Despite a drop in the level of matching funds from the state, the Community Preservation Act has seen more than $825,000 directed from the state to Island towns this year, with the final installment delivered this month.
Combined with the local revenues, this means town community preservation boards have about $2 million for open space, community housing, historic preservation and recreation projects.
They’d chewed through the conch ceviche. They’d done the pot-roasted homegrown rabbit with Vineyard apple and sage sauce over garden-dug fingerling potatoes. They’d downed beach plum jelly, beach plum syrup, beach plum soy aioli and beach plum compote on dishes sweet and savory, and even Concord grapes on a vindaloo.
By the time the 33rd and final entry in Monday’s Wild Food Challenge was placed before the tasting panel at Détente, the three judges were relieved to find it was a digestif.
Featherstone Center for the Arts, the nonprofit arts campus on a hilltop in Oak Bluffs, has a new executive director, after its board appointed Ann Smith to replace Francine Kelly at its annual general meeting last Wednesday.
Ms. Kelly, who has vastly expanded Featherstone’s programs and fundraising since arriving in 2003, asked the 18-member board in August for retirement effective Labor Day. She will stay on as a consultant to plan events to promote the center’s 15th anniversary next year.
Tisbury School principal Richie Smith can describe exactly the moment he learned how his students performed in the annual Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System (MCAS) test: it was August 6, early morning, in his kitchen, on the telephone and he did cartwheels.
“Well, it was more jumps,” he revised. “But I react that way every year when I find out we made AYP.”
Three generations of the Oliver family of Edgartown had sailed their 22-foot Hereshoff Seasons from Mattapoisett on Tuesday, catching three nice bluefish for dinner on the way, when six-year-old Elizabeth Oliver became the center of a confrontation with the U.S. Coast Guard that devolved into a noisy standoff over individual rights, maritime authority and child safety, not to mention the issuing of six violations and numerous threats of legal counteraction.
Vineyard Haven beaches from Owen Park to Ralph Packer’s gas station remained closed Monday after electrical storm damage overnight on Friday caused a pump problem that allowed sewage to seep into storm drains which empty into the harbor between the Steamship Authority and the Black Dog Tavern.
