It was standing room only Wednesday night at the Bunch of Grapes Bookstore in Vineyard Haven when broadcast and TV journalist Alison Stewart of New York and Oak Bluffs told the story of writing her new book, First Class: The Legacy of Dunbar, America’s First Black Public High School. Although she has had a 20-year career anchoring and reporting for MTV, PBS, NBC News, ABC News and CBS News, First Class is her first book.

There’s a new name on the Futures Collegiate Baseball League championship trophy.
With a 6-3 defeat of the Nashua Silver Knights before a cheering home crowd on Thursday evening, the Martha’s Vineyard Sharks earned their first league title. They swept their way through the FCBL playoffs, which began last week, building on a strong 35-18 regular season to bring home the title.

You won’t want to miss the basted baby back ribs at the Tisbury Council on Aging’s barbecue and gourmet food basket raffle on Saturday, August 24, beginning at 1:30 p.m.

The Friends of the TCOA organize the barbecue to help support the programs at the senior center. Ribs, beans, corn on the cob, potato salad and desserts round out the menu.

The cost is $15 per person. Call 508-696-4205 for more information.

President Obama addressed the nation from outside his Chilmark rental home Thursday morning about the ongoing violence in Egypt.

The briefing took place on the sixth day of President Obama’s Vineyard vacation, a week punctuated by security and press briefings and a familiar pattern of golf, dining out and quiet time with family and friends.

Shep and Ian Murray sat in a pair of white Adirondack chairs on the front stone patio of Vineyard Vines in Edgartown. Both were barefoot. A pair of Crocs, blue for Shep, gray for Ian, sat next to the chairs. They wore khaki shorts and blue-accented shirts, a polo for Shep, untucked button-down for Ian. They looked like any other pair of brothers on the Island in August.

Benton Wesley hesitated, but once Frank Hardy got the feel of sand beneath his flippers, he made a beeline for the surf, soon disappearing under a crashing wave on the Vineyard’s south shore.

About 10 months after the two rare Kemp’s Ridley turtles washed up on a Cape Cod beach in a hypothermic state, they were returned to the waves off Long Point in West Tisbury Wednesday.

Each morning when West Tisbury emergency management director John Christensen wakes up, he turns on his iPad and checks the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association’s weather forecast. It doesn’t matter if it’s the middle of winter or hurricane season.

In a special report today, the Vineyard Gazette embarks on an in-depth examination of erosion, its history, its scientific processes, its human impacts and the implications for the future. Reporters and photographers zoom in on five areas around the Vineyard: Wasque, the South Shore and Chilmark, the Gay Head Cliffs, East Chop Drive and the sweep of coastline from Oak Bluffs to Cape Pogue.  

The gates opened on Thursday morning for the 152nd annual Agricultural Fair, and within minutes the livestock judging was underway, six horses cantered around the show ring, and a person scaled the portable rock wall at the edge of the food area.

More than 30 years ago Dr. Donald Berwick began seeing patients in the Martha’s Vineyard Hospital emergency room. At the time, the ER was staffed by visiting physicians on weekends, so he helped set up the schedule and find the doctors a place to stay for the night. Since then, he has stopped seeing patients, was temporarily appointed by President Obama as administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services in Washington, D.C., and in June, declared his campaign for governor of Massachusetts.