Art Exhibition

Marianne Neill will be showing her recent gouache paintings at the Chilmark Library for three weeks beginning May 22 through June 11. The opening reception will be held on Saturday, May 22 from 3 to 5 p.m. All are welcome. The show can also be viewed during regular library hours: Monday 10:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m., Tuesday 10:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m., Wednesday 10:30 a.m. to 7:30 p.m., Thursday 3:30 to 6:30 p.m. and Saturday 10:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m.

By JIM HICKEY

West Tisbury police are investigating a nighttime theft of a large amount of cash from Heather Gardens Nursery on State Road that occurred last Sunday. Police believe the thief is someone with knowledge of the business.

Jump for Joy

It is by far the Island’s largest conservation property, more than five thousand acres spread across the Vineyard’s ample middle, spanning the towns of Oak Bluffs, West Tisbury and Edgartown. But as conservation properties go, the Manuel F. Correllus State Forest is also largely unsung. It’s that vast swath of trees you drive by on the north side of the Edgartown-West Tisbury Road. It’s the corner near the airport where Smoky the Bear reminds all who pass what the level of fire alert is today.

The Aquinnah selectmen signed an agreement with the Wampanoag Tribe of Gay Head (Aquinnah) this week to coordinate emergency services for the town for the coming year. The joint town-tribe agreement was first established in 1995 to help coordinate police, fire, emergency medical, and natural disaster services.

The agreement has gotten better each year, said tribe natural resources director Bret Stearns at the selectmen’s meeting Tuesday night.

I grew up near Glens Falls, N.Y. Even though Glens Falls was a city of only 20,000 residents, there were two daily newspapers, The Post-Star in the morning and The Times in the afternoon. Most people read both. And almost everybody read at least one. It was the 1950s and television was just breaking into our living rooms. Radio had become somewhat commonplace following the hour-by-hour reports of “the War” a few years earlier. The newspapers charted local, national, international and personal life for most Americans, including the people in my hometown.

HUNDRED-DAY HAUL: 27,000 Miles in 100 Days. By Chris Huff. Vitallight Press. 285 pages. Soft cover, $19.90.

M aybe you know Chris Huff because back in the 90s he mowed your lawn. Or because in that same party-hardy epoch, you and he knocked back some serious drinks at the Lamppost, the Rare Duck and the Ritz. Or you joined the throngs who donated, over the brand new World Wide Web, cash to fund the guy’s road trip throughout the 48 contiguous U.S. states, this madcap laying of rubber to take place in the last hundred days of 1999.

Sea Breeze

Alas! the flesh is sad; the books I’ve read already —

O to run away! To flee! I feel with birds their giddy

Flights between unknowns: sea-foams and skies!

And nothing, not old gardens mirrored in bright eyes,

Can now hold back this heart — o sea-drenched nights!

Nor, on this empty paper, lamp-light’s

Desert clarity, whose whiteness keeps it undefiled;

Two days before my longtime friend, Stan Hart, died, I had the distinct pleasure — and pain — of paying him a final visit. He was hooked up to an oxygen tube and was very frail. But he was very brave as well. He had wanted the Vineyard Gazette to interview him for a story in the paper about the publication of his two new books that he could see while he was still with us. The paper came out last Friday, with a fragile photo of him taken by myself holding those two books. And then Stan died the next day.

The Oak Bluffs Public Library, in conjunction with the annual celebration of Della Hardman Day on Saturday, July 31, is sponsoring a photography contest to select 14 images featuring Martha’s Vineyard that reflect Della Hardman’s legacy theme “savor the moment.” The winning entries will be published in the Oak Bluffs Public Library calendar for 2011.