A Martha’s Vineyard Love Story
Three Parts Romance, two parts nostalgia with a dash of African American cultural history make A Martha’s Vineyard Love Story an enjoyable Island cocktail. This slim novel follows an unlikely pair whose enduring attraction might seem unbelievable to anyone who didn’t fall in love for the first time in August by the ocean. Authors Kathleen…
The Liberator Among Us
Ten years after the decision she wrote changed America forever, Chief Justice Margaret H. Marshall reflects on democracy, marriage, and her intimate relationship with the Vineyard.
Notes from the Tackle Room: The Wooden Atom
In 1953 I found a wooden Atom in the mouth of a dead shark on South Beach. It was the first plug that I owned, and a couple of weeks later I caught a striper on it. That began my decades-long love affair with striped bass plugs, which continues to this day. The plug still hangs in my tackle…
Are You Ready for Magic Music?
After forty-something years the greatest Vineyard band you never heard of is releasing a debut album.
Down on the Farm
As idyllic as Island farming may seem, making a go of it is, and always was, a mysterious combination of constant hard work and occasional good luck. At West Tisbury’s iconic Nip’n’Tuck Farm, it’s always been, well, nip and tuck.
A Tale of Two Parties
Like many Vineyard regulars, writer Elizabeth Gates is wondering how we got here and where we’re going.
Mr. Bluffs Goes to Washington
Paris has the Louvre, London the British Museum. Washington has the Smithsonian, and now the Smithsonian has the Vineyard.
Al Styron’s The Books
The Map Thief; You Are Not Special and Other Encouragements;
Not Your Mama’s Game of Telephone
The artist and musician Sally Taylor was traveling with her family and the voice in her head was getting clearer.
The Little Yacht That Could…
It was all very genteel, downright “Corinthian” as sailors would say, referring to the British tradition of “gentlemen sailors” who race around buoys for the pure honor of being able to say they won. But even though there were to be no Bowie knives thrown or hogs running wild, there was nonetheless a whiff of…
How It Works: Tuna Fishing
Alex Friedman was getting antsy. Tuna season had opened the day before and he hadn’t gone out because it looked like there would be foul weather offshore. But now, as we sat in Oak Bluffs harbor onboard his thirty-five-foot H&H Downcast F/V, Dazed & Confused, the VHF radio was blurting out conversations between captains and…
Island Classic: The Flip-Flop
Listen. Hear that? No, not the roar of the ocean (or the honking at Five Corners). I’m talking about the soft, rhythmic patter so unmistakable it has a shoe named after it: the flip-flop. From the scattered pairs readily left behind at the sandy mouth of Lucy Vincent, to the street-slapping serenade heard all over…
Forever Young
Ask almost anyone about their childhood days at summer camp and they will regale you with tales of adventure, summer friendships, and cheesy camp songs they love to this day. At Sengekontacket Pond in Edgartown it’s no different. The many alumni of Fern and Feather Natural History Day Camp will tell you that they slept…
Wes Craven’s The Birds: Part 4
So when you get the call, well, will you have the guts to go?
From the Editor
Despite the sublime craziness of August on the Vineyard – craziness that is best left uncataloged lest the list of diversions itself cause early-onset late-August ennui – it is the moments of stillness that endure. Stillness is not the same as silence. Waves will lap or crash on sand or on rocks. Flags will flutter…
DAW: August Schedule
The Fireworks, Illumination — How in heaven or tarnation Does one find the time to spare And still spend four days at the Fair?
That's My Boat
That’s My Boat: Fred Murphy
Captain: Fred Murphy Home Port: Vineyard Haven harbor The Name: Ishmael The Boat: Forty-eight-foot knockabout (i.e., no bowsprit) schooner Fred Murphy was a twenty-three-year-old in the U.S. Merchant Marine in 1973 when he bought a wooden boat named Night Wind. She was one of six schooners built at the Captain O’Connell, Inc. boatyard in Quincy, Massachusetts,…
One Last Thing
A Cell Tower Grows in Chilmark
I knew it was only a matter of time before my mother sent her first text message. She was the last holdout in our family – a family that still reads newspapers cover-to-cover and owns landline phones. One by one, we all got laptops and cell phones. We began e-mailing at first, then texting –…
The Look
The Look, 1950
Irving Chapman, a founding member of the Egartown Reading Room, with hisdaughter Lucille “Tootie” Chapman at Edgartown Bathing Beach on Chappaquiddick.
