Santa Special at Spa

Though snow remains elusive, the holidays are here and presents abound.

This year the Mansion House is taking on the role of Santa with a gift-giving promotion: a complimentary day pass to the health club with the purchase of any gift certificate to the spa, health club or restaurant, Zephrus. Treat yourself or someone else. Each day pass offers the chance to try out a new exercise class, take a dip in the heated pool or recline in the hot tub, sauna or steam room, for free.

My early childhood was spent in a beautiful four-story New York city brownstone that my great-grandparents owned. The floors were wood and always polished; each floor had its own kitchen, bathrooms with large giant claw-foot tubs, and a unique style that reflected its occupants. My parents, siblings and I lived on the upper floor, my great-grandparents lived on the floor directly beneath us, and my grandparents beneath them. But despite the brownstone’s blueprint that gave us the chance to live apart, we never did.

There was almost no one on the first deck of the MV Martha’s Vineyard on the 2:30 p.m. boat out of Woods Hole on Nov. 16. Once the motor vessel had turned around to head out across the Sound, the quiet was deafening— no hum of conversations, no cell phones in use, no shuffling footsteps, no babies’ cries, no children’s running feet, no greetings, no laughter, no one. The vacant seats spooked me a bit. Is this what the end would be like?

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Ho, Ho, Hot Breakfast

You know what they say about breakfast: It’s the most important meal of the day, necessary to sustain energy. So it’s no wonder that even with Santa’s hectic holiday schedule, he’s scheduled time on-Island to enjoy an array of eggs, sausages, homefries and pancakes.

The jolly man in red will stop by the Wharf in Edgartown on Dec. 11 from 8 to 10:30 a.m to partake. Admission is $8 per adult and $4 per child, cash only. Photos with Santa are $5.

Please Adopt Us

Trained as a scientist, Neil Atkins can detail the very moment when an enzyme breaks down from a complex sugar to a simple sugar. 

Whether it’s in a sterile medical research lab or the peanut-shell-laden Offshore Ale Brewery Company in Oak Bluffs, Mr. Atkins has discovered little difference when it comes to studying molecules and creating a fine beer.

In the book Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong, college history professor James Loewen tackles the subject of why nearly all high school students find history boring. One of his main conclusions is that textbooks place characters from history into one of two categories: Hero or Villain. There are no gray shadings, no nuance as to how nearly everyone, in both character and action, can be both good and bad, misguided and prophetic.

An Edgartown woman was arrested and charged last week in connection with a series of break-ins involving stolen prescription drugs from private homes in three Island towns.

Joann Hathaway, 52, was arraigned in Edgartown district court on Dec. 1 on six counts of breaking and entering in the daytime (a felony), two counts of larceny from a building and two counts of larceny under $250.

The U.S. Coast Guard has scaled down its deign for a new boathouse in Menemsha, but Chilmark selectmen said this week that it was still too big.

“The height is still an issue,” said selectman and board chairman Frank Fenner at a special presentation Tuesday afternoon. “Everything seems to be growing and we’re trying to contain this a little bit and not get into a position where everyone is up in arms about a mammoth structure.”