Commentary
From a Visitor’s Diary in 1872:
The diary of a visitor to Oak Bluffs in 1872 gives not only a record of what summer visitors sought and found but also invites many contrasts with the present. Here are reproduced segments of the diary written by Henrietta R. Hawes, and her comments have preserved more than a little of her personality.
By Nicole Galland
We recently moved into a place of almost inexpressible beauty. There are many such on Martha’s Vineyard. I appreciate that beauty; it adds to my love of the place. But it is not the sum of my love. What makes this place so special is the essential Vineyardness of both the home and our relationship to it.
A few weeks ago I went on a bike trip to Woods Hole with a group from The Anchors in Edgartown. We rode the bike path to North Falmouth and back, a pretty ride past a stretch of beach and a varied landscape of woods, fields and cranberry bog. As I pedaled along, shifting my 18 gears, a helmet planted firmly on my head, I remembered my first trip to Martha’s Vineyard. I arrived then on a three-speed Raleigh with an army surplus saddlebag slung over the rear fender and nothing but hair on my head.
The crowd looked frighteningly large. I had butterflies in my stomach and my palms were sticky as I searched for my mother in the stands. My previous experience with a skillet had been stationary and involved eggs, not throwing, but I had impulsively announced in an editorial meeting at the Gazette (where I am working as an intern this summer) that I would enter the 14th Annual Women’s Skillet Throw at the Agricultural Fair. What had I been thinking? But there was no time to back out.
NO PREFERENCE
Editors, Vineyard Gazette:
I have to question the math and management of the Steamship Authority’s Islander Preferred reservations system. I write this Sunday morning after telephonically punching my way through to the phone reservation center and being told that all of tomorrow (Monday) is sold out — six minutes after they began answering phones at 8 a.m.
Cliff Hangers
From Gazette editions of August, 1986: