Mark Alan Lovewell
Sometime this summer, Vineyarders will have another opportunity to buy freshly-harvested blue mussels from Vineyard Sound. The forecast is even better for the year 2012, if all goes according to plan for Menemsha fishermen Alec Gale and Tim Broderick.
The two men have big plans. They have been working with the town of Chilmark, the Martha’s Vineyard Shellfish Group and others on an experimental blue mussel farm off the north shore of the Vineyard.
James A. (Jim) Tuck, an archaeologist who has sifted through coastline soil looking for stories that go back centuries here and afar, gave a talk Saturday night at the Barnacle Club. Mr. Tuck, a resident of Hines Point, has been exploring the earliest history of whaling in Labrador waters. His search has taken him back to a time well before the Vineyard was discovered by European explorers.
The winter of 2011 is one for the record books throughout the Northeast, but on the Vineyard it has been a different story altogether. Snow on the mainland has been measured in feet, while on the Vineyard it has been measured in inches. Ice has been the Vineyard’s most steady winter companion so far.
Tucked as it was into a quirky little spot in the middle of the busiest intersection on the Island, Courtesy Motors was a place where you always needed directions to find it, but once found you knew your car would be in good hands, whether for a simple oil change or a complicated clutch repair.
Now the reputable car repair business that was located for 30 years off Five Corners in downtown Vineyard Haven has moved. Last fall Courtesy Motors relocated to a bigger place off Holmes Hole Road. It has more space, more parking and friendly neighbors.
Had a groundhog stirred from his sleep on Martha’s Vineyard on Wednesday morning, he would not have seen his shadow, presaging a short time before spring. Cynthia Riggs was more concerned about the ice out on the landscape and roads on Wednesday morning when she woke up. For her this was a big social day, when a lot of her friends and townspeople were coming for a party.
A very big party.
Robert Burns, the bard of Scotland, would have had a pleasant evening at the Harbor View Hotel in Edgartown on Saturday night. More than 100 Vineyarders turned out for the 24th annual Robert Burns Nicht Supper. There were toasts. Members of the Scottish Society of Martha’s Vineyard recited the poet’s words and sang his lyrics. They shared in the humor of a good Scottish story.