Gary Murphy came to Vineyard House in July of 2006 with a broken marriage, taxes piled up, child support debt and a much bigger problem.

“I was a functional alcohol addict,” he said. “But I just got sick of being out there, and I wanted to give it one more try. I’ve been clean ever since.”

Just last month he left Vineyard House after serving as a house manager for five years.

John Cruz

Grammy winner singer-songwriter John Cruz has returned to the Vineyard to open his East Coast tour with three evening performances aboard the Black Dog’s Tall Ship Alabama. The first performance took place last night, July 19. He also plays tonight and tomorrow night. The concerts begin at 5 p.m. and cruise the Vineyard Sound for several hours, returning at 8 p.m.

Hooked on a Feelin’

E pluribus unum. From many musical sensations comes one Super Group to perform at Hooked seafood restaurant in Oak Bluffs on July 28 at 9 p.m. The musicians are Rick Marotta, drummer for Steely Dan and Paul Simon; Joe Caro, guitarist for Carly Simon and Lenny Kravitz; Neil Stubenhaus, bass guitarist for Sting and Barbra Streisand, and Jon Gilutin, keyboard for James Taylor and Diana Ross.

Tickets are $15 and available only at Hooked.

Party Time in a Square That’s Hip

It’s summer on Winter street in Edgartown and there’s a block party going on tomorrow.

In the summer of 1992, a few friends from Connecticut College, Wesleyan University and Skidmore College who knew each other from high school had the idea to spend the summer on the Vineyard doing what they liked best: singing.

Jody Alford and friends each gathered a couple of members from their respective collegiate a cappella groups and headed to the Island, forming a group they called the Vineyard Sound.

The benefit concert at the Tabernacle on Tuesday will be quite the sight to see. More importantly, it will be the one to hear.

David Crohan, celebrated pianist and former owner of David’s Island House in Oak Bluffs, is performing with several other musicians to benefit Freedom Guide Dogs breeding and training facility in New York and the Martha’s Vineyard Cancer Support Group.

Rare nautical charts from the late 1700s signed by a Vineyard sea captain and depicting the coast of Portugal and the Orkney Islands are among the treasures that have been recovered from what is believed to be the second oldest house on the Island, Sheriff’s Meadow Foundation executive director Adam Moore said this week.

On Thursday, May 24, Friends of Family Planning of Martha’s Vineyard Inc. hosted our annual art show benefit gala preview party. Each year we are overwhelmed by the generosity of our Island community. This year, our gala event (relying almost solely on donations) was one of the best and most successful ever, due to the many donors who made it possible.

Jawsfest: The Tribute has received numerous questions regarding our Summer for the Sharks conservation initiative, with people wondering if we are against the Boston Big Game Monster Shark Tournament that begins this week. The answer to this question is no; however, we would like to see that tournament convert to a catch-and-release event, as is happening with many such tournaments today. As a local business owner, who also runs TicketsMV.com, I fully appreciate the revenue derived by local businesses from events. I also appreciate that select shark populations have declined by a frightening 90 per cent in the last 40 years.

I read with a great deal of interest Prof. David Morris’s column on Thomas Paine (“The Long-Lasting Influence of Common Sense”). Readers should understand that Paine did not stop with the most cogent and perhaps first-published arguments on why the Americans should separate from the British Empire. He also wrote, just a few years later, two of the most important tracts on why society must care for its less fortunate citizens, in the second part of Rights of Man (1792) and Agrarian Justice (1797).