Island writers are expressing sympathy and sadness for the loss, they hope only temporarily, of the Bunch of Grapes Bookstore in Vineyard Haven that was devastated by fire on July 4.
Red Cross Classes
The American Red Cross is organizing a number of CPR, AED and First Aid classes in July and August. All classes will be held at the Martha’s Vineyard YMCA at 57 Pequot avenue in Oak Bluffs.
The Infant and Child CPR class will be held on Monday, July 14, from 5:30 to 9:30 p.m. The cost for this class is $45.
An Adult CPR/AED class will be held on Saturday, July 12,and there will also be a class on Saturday, August 9, from 8:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. The cost for the Adult CPR/AED course is $50.
Conservation Today
When groups such as the Vineyard Conservation Society came into existence in the mid-twentieth century, the Vineyard seemed a simpler place. And their mission seemed a straightforward if sometimes daunting one: to protect special places on the Vineyard from the same sort of development that was gobbling up so much land on the mainland.
Counting Crows
Anyone who is out early in the morning these days will surely hear or see a crow, or a murder of crows, as groups of crows are called. They may be cawing from one tree to the next, alerting each other to the skunk dead in the road below or the field just planted with tasty seed corn. They may simply be conversing. But there is always an urgency in the voice of a crow.
It’s the Berries
From the Vineyard Gazette editions of July, 1933:
Editor’s Note: What follows is the text of Martha’s Vineyard Museum executive director Keith Gorman’s letter to the members, published in the latest edition of the museum newsletter.
ROOTING FOR HILLARY
Editors, Vineyard Gazette:
I’ve scoured my e-mail list and shamelessly scavenged from all of my friend’s e-mail recipient lists, believing that the power of people and the Internet will work its magic to help my friend and fellow Vineyarder Hillary Landers, who suffered a spinal cord injury in the fall of 2006.
I Remember Jerry best at work
Two drawknives
A peavey
And an ax
A tractor trailer load
Of spiles
Oak trees
From up north
We’d bark
Me a teenage
Local kid
Him a father
Fresh from San Miguel
He came with Bernadette
And the girls
Work for Manuel Santos
In the cemetery
Yardwork
Temperature: Precip.
Day Max. Min. Inches.
Fº Fº
July 4 81 67 .00
July 5 77 65 .03
July 6 72 65 .15
July 7 79 67 .00
July 8 83 69 .00
July 9 83 68 .00
July 10 82 67 .04
Water temperature in Edgartown harbor: 76º F.
BETTYE FOSTER BAKER
508-696-9983
The fascination and excitement of the Fourth of July celebration came and went, but it was Sunday morning, July 6, under the lofty ceiling of historic Union Chapel in Oak Bluffs that Professor Charles Olgetree Jr. of the Harvard Law School reframed that historical conversation of July 4, 1776, with a moving and thoughtful sermon to an overflowing chapel, What July Fourth Means to Me.
