Little Bighorn: A Novel; The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry.
By Alexandra Styron
Three or four times a year, an excavator crawls out to the barrier beaches between some of our great ponds and the open ocean and makes incisions in the sand that open up floodgates. This is a diesel-powered version of a ritual that goes back to ancient times.
By Geoff Currier
The waistband on these swimming trunksHas suffered one too many dunksAnd now, by way of striking back,It gives its owner too much slack.
By D.A.W.
Captain: Wayne Iacono Home Port: Menemsha Name: Freedom The Boat: Thirty-five-foot Bruno & Stillman fiberglass lobster boat. Built 1980 in Newington, New Hampshire. The Other Boat: Warrior, a twenty-foot fiberglass scallop skiff, makers unknown.
By Ivy Ashe
Ted Williams, “the greatest hitter who ever lived,” was also a star in the sport fishing world and a member of the International Game Fish Association Hall of Fame. Although he never fished on the Island, members of the derby committee and the Chamber of Commerce traveled to Fenway Park and presented him with a striper caught in one of the first derbies.
By Kib Bramhall
At Studioshop in Oak Bluffs, a mother-daughter design team has a world of ideas.
By Heidi Sistare
If you aren’t already acquainted with Tony Horwitz’s winning brand of travelogue history (Blue Latitudes, One for the Road, etc.), do yourself a favor and head to an Island bookstore. Or save the gas and download the e-book BOOM: Oil, Money, Cowboys, Strippers, and the Energy Rush That Could Change America Forever.
By Alexandra Styron
Hummingbirds are on their way now.Summer catbirds? Any day now!Ospreys land on last year’s poles,As bluebirds flirt with orioles.
By D.A.W.
The old Lagoon Pond drawbridge had a good run, but after seventy-five years it was more than a little cantankerous.
By Geoff Currier
Captain: John Thayer Home Port: Lagoon Pond, Martha’s Vineyard Marina The Name: Kittiwake III. “I do not change the names of boats.” The Boat: Twenty-six-foot bass boat originally built of cedar on oak by Erford Burt at Burt’s Boatyard in 1952. The boatyard is now Martha’s Vineyard Marina, on the Lagoon [formerly Maciel Marine].
By Ivy Ashe
Fifty years ago, Anne Hale helped found the Felix Neck Wildlife Sanctuary on the shores of Sengekontacket Pond in Edgartown. Twenty-six years ago she published Moraine to Marsh, a slender, spiral-bound volume that became a treasured go-to guide to the flora and fauna of the Vineyard.
Lungs tight from kicking up sawdust on a newly cleared trail, I searched my backpack for my inhaler. Weariness was written on my friends’ faces too. A dusty, panting dog lay in front of us, his head turning slowly to drink from a bowl of water. We had been hiking for sixteen miles – a journey that began halfway across the Island at Katama Point Preserve.
By Alison L. Mead
