The town of Tisbury has repossessed two small truckloads of timber left over after work on the Owen Park pier and taken home by harbor master Jay Wilbur.

The action followed a heated scene at last week’s selectmen’s meeting, in which Gene Decosta accused Mr. Wilbur of having “defrauded the town.”

Mr. Decosta accused Mr. Wilbur of having put his assistants to work at $14 an hour, pulling nails from the timber.

Sarah Mello has stepped down as superintendent of the Chappaquiddick properties of The Trustees of Reservations to return to her former position as director of education at the organization’s Island properties.

Chris Kennedy, Islands regional director for the trustees, said Mrs. Mello relinquished the post for personal reasons.

At first glance, Rick Karney does not appear to be a farmer. He works on the water and is usually more damp than dirty.

But to watch him in action is to be sure that the work Mr. Karney does at the Martha’s Vineyard Shellfish Group is hardly different from the work Island farmers do in their fields and stables and greenhouses every day.

First it was Owen Bennion’s two front teeth vs. a steel basketball pole. Then it was Matt Ungaro’s left ear vs. a moth of undetermined species.

Around the Farm Neck links, Don Wilks likes when fellow golfers find out he’s an artist. “They always say, ‘You’re not the kind of guy I expect . . .’ ” This may be, Mr. Wilks points out, because he is neatly turned out and he does not have long hair.

The face of Main street in Vineyard Haven has changed more by the act of fire than any street in any other Island town.

The town is like a Greek mythological phoenix, always turning the negative into the positive, and rebuilding bigger and better than before.

Main street in Vineyard Haven has a history of big fires. The greatest of them was the night of Aug. 10, 1883, when all of the street — 62 buildings — burned to the ground in a span of six hours. Coincidentally it was Illumination Night in Cottage City, now known as Oak Bluffs.

Tisbury assistant fire chief Tom Colligan was showering in an outdoor shower on Friday morning at his home in Edgartown when his pager went off.

Prior to that moment, he had plans to spend the day with his cousins and relatives.

Less than a half hour later, he was inside the basement of Cafe Moxie in Vineyard Haven with little or no vision, feeling his way through orange-tinted black smoke.

He was fighting a fire to save a building, but also aware that he and his colleagues were at risk.

From the Ashes

They were ready. Austin Racine and Katrina Yekel, who had bought the Cafe Moxie restaurant on Main street in Vineyard Haven in May, were prepared to work sixty-three straight days — all of July and August — to survive and succeed in their business, to make money during the Vineyard’s all-too short summer season, to help realize the dream that they both held so dearly.

First published on the Gazette Web site Friday morning.

The wheels on his bike stopped abruptly on Centre street behind Cafe Moxie when the pantry chef saw flames breaking through the roof of the restaurant around 9:40 a.m. on the Fourth of July. “I guess I don’t have work today,” he said sadly, and rode off.

THANK YOU, COMMUNITY

Editors, Vineyard Gazette: