NANCY GARDELLA

508-693-3308

(vhavenvgazette@yahoo.com)

Get out your handkerchiefs and checkbooks, here is my annual post-Thanksgiving holiday shopping wish list.

Church Annual Gift Sale

The First Congregational Church in West Tisbury invites the community to its Greens, Food, and Gift Sale on Saturday, Dec. 8 between the hours of 9 a.m. and 1 p.m. Coffee, hot cider, and hot chocolate will be available early and a homemade soup luncheon will be served starting at 11:30 a.m.

JOHN S. ALLEY

508-693-2950

(alleys@vineyard.net)

Most of us are still recovering after a wonderful Thanksgiving dinner yesterday shared with family and friends. The Steamship Authority and Cape Air have been very busy this week transporting people to and from the Island.

David Bouck of West Tisbury is enrolled in SEA Semester, a study-abroad program through Sea Education Association in Woods Hole while away from studies at Endicott College. David has successfully completed the Sea Semester’s six-week shore component earning academic credit for curriculum in oceanography, nautical science and maritime studies.

JANE N. SLATER

508-645-3378

(slaterjn@comcast.net)

Chilmarkers can save gasoline and shop in town this holiday season. Many shops will remain open weekends. The kickoff for the holiday shopping will be a flea market at the community center on Dec. 8 from 9 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. Coco Adams asks all vendors of crafts and handmade items to come out and sell their holiday wares. There will be antiques and attic treasures, too. Ethel Sherman will be there with her favored jellies and jams. Please call Coco at 508-645-3414 for details.

Congratulations to Cheryl Andrews-Maltais on her victory in winning the seat as tribal council chairperson for the Wampanoag Tribe of Gay Head (Aquinnah). She will take office Jan. 5. Cheryl is the daughter of Joseph R. and Edith (Correia) Andrews of North Dartmouth. She is the wife of Daniel Maltais and the mother of 11-year-old Samantha Maltais.

Thanksgiving 2007

FOR NANCY WHITING

Editors, Vineyard Gazette:

I was saddened to learn of the recent death of Nancy Whiting, former librarian of the West Tisbury library. She made it classy to love books, and generations of up-Islanders benefitted from it.

I’m trying to be thankful, and that should be easy at this time of year. Here I am in Chilmark where I enjoy the legacy left by my parents, Henry and Peggy Scott. That legacy is our family house, facing south on South Road, set between old roadside stone walls, close to an open meadow and looking south toward Chilmark Pond and the sea. Known in the community as the Scott House, my dad had named it Pipe Down, after his days in the U.S. Navy, 1944-45, then stationed on Martha’s Vineyard.

Driving down Edgartown’s School street with lamp-maker Billy Hoff is like a scene from Men In Black — except that, instead of aliens, you see that lanterns handmade by Lamplighter Corner Inc., are right under your nose, and absolutely everywhere. “That’s a bullseye pane,” he says, steering his pickup past a blue-front glass piece on a three-foot high solid brass lamp. “There’s another couple . . . I made that one.