Angel Flight Northeast is one of the unsung heroes of Island life: a group of pilots who offer free transport to people needing access to medical care. The organization is now in its 15th year, having served Martha’s Vineyard since 1997. As of June 4 (the last time statistics were tallied), Angel Flight NE had scheduled more than 8,600 flights and flown 5,400 missions for Vineyard residents. This equates to $1.7 million in donated time and expenses for patients and their families living on Martha’s Vineyard.

Wearing a bright orange top and neon green running shoes, David Melly was easy to spot along Middle Road on Saturday morning. Then again, it wouldn’t have been difficult to find Mr. Melly at nearly any point during the 2011 Chilmark Road Race, as the 18-year old from Newton blew away the field. His winning time of 16:22 was more than a minute faster than the time of runner-up Jake Quagiaroli of Fishers, Ind., who crossed the finish line in 17:28.

A title dispute between the Sheriff’s Meadow Foundation and two Vineyard residents, both sides believing they own the same piece of property in Chilmark, moved into the Massachusetts Land Court this month after the foundation sued the two year-round residents who had begun to clear the land and build on it.

On a blustery, damp Monday morning at the Grange Hall, U.S. Senator Scott Brown lamented the similarly dreary state of affairs in Washington, D.C.

“I too have been disgusted by the government’s complete lack of accountability to its citizens,” he said at yesterday’s appearance in West Tisbury as part of his three week “jobs tour” throughout the commonwealth, which he has represented in the senate since January last year. The event ended unexpectedly when a member of the audience was stricken with a medical emergency.

From Gazette editions of August, 1986:

It is so special this time, there will be color postcards, a Vineyard Clydesdale, the calzones, the Mexican egg rolls, and one more thing — there will be the head of the state Department of Agriculture, full of ideas, honors and praise for the Vineyard farmers.

The ribbons were very important at the time, Eleanor Neubert recalled. She would show her 4-H calf (later, her 4-H cow), her rabbits and her hens, and she’d plant vegetables in her plot of the family garden so she could enter those in the fair, too. One year she competed in a horse show but found that wasn’t nearly as fun as the other activities.

The Menemsha boat pumpout facility is barely working this summer. In front of the Menemsha harbor master’s shack, right next door to Menemsha Texaco, it has for most of the summer sat idle.

Edgartown harbor and Vineyard Haven harbor master departments have pumped more than 20,000 gallons in each of their towns. The Oak Bluffs harbor master’s office pumpout boat has handled around 10,000 gallons.

Tuesday, August 9, was the 16th anniversary of the death of Jerry Garcia, the lead singer of the Grateful Dead. In honor of the late songwriter and musician, the Grateful Dread, a band of Island musicians who play Grateful Dead songs with a reggae flair, and play every Tuesday night at Nectar’s, decided to pay homage not with a moment of silence, but with an extra long guitar solo.

Elisha R. Smith, 88, can remember going to the fair with his grandfather, George Smith, who was really his uncle. “But I always called him grandfather,” Mr. Smith said, seated in the shade of his Oak Bluffs farm on Saturday. The senior statesman among Island farmers, Mr. Smith has many fond memories of fair days, which were a festive time and a time to take a break, at least for a few hours, from the daily chores of milking cows, collecting eggs and delivering milk to families in Vineyard Haven and Oak Bluffs.

Author Bill Sargent will discuss his new book, The Well from Hell: The BP Oil Spill and the Endurance of Big Oil, at the Chilmark Public Library on Wednesday, August 17, at 5:30 p.m.