Lighthouse Walk

The National Senior Health and Fitness Lighthouse Walk will be held this Wednesday, May 27, at 10 a.m. A nationwide event, the walk is meant to promote active and healthy lifestyles through physical fitness. Those interested may register with Cathryn at the Edgartown Council on Aging by calling 508-627-4368. Three routes of varying lengths are on offer, and participants can create their own pace and desired length of walking distance. The first 20 registrants will receive a free pedometer.

A public hearing will be held in West Tisbury at 7 p.m. on Wednesday at the public safety building on State Road on the proposal from American Tower Corporation to build a distributed antenna system (DAS) to improve cell phone coverage in the three up-Island towns.

The town last year signed a memorandum of understanding with Aquinnah and Chilmark to join together and build a new DAS system, although since then some residents have questioned the plan and called for the town to drop out of the deal altogether.

The Island Cup, the storied inter-Island battle between the Vineyard and Nantucket high school football teams that comes around every November, will have a markedly different feel this year. Nantucket coach Vito Capizzo, who is as storied as the rivalry, announced this week he is retiring after 45 years.

The women of Martha’s Vineyard were ablaze with enthusiasm as they gathered at the Old Whaling Church on the night of Tuesday, May 19, to hear a talk entitled: Seven Secrets of a Woman on Fire.

The Martha’s Vineyard Women’s Network year-end event welcomed life and executive coach Debbie Phillips to promote her national organization, Women on Fire, and to offer personal and career guidance to professional women of the Island.

Rain and drizzle forced volunteers, staff and supporters for the new YMCA building into a huddle beneath a small tent at Monday’s groundbreaking ceremony. At the center of the huddle was a scale model of the new 38,000-square-foot facility.

Unusual sounds are coming out of the normally sedate Up-Island Senior Center at Howes House this Monday afternoon in May. Shortly after a barefoot man jumps out of a van to unload a set of conga drums, the rhythms from palms and sticks start to reverberate throughout the building.

One morning in 1934, when Nelson Bryant was eleven years old, his father bought him a twenty-gauge shotgun. He took it out to the marsh at the head of a great salt pond near his house to look for birds. The landscape around him had changed little in the past five thousand years. He could turn in every direction and see just one house. Before long, a black duck flew by, and he took aim, pulled the trigger, and watched the bird drop to the ground. It was Christmas Day.

It was a mixed group that gathered in the Polly Hill Arboretum Saturday night about 5:30 p.m. From this aging grandmother to a six-month-old baby boy, and in between stood six lovely teenaged girls in their colorful prom gowns, contrasting shawls, wrist corsages, makeup, and recently done hair styles. As they stood together in front of a blooming rhododendron bush, bookended by two handsome young teenaged boys, Sal and Josh, in black tuxedos — one with a forest green vest and the other with a silver vest — they giggled and posed for their pre-prom photographs.

call to arms

Editors, Vineyard Gazette:

The following letter was sent to the New England Fishery Management Council Herring Advisory Panel on May 11:

Memorial Day 2009

What will the summer bring? This has been on the minds of Islanders throughout the long winter. As sidewalks and farm fields lay frozen beneath endless layers of snow and ice, as the economic downturn cast dark shadows across the nation, as Islanders pulled in their collective horns and counted their pennies along with their blessings — the question hung in the air wherever you went. What will the summer bring?