Edgartown police are investigating a string of home break-ins in the downtown area over the past week.

Det. Craig Edwards said there were four break-ins on School street and South Summer street, two at the same house. The first was on June 12, when a piece of jewelry and several bottles of prescription medication had been stolen from a home on School street. The homeowners were out and the door was unlocked, police said.

Junior Golf Clinics

There were no vuvuzelas at Veterans Memorial Park in Vineyard Haven when the Island’s U-13 boys’ travel soccer team approached their playoff game on Saturday, but the lack of long plastic horns did not make it that much quieter than the World Cup games going on at the same time in South Africa.

The Martha’s Vineyard Commission on Thursday heard emotional testimony both for and against a proposal by the World Revival Church in Oak Bluffs to build a large tent with amplified music at the corner of Ryan’s Way and Edgartown-Vineyard Haven Road for outdoor religious services, prayer groups and choir practice.

A top state fisheries official told a Vineyard gathering on Friday afternoon that it is not feasible to restore the 61-year-old state lobster hatchery — at least not for raising young lobsters for release.

“We have no evidence that we did enhance the wild population to any significant degree at all,” said Paul Diodati, director of the Massachusetts Division of Marine Fisheries. “That and the cost in the past 10 years of government has become a real concern. Funding has withered,” he added.

It has been an unusual past 100 years for Noman’s Land, that half-forgotten rock off Chilmark and Aquinnah that has occasionally reasserted its presence to Vineyarders with wafting smoke clouds and distant bomb blasts. Shrouded in mystery and explosives, it has seen rumrunners, pirates, hurricanes, and even an accidental internecine gun battle between the Coast Guard and the Navy in 1967.

Martha’s Vineyard Preservation Trust executive director Chris Scott stood in his usual spot onstage with auctioneer Trip Barnes Saturday night, as Mr. Barnes kicked off the Taste of the Vineyard gala auction. With only five items up for bid, it was a light year for the trust. Bidders generally have some two dozen items to choose from.

Chi Gung

Chi Gung classes will be held with instructor Daisy Lifton at the Tisbury Senior Center on Mondays at 9 a.m. All are welcome to attend. Classes are $5 or $4 each, if paid in full for the month prior to the first class. Call 508-696-4205 to register; ask for Sandy.

Meredith Graduates

Meredith Goldthwait, of Vineyard Haven, has graduated magna cum laude with a liberal arts degree from the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth.

From Gazette editions of May, 1960:

There is a persistent legend, which, if it cannot be proven, certainly never has been disproven — this is the Hammett legend. The Island family of Hammett, well known on the Island from about 1700 to 1900, has produced master mariners, soldiers, adventurers and merchants of every variety. Island Hammetts served in the Revolutionary War, sailed in whaleships, prospected for gold in California, served in the Civil War, and were known in the profession of book-publishers, writers and politics.