News
Historic Oak Bluffs
On Thursday, August 13 the Oak Bluffs historical commission continues its summer programs with Revisiting Summer Recreation in Oak Bluffs - 1870s to 1930s. The program takes place at the Oak Bluffs Public Library Meeting Room from 6 to 7:30 p.m. A slide show will accompany information about croquet, roque, bathing, roller skating, horse racing, biking, golf, tennis, baseball and the Flying Horses. Little known facts will be shared. Refreshments will be served.
In the process of promoting Richard Russo’s new novel That Old Cape Magic, local booksellers Dawn Braasch (Bunch of Grapes) and Susan Mercier (Edgartown Books) seem to have tapped into some old Vineyard magic: a sense of cooperation, community and support.
In an interview yesterday over coffee, the two women shared an easy camaraderie. They are fast friends, as comfortable discussing their common business struggles as sharing family updates.
A Columbus, Ohio, man died on Friday afternoon after he was pulled from the ocean at Abel’s Hill Beach in Chilmark where he had been swimming with his wife.
William Laidlaw Jr., who worked as chief executive officer of the Ohio Historical Society and was a longtime seasonal resident of Abel’s Hill, was pronounced dead at the Martha’s Vineyard Hospital at 5:28 p.m. He was 66.
The Chilmark Road Race is about much more than speed. How many contests pit septuagenarians against seven-year-olds? How often do you see Crocs on the starting line? Where else do people doing a 20-minute mile get such an enthusiastic round of cheers?
Behind FEMA, there is LEMA. And behind the Local Emergency Management Agency for Oak Bluffs, there is Peter Martell who, on a recent afternoon, is at the desk of his gloomy office at the Wesley Hotel, facing the door and fielding phone calls.
The room is lined with disaster management literature, Steamship Authority deck plans, stacks of Island directories and maps of flood zones.
Don’t we all feel an extra measure of sympathy for that category of victims of Bernie Madoff’s vast fraudulent investment scheme, the ones whose names were tagged with the descriptor philanthropist?
Well, at least in some cases, we should not. Some of them were far from being hapless victims. Some made, and then hid, millions, or in at least one case, billions of dollars, says Lucinda Franks, a Pulitzer-Prize-winning investigative journalist.