Mark Alan Lovewell
The Edgartown Yacht Club’s annual Round the Island race begins at 8 a.m. tomorrow morning, and by Wednesday afternoon already there were 46 sailboats registered to start in the 67-mile contest. It is one of the three big racing events for the Edgartown club, with sailors from along the East Coast here for a full day of sailing.
Recreational boat traffic in Vineyard harbors was off during the first weeks of summer, but harbor masters report that all changed last Friday, when all four harbors were suddenly full for Independence Day weekend.
“I don’t know if it is the weather, the price of gasoline and the economy,” said Dennis Jason, Chilmark harbor master. “It could be all three.”
Three years ago, Rose Abrahamson told a Vineyard Gazette reporter her art show then at the Shaw Cramer Gallery was her last. Now this summer, at 89 years of age, she is saying this show at the same gallery will be her last.
As talented and respected as she is, whenever Mrs. Abrahamson produces new paintings it calls for an exhibit. And just as well she is having another, because this show includes what she calls the best piece she ever has made.
Matthew Stackpole has ridden the crest of so many successful Island endeavors for so long, it should be no surprise that on Saturday, July 9, he will receive a coveted Island award. Mr. Stackpole is the recipient of the second Walter Cronkite Award; he will be honored at the 20th annual Seafood Buffet and Auction, a fund-raiser for Sail Martha’s Vineyard at Tisbury Wharf.
The horror of the Civil War was the graphic and powerful subject of the 1989 Academy Award-winning film Glory, screened at the Katharine Cornell Theatre on Monday night. The event kicked off the Civil War Film Series, jointly sponsored by the Martha’s Vineyard Film Society and the Martha’s Vineyard Museum to commemorate the country’s most deadly war through movies, talks and exhibitions. The museum recently launched an exhibit titled We Are Marching Along: Martha’s Vineyard and the Civil War which continues until April 2012.
The Edgartown Fire Department is celebrating its 175th anniversary, and so, not for the first time, firefighters from Edgartown will have a prominent place in the Fourth of July parade planned for Monday.
It was the Edgartown fire department that hosted the first Fourth of July celebration in town, in 1844. The party included a lot of local pomp, a parade, plenty of flag-waving, patriotism and a dinner.