Idyll Chatter

From Gazette editions of December, 1935:

At the Table

From Bill Caldwell’s 1983 “The Day After:”

Please pass the bicarb. That second round of pie a la mode was a mistake. Indeed the entire notion of acknowledging nature’s kindness by feasting may have been a mistake. The Pilgrims should have celebrated by fasting. Something is missing from this eyewitness account of the first harvest festival:

Dishing Local

From the Gazette Turkey Files:

The turkeys that adorn Thanksgiving tables come mostly from the mainland. But there was once a time in the not-too-distant past when the Island-producd turkey was as much a part of Island gourmet eating as Island-produced seafood.

At Loggerheads

From November, 1985 Gazette editions:

U.S. Congressman Gerry Studds told a crowd of more than 100 in Tisbury that on the way to the Vineyard he saw a rainbow. From the sound of how things went in Washington the previous week, he needed it. The gloomy news of a federal budget still suffering from chronic imbalance and Coast Guard belt-tightening measures that left the coast unprotected from drug running and illegal fishing fit right in with the gray day.

Ports of Call

From Gazette editions of November, 1935:

Gifts from the Sea

From a 1961 Gazette edition:

It was quite recently that the conversation among a group of representative men was pertaining to the valuation of real estate for taxation purposes. One man in the group said: “The biggest part of the houses in the town of ________ were built of lumber picked up on the beaches.”