JANE N. SLATER

508-645-3378

(slaterjn@comcast.net)

The July full moon is here and the skies are clear enough for us to enjoy the wonderful light. The days may be hot but the evenings are pretty near perfect this week . . . hope you all are enjoying them.

JO-ANN TILGHMAN

508-627-7669

(tilghmanjb@aol.com)

We are constantly reminded that Chappy is a wild and beautiful place that we share with the animals that are found on land and in the waters surrounding our island.

Just such a reminder was sent to me by Chris Kennedy of The Trustees of Reservations in this report of the injured seal pup that was found on the Chappy side of Norton Point Beach on July 6. 

RICK HERRICK

508-693-8065

herricklr@verizon.net

Dr. John A. Hargreaves, son of Jack and Ute Hargreaves, left for Iraq last month armed with a doctorate in biology and a heart filled with idealism. John is part of an assessment team from Texas A& M University that is exploring ways to rehabilitate agriculture in that war-torn country. His specialty is aquaculture.

The Polly Hill Arboretum is full of special trees, but if there is one which is more special than all the rest, according to executive director Tim Boland, it is a magnolia Mrs. Hill planted more than 40 years ago.

What makes it extra special is not its beauty or it rarity, although it is both a gorgeous tree and one which really should not grow in these climes at all; it is the fact that it saved the arboretum.

Indirectly, but nonetheless it did.

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.”