I am attuned to sound. I have been since I was a child and liked to capture the sounds, voices and happenings in my world on my red Take ‘n Tape Panasonic cassette recorder.

They had an old-fashioned hearth-warming party at Tom’s Neck farm on Chappaquiddick on Sunday afternoon. It was a gathering of relatives and old Island friends. They lit a fire.

they’d never been there in the summer before when the white morning sky burns the mist like snowy cinders

Great-grand-daughter of a Vineyard whaling captain, daughter of a West Tisbury poet and a New Jersey educator renowned for his Island linoleum block prints, longtime West Tisbury bed and breakfast proprietor, mystery book writer and writing teacher, Cynthia Riggs has now written not only of her Vineyard years but of much more.

When you lose your partner, tasks envelop you in that first year. Change your bank accounts, send death certificates to Social Security and some credit card issuers and, yes, you also have to get rid of things.

Reading the newspaper, watching television or surfing the internet, we acknowledge these are turbulent times. However, examining world affairs, the most pressing issue seems to be the Coney Island hot dog eating controversy