Middle Road wears an Island necklace in shades of gray. Allow the car behind you to pass and drive just slowly enough to glimpse it hiding behind a blur of trees and vines, or follow after it as it lends definition to the landscape on either side of the road from West Tisbury to Chilmark.

The clash between Island aesthetics and improved utilities has come to a head on the Vineyard over the last several weeks as new, larger utility poles started popping up on Vineyard roads.

Residents and town officials have criticized the new poles as unsightly and out of keeping with the Vineyard’s character, referring the project for review by the Martha’s Vineyard Commission. NStar, the utility company installing the poles, said this week that the poles are necessary to improve electric service and meet demand.

Workwise, Josh Scott is an ultra-marathoner. On a sunny, brisk spring morning, the arborist and owner of Beetlebung Tree Care walks around a spectacular 70-acre property on Squibnocket Pond with caretaker Tim Rich. Visually, they are quite a pair. Tim is tall, maybe six-six with a long, lumbering stride while Josh has the wiry build and nimble movements of a runner.

Chilmark holds many emotions as the biggest holiday of the season comes upon us. I don’t have to list them; we each can face our own as we get all the parts in order for a smooth and happy Fourth of July with our family and visitors. Cheers to us all as we spend another Fourth with each other in our favorite holiday spot, Chilmark!

Roxane Ackerman returned home on Saturday after a brief stay in Brooklyn, returning with her daughter Naushon and eight-month-old granddaughter Nanawusuwee, who will be visiting family and friends for the week in Aquinnah.

Don’t tell me there is no climate change going on when Martha’s Vineyard has been experiencing monsoons like Southeast Asia. Anyone allergic to mildew? Well, in spite of the iffy weather, the Berman clan has made it to the Island for their 15th summer on the water in Vineyard Haven. Alan and Michele Berman are hosting their six grandchildren, children, friends and the family dog, Huck.

Welcome to summer and all the people it brings with it. Traffic is heavy everywhere, even over at the landfill. The weather has been muggy with rain two or three times a day leading up to the holiday. Just about every building in town is now occupied. The Blake pie gazebo reports a brisk business. Busses are comfortably full, planes and boats are crowded.

By the time you read this the Schifter’s house will be hovering in its new location. All that remains is to fill the space between the ground and the house with concrete blocks, then remove all of the steel beams and wheels that provided the levitation. Then the dirt goes back around the house and by Christmas you won’t know anything ever happened there. Don’t miss the book signing at Slip Away Farm on Sunday, July 7 from 4 to 6 p.m. for Melinda Fager’s new book Living Off the Sea on the Island of Chappaquiddick.

Records of black people on Martha’s Vineyard go back to 1703. Documents identified by Jacqueline Lois Jones Holland (10/25/25 to 8/15/07), one of the first people to write about African Americans on the Island (The Dukes County Intelligencer, August 1991), described black people as live-in servants who took care of homes and families and mariners who were deck hands, cooks, sail makers and whale men, one of whom became captain of a whaling ship in the 1800s.

Amos Gaylord enrolled in a college last fall that was 12 miles from his home in Waitsfield, Vt., but it could have just as easily been on another planet. When his mom, Beth Huss Young, called on Sunday afternoons to see how he was doing, she was given five minutes. There was even less communication during meals. Students were ordered to remain silent during all three of them.