North Water Gallery Will Host Exhibit by Ray Ellis

North Water Gallery in Edgartown welcomes all to a champagne celebration to honor Ray Ellis with his first show at the gallery. The reception is tomorrow, Saturday, June 21, from 5 to 7 p.m.

The show will feature many new and never-before-seen works by the 88-year-old painter, including several recent up-Island watercolors, as well as his limited edition prints and signed books. Join in a toast to the artist, who will attend.

Company Marks 100 Years

Company Marks 100 Years

Chaffee Industrial Roofing of East Providence, R.I., a company with ties to the Vineyard, is celebrating 100 years in business.

Dorothy Chaffee, widow of late owner Henry Chaffee, lives in Edgartown. Steve and Sandy Chaffee, representing the third generation of Chaffees in the business, are seasonal residents of the Island. The company also has done roofing projects on the Vineyard.

Art Teacher’s Dragon Will Perform in Magic Flute

A dragon created by art and technology teacher Paul Brisette and his art students at Martha’s Vineyard Regional High School will fly high and terrorize a young prince as the centerpiece of the Magic Flute scenes in the OperaFest 2008 performance, Saturday, July 26, at 8 p.m. at Union Chapel in Oak Bluffs.

Agreement Could Clear Way for Better Cell Phone Service

A new draft request for proposals (RFP) to improve up-Island cell phone service is complete, but first the three towns that are involved must sign an intermunicipal agreement.

Aquinnah, Chilmark and West Tisbury plan to build a distributed antennae network to improve cell phone service.

Aquinnah town coordinator Jeff Burgoyne said yesterday he plans to have intermunicipal agreement language ready by the weekend for town counsel Ronald H. Rappaport to review. Mr. Rappaport is counsel to all three towns.

August Auction Will Offer Four Possible Golf Dreams

Champion golfer Ernie Els will headline the golf offerings at this year’s Possible Dreams Auction, the charitable fund-raising event that benefits Martha’s Vineyard Community Services.

Leaving

Leaving

How can I bear to leave this place,

take the next boat out into the harbor,

pass the buoy, toss

a penny into the water for a return?

How can I bear leaving after 39 years —

built my own house, planted my garden,

tall-trees design, skylight to watch the evening sky,

see the night flight plane lights

blinking their way across the sea.

How Do You Fix a Broken Internet?

The Internet has been around for approx i mately four decades, but a team of Stanford University experts says it’s broken. It’s now in the midst of taking a pull-out-all-the-stops approach to developing a new prototype.

The project is called the Clean Slate Design for the Internet. It’s supposed to answer two questions: how to design a new global communications infrastructure from the ground up, and what will the Internet look like in 15 years.

Unfortunate License

Unfortunate License

The very thought that walking down a Vineyard beach and casting a fishing line into the ocean will require a license would appall and anger generations of fishermen stretching deep into the Island’s past.

The same restriction on fishing in freshwater ponds likely would have struck Island fishermen of past centuries as a foolhardy and unwarranted invasion of the government in a matter that was none of its business.

Public Safety Alert: Children at Play

Public Safety Alert: Children at Play

In one more sign of the changing season, today is the last day of school for most Island public schools (the Martha’s Vineyard Public Charter School had its last day yesterday.) The familiar yellow buses that roll on Island roads early in the morning and again in the afternoon throughout the fall, winter and spring, are ready for decommissioning as transportation vehicles for our most precious resource — Vineyard school children. At least until just after Labor Day.

Pretty in Pink

Vineyard woodlands are full of delicate pink lady’s slippers, the striking native wild orchids that grow here. In some places hundreds of lady’s slippers can be counted in a small patch of woods. Also called moccasin flower, the flower’s genus name (Cypripedium acaule) derives from the Latin word for Venus’s slipper.

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