The Martha’s Vineyard Land Bank reported revenues of $186,429 for the business week ending on Friday, July 20, 2012. The land bank receives its funds from a two per cent fee charged on many Vineyard real estate transactions.

A charter fishing trip turned exciting Thursday morning when those aboard came within five feet of what they believed to be a surfacing great white shark.

Buddy Vanderhoop, captain of the charter boat Tomahawk III, was taking his charter customers out for a morning of fishing when they came upon the nearly 20-foot shark about a mile offshore, between Aquinnah and Noman’s Land.

On Friday, The Cottagers Inc. of Martha’s Vineyard
sponsor the eighth annual African American Cultural Festival, an event
packed with free educational programs and culture. The festival takes
place in Hartford Park off Massassoit avenue and at Cottagers Corner on
Pequot avenue.

If you haven’t heard about the latest incendiary human who used an arsenal of firearms to blow away a dozen Colorado moviegoers as well as injure nearly five dozen more, then you must be living under a rock. And if that’s where you are, then if I were you, I’d stay there. That’s probably the last safe place in America.

It’s a question that vexes local planning agencies and inflames passions from homeowners builders, and residents on both sides of the issue.

When it comes to houses, how big is too big?

This issue has special resonance on the Vineyard, where land is limited and residents have a history of fiercely protecting — and debating — the Island’s character.

Under construction for the last two years and on the drawing board far longer than that, the new emergency services building in Tisbury cannot accurately be called new anymore, although it remains unfinished and unoccupied. One deadline after another for completion of the problem-plagued building has passed in the last year. And still the seven million-dollar project drags on.

From Gazette editions of July, 1960:

Joseph C. Whitney of Edgartown and Westwood garnered an experience Friday afternoon that will make more than a footnote if he ever decides to write an autobiography. He landed a single engine Commanche, of which he was the only occupant, without the benefit of wheels.

Oak Bluffs has long been a town of multiple personalities — some exuberant, some rough and tumble, some flashy and artistic, some quietly generous. One of our least favorites, the one that is prone to recklessness after a few drinks, seemed to dominate last weekend. The police log tells the story of a raucous Saturday night marred by a range of bad behavior and resulting in numerous arrests. Reviewing the weekend, town officials were careful not to blame the Monster Shark Tournament, but count us among those who are glad to see it over.

Why did the chicken cross the road?

We can finally put paid to this old joke because the answer, after visiting 17-year-old Cord Bailey’s 11 chickens and single rooster on State Road in Vineyard Haven, is that none of his chickens has ever crossed the busy road, nor even set claw on the sidewalk.

“They know their own boundaries,” said Cord, although the band of fowls also takes a proprietary interest in the lush, shaded lawn next door. “The neighbors don’t mind,” he added, “In fact, they like the chickens!”

As I sat with my family Sunday, eating blueberry pancakes under piercing blue skies at the Katama Airfield — along with dozens of others outside the small restaurant there — it occurred to me that what makes this such a popular spot is our continual fascination with air flight. In an age of routine jet travel and near-routine orbital space missions, we still get a kick out of seeing small antique planes huff and puff along the bumpy grass airstrip and pull themselves up above South Beach, and then set down only a few yards away from us.