Old Ridge Road and the surrounding neighborhood is emerging.

Scientists and naturalists working on and near the Vineyard worry that recent reported sightings of great white sharks near the Island will feed fears that get ahead of the facts.

Naturalist Gus Ben David, shark expert Greg Skomal and oceanographer Anthony Wood downplayed the threat to humans from sharks.

“I landed in Cottage City in February of 1882, after a short stay on the mainland,” wrote the late Manuel S. deBettencourt in an open letter to the citizens of Oak Bluffs. The letter is undated, but Oak Bluffs town archives show that Mr. deBettencourt was first elected selectman in 1925. The letter was a plea for reelection.

WVVY,93.7 FM, the Island’s fledgling community radio station, has struggled to raise funds since it began broadcasting last December, but tomorrow WVVY is going for it all with its first Aquinnah Music Festival.

The nine-hour live music fundraiser at the Cliffs in Aquinnah offers a dozen acts spanning American musical genres from rock to rap, Native American to bluegrass.

Tim Laursen, who writes the majority of the lyrics for The Billionaires, looks through his screen porch out at the woodland behind his family’s Vineyard Haven home, and tries to explain his song-writing method.

“Okay, popping into my head right now, wood,” he says, humming a tune and then seamlessly cranking out a lyric: “Must be romantic cutting wood by hand/Put down the power tools and give me back the land.”

These were the top finishers in the 85th Annual Regatta of the Edgartown Yacht Club, held from July 10 through 12.

Wianno Senior Division (21 boats)

1, Cochenoe, Donald Law; 2, Yankee Dime, Frank Saul; 3, Cheerful, Lloyd B. McManus Jr.; 4, Heritage, John Fallon; 5, Aurora, Holly Edmonds; 6, Dauntless, Jeff Tracy; 7, Lente Festina, Kevin Plunkett; 8, Golden Summer, W. Patrick Lentell; 9, Rapparee, Peter O’Keeffe; 10, Odin, Andrew Dunne 4th.

Shields Division (9 boats)

Spirituals at East Chop

Lighthouse: Free at Five

The Martha’s Vineyard Museum will present the second in their summer Free at Five series on Wednesday, July 23, at the East Chop Lighthouse in Oak Bluffs.

The lighthouse will be open free of charge to the public beginning at 5 p.m., followed by a performance by the Jim Thomas Spiritual Choir at 6 p.m.

JAY ALEXANDER BROWN

Hold on to your hat, because on Tuesday, July 22, the Oak Bluffs Tabernacle will be whisked away to the Valley of the Wind.

In this serialized novel set on the Vineyard in real time, a native Islander (“Call me Becca”) returns home after years in Manhattan to help her eccentric Uncle Abe keep his landscaping business, Pequot, afloat. Abe loathes Richard Moby, chief of the off-Island landscaping business Broadway. He is irrationally convinced that Moby wants to destroy Abe personally, and Island-based nursery businesses in general.

Dear P: