Juneteenth is the oldest nationally celebrated commemoration of the ending of slavery in the United States, and this year a host of Oak Bluffs merchants will help celebrate the event by donating some of their proceeds from Saturday, June 19, to help the Martha’s Vineyard Bradley Square project.

Deon’s restaurant will host a reception on Saturday from 4 to 6 p.m. as part of the celebration. Tickets are $10, available at the door.

Circle of Faith,> The Story of the Martha’s Vineyard Camp Meeting, By Sally Dagnall, Vineyard Stories, Edgartown, Ma. 2010 $24.95.

T here is no other place quite like Oak Bluffs — the color and charm, the hustle and bustle, the beaches and parks and fireworks and festivals, open and free and inviting. And to think it all started as a religious retreat.

I want to continue the educational and civil dialogue started by Henry Stephenson in the recent issue of the Gazette in response to our POINT (Protect Our Islands Now for Tomorrow) newspaper advertisement. His thoughtful and well-written letter deserves to be taken seriously and responded to in kind.

Mr. Stephenson agrees with POINT that the public trust doctrine needs to be complied with. He states that we should work to insure that profits to developers are capped and that the benefits go to the people of the region.

I was reading The New York Times on the bus from the Palmer avenue lot to Woods Hole to take the ferry to the Vineyard when the woman sitting next to me profiled me and said something about my being a New Yorker. I responded to her smile, and said, “Yes, but I was a Brooklyn boy.” I then asked her how she knew I was from the Big Apple. She responded: “The way you fold your newspaper.” I guess she knew what she was talking about since she seemed to be in her 60s and was a real estate agent in New York city and the Vineyard.

The King and Us

From Gazette editions of June, 1985:

The Queen Elizabeth 2, one of the largest cruise ships in the world, dropped anchor a mile off East Chop Tuesday. She carried 1,700 passengers and a crew of nearly 1,000. She came with four restaurants, seven bars, 1,350 telephones, 180 clocks, four swimming pools, seven shops (including Harrod’s), two discos, a casino, a computer learning center, a bank and a theatre with 525 seats.

COMPLETE SURPRISE

Editors, Vineyard Gazette:

Words cannot express the emotional feeling that I felt, when my name was read by the principal of the Martha’s Vineyard Regional High School at the start of the Class Night ceremony for the class of 2010, at the Tabernacle in Oak Bluffs, on Friday, June 11.

The other day while mowing the lawn I stopped to wipe the sweat from my forehead and assess my progress. I am forever tinkering with my technique; an up and back pattern, a series of ever shrinking squares, or even, on a rare day, just going with the flow. Deep in thought I happened to notice, out of the corner of my eye, my five-year-old son, Hardy, dressed in a flowing green cape, pirate hat, and a pair of flippers. He was lurking near the shed and watching me. I pretended not to notice and restarted the mower.

Make Way for Plovers

The recovery of the piping plovers is a good news story in what feels at times like a growing sea of environmental disasters around the world. Placed on the list of threatened species about twenty years ago, these tiny shorebirds that make their nests in bare scrapes of sand on remote, windswept barrier beaches, have made a strong comeback in recent years and are now nesting in large numbers on the Cape and Islands.

Summer Outlook

The Vineyard confidence index is measured in many ways. A quirky economist could devise a matrix involving the number of bulbs and blossoms flowering; the count of sunny days divided by the amount of evening rainfall that makes for happy farmers; the dimensions of freshly painted signs in heralding new or familiar businesses; the frequency of the ferries spilling smiling visitors into Oak Bluffs or Vineyard Haven; the distance of the traffic backups. Most ways you look at it, this has been a promising spring.

Food Pantry

The next Serving Hands food distribution will be on Wednesday, June 23, from 1:30 to 3 p.m. at the First Baptist Church parish house on William street in Vineyard Haven.

Food will be distributed until it runs out. If you have a pantry card, please bring it.

Food is available for participants who are on one of the following programs or meet the USDA income guidelines: food stamps, AFDC, WIC, Welfare, Medicaid, SSI, Head Start, fuel assistance, family day care, Veteran’s Aid or Island Food Pantry.