Wooden Whaleship Restored

Shipwrights have installed the last plank in the Charles W. Morgan, the last wooden whaleship of the 19th century housed in Mystic Seaport in Connecticut. The wooden ship that began its 80-year career hunting whales with an Edgartown whaling captain, Thomas A. Norton, and many Vineyard crewmembers, is undergoing a $5 million restoration.

Last Friday afternoon shipwrights installed the shutter plank on the 106-foot vessel, which is expected to sail again in 2014.

With the exception of the football team, which has three games remaining on its schedule, the regular fall season wrapped up last week.

By MARK ALAN LOVEWELL

Building a senior center was a hard sell to Tisbury voters many years ago. So when fans and friends gathered on Sunday to celebrate the Tisbury senior center’s 20th anniversary, it was a festive occasion.

Center director Joyce Stiles-Tucker recalled her 32 years of working for the town seniors, first as a coordinator and later as director of the center. Much of her time in those early years was spent advocating for the center and services for seniors. It was not always an easy journey, she said.

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Edith W. Potter of Chappaquiddick, a longtime conservationist who wrote the first zoning bylaws for Edgartown and was influential in saving South Beach and the Katama airfield, will receive the annual Spirit of the Vineyard Award, Hospice of Martha’s Vineyard announced this week.

The award is given annually to a person who has served for one or more nonprofit organizations on the Island, and whose work has made a difference to individuals and to the community as a whole.

Purple and green lights, a vibrant contrast to the orange tungsten that lights up the fall, flicker from within a small one-room building on State Road. There’s a class going on inside; Kimberly Cartwright, one of the founders of the Om of Motion studio, is leading Wednesday night Old School Spin.

Oak Bluffs voters accustomed to cost cutting will get another chance to do so next Tuesday at a special town meeting when they will be asked to decide how to close a $300,000 budget gap. And town leaders hope that this latest round of belttightening will once and for all put the town on course for a sustainable future.

The special town meeting will be held on Nov. 8 at 7 p.m. at the Oak Bluffs School.

The federal government will continue to foot the bill for its mandatory at-sea monitoring program for another year, after meeting with fishermen and state representatives in recent weeks and reviewing the economic impact of the costs associated with the year-old catch shares fisheries management program.

The bumpy route to the construction of Chilmark’s first town-owned affordable housing development came to a close last Saturday as town selectmen hosted an open house for residents at Middle Line Road.

The Edgartown water department must account for $171,600 in receipts for its new headquarters off the West Tisbury Road before it can receive reimbursement from the USDA, town accountant Kimberly Kane told the selectmen this week.

Without the reimbursement, the town will have to pay the bill.