William S. O’Connell agrees he cannot have a heliport on his Chappaquiddick property, but he still believes that he can occasionally land and take off from there in his helicopter. And the town of Edgartown has filed a lawsuit to stop him.

Charter School Students

Plan Katrina Relief Work

A group of high school students from the Martha’s Vineyard Public Charter School will return to Biloxi, Miss., to continue their Hurricane Katrina relief work. The students will be traveling Jan. 6 through 12 to work with the Restoration Point non-profit organization.

Island Ambulance Services

Seek New Volunteer EMTs

Vineyard ambulance squads once again are appealing to Island residents to become a volunteer emergency medical technicians.

Jeff Pratt, president of the Martha’s Vineyard Association of EMTs and Tisbury ambulance coordinator, says that new emergency medical technicians are needed every year. Classes start in January and go through April. Participants can become an Island emergency medical technician by June.

Legion Will Join Wreaths

Across America Ceremony

American Legion Post 257 has volunteered to conduct the Wreaths Across America ceremony this year at the Oak Grove Cemetery in Vineyard Haven on Dec. 15.

Starting at noon, post members will lay seven ceremonial wreaths to remember those who gave their lives in service for our country.

Even before the 30th annual Island Cup game began on Saturday, things didn't look good for the visiting Whalers from Nantucket.

When the players in blue and white stormed the field before the game and tried to plant their flag, the wooden mast snapped in half and the Whalers' banner fell onto the ground.

Things only got worse for the Whalers after that.

The Vineyard exploded for 28 second quarter points, all fueled by Nantucket turnovers, to put the game out of reach early en route to a 48-6 drubbing.

A Real Thanksgiving

Written by Henry Beetle Hough. From the Vineyard Gazette edition of Nov. 19, 1971:

Thanksgiving editorials and proclamations are, in general, too “usual”; there is nothing one needs to know less about in order to produce an appropriate measure of rhetoric. Thanksgiving is able to carry itself and should continue to do so, but just the same I’d like to write something a little apart from the inherited pattern.

Martha’s Vineyard Glassworks, a hand-blown glassworks gallery and studio, will donate five per cent of December sales to the Safe Haven Project, an Island-based nonprofit learning organization that provides educational opportunities for the greater community of young people living with, or affected by, HIV/AIDS.

Libby Johnson, gallery manager and a member of the Safe Haven Committee, said Safe Haven is raising money to fund the organization’s spring camping season.

When the Elves Faire in Edgartown opens on Saturday, Dec. 8 at 10 a.m., children and parents can enjoy craft-making together, producing gnome or princess hats, snow globes and many other delights. Other favorite attractions are decorating gingerbread houses and face painting. Booths are set up with all the materials and a coach for each project.

The Journals of Constant Waterman, Paddling, Poling, and Sailing for the Love of It. By Matthew Goldman, Breakaway Books, Halcottsville, N.Y. 2007, page 336. $14.

Matthew Goldman has sailed into Vineyard waters with his book The Journals of Constant Waterman. Boat enthusiasts and especially wanna-be boat enthusiasts will enjoy the short stories assembled between the cover. His trade is boat repair and maintenance and a lot of other crafts. He lives in Stonington.

In the midst of Hanukkah, children’s author Sarah Marwil Lamstein polishes up timeless motifs about the mysterious ways of God in Letter on the Wind: A Chanukah Tale, her dexterous retelling of a folktale from the Middle East.

She will share the book on Friday, Dec. 7 at 7:30 p.m. upstairs at the Bunch of Grapes Bookstore on Main street in Vineyard Haven.