When I arrived at the beach on November 3, 1979 this message was scratched into the dirt of the parking lot: LUCIANO WAS HERE, 22, 28, 36.
By Kib Bramhall
In honor of the seventieth Martha’s Vineyard Striped Bass and Bluefish Derby, we sent fishing legend Janet Messineo out trolling for fish tales. Then, in honor of the fortieth anniversary of Jaws, we chummed the waters ourselves for a couple of good shark stories. The result? Well, you should have been here that time when, holy crap...you wouldn’t have believed it....
What type of berry is safe to eat but not to plant? The answer isn’t so much a riddle as a home cook’s pro tip and a gardener’s cautionary tale. Autumn olives, small red berries with silver flecks, are abundant on the Island – too abundant, in fact. The native Asian shrubs and trees, introduced to the U.S. in the 1800s to line roadways and prevent erosion, today pose a significant threat to native foliage.
Do New England’s top lumberjacks really live in West Tisbury?
By Geoff Currier
You can spend more than $1,000 on a fly reel. But who needs it? Charlie Blair and I each caught derby fly-rod-record fish on reels that cost $25.
By Kib Bramhall
Everett Poole has a simple plan to fix the Island. But first you have to get him to slow down enough to tell you about it.
By Mollie Doyle
Seventy years ago this August, V-J Day set up a string of events that led me to the Vineyard and altered my life forever. When victory was announced, my mother made plans to visit her parents, who were vacationing at the Harborside Inn in Edgartown, and we set out the next day, taking the Cape Codder train from Grand Central Station in New York to Woods Hole, where we would board the Vineyard ferry.
By Kib Bramhall
Meet the brains and brawn behind the new Rosewater Market in Edgartown.
By Erin Ryerson
Lickety-split renovations are a specialty of sorts for Mark Snider.
By Phyllis Meras
Sometimes the arc of the moral universe is long and slow, and sometimes it curves sharply, making up for wasted time. That was the case last month as scattered calls to remove the Confederate battle flag from the South Carolina capitol ignited a nationwide call to expel Confederate symbols from all parks and government buildings.
By Tom Dunlop
Forty years ago Jaws put the Vineyard (masquerading as an island called Amity) and white sharks on the same Hollywood map. The celluloid great white shark that terrorized beachgoers gave sharks a bad rap, and swimmers reason for pause, for years.
By Sara Brown
As the wooden fishing boat slows to a halt, twenty-three rods rest perpendicularly on the red metal railing waiting for the signal. When the motor cuts, the weighted and squid-baited lines drop immediately into the water, finding their way down about fifty feet to the bottom. Tap, tap, tap, the hits come nearly instantly. Within minutes, maybe even seconds, amid shouts and whoops, silver fish dangle from multiple lines.
By Catherine Walthers
