Julia Rappaport
Judy Blume loves to read. She has stacks of books piled around her house. They fill bookshelves, clutter the kitchen counter and sit precariously on coffee tables, leaving no room for coffee cups. "I wrote to Dave Eggers this winter," she said, gesturing to his book, The What of the What, which sat at the top of one pile. "He e-mailed back!"
She confessed that she still gets nervous around other writers, particularly if she has not yet met them.
Andrew Woodruff, the owner of Whippoorwill Farm who is best known for bringing community supported agriculture to the Vineyard, is scrambling to put together a group to buy Thimble Farm to block a sale of the farm to a private buyer.
The deadline is August 28 and the outcome is at best uncertain.
The gates opened half an hour early this year for the 146th annual Martha's Vineyard Agricultural Society Livestock Show and Fair because of the number of people milling in the parking lot. And at 10:45 a.m. yesterday the line in front of the West Tisbury firemen's hamburger booth was the shortest it will be all weekend. At peak hours, the wait for a grilled-to-perfection burger can take up to 15 minutes, but on this morning, only two people were waiting, their elbows up on the counter.
Rural West Tisbury May Favor Hens and Roosters - Legally
By JACK SHEA
West Tisbury is zoned as a rural agricultural town and there is ample case law, some of it dating to the early 20th century, that supports the rights of rural property owners to keep a flock of chickens in the backyard.
This is the opinion of town counsel Ronald H. Rappaport, who told the town building and zoning inspector in a letter this week that it is his call to make in a dispute between two Longview neighbors over noisy roosters.
She grew up in Chilmark, the twelfth generation of an Island farming family. He was raised in Brooklyn, N.Y., the grandson of Jewish immigrants. He had never farmed and she was all set to move to Boston. But life, horses and a flock of sheep intervened. Thirty-two years later Mitchell Posin and Clarissa Allen talk about their relationship, while inhabitants of the farm chime in with crows and bleats, contributing to the tale.
Interviews by Julia Rappaport
Mitchell
By this time next summer, it may be possible to watch the sunset from the Aquinnah cliffs and talk - uninterrupted - on a cell phone.
That is the hope anyway of Jeffrey Burgoyne, Aquinnah town administrator, who along with selectmen from Chilmark and West Tisbury, has been working for the past two years to launch a project to install a partially underground system to make uniform cell phone service available in the up-Island towns.