One of the great public views on the Vineyard at the Tashmoo Overlook is disappearing behind a wall of willows, but instead of calling in tree surgeons to open the vista up, the trees’ owners have called in their lawyers.
The Tisbury selectmen complained on Tuesday night that despite more than a year of attempts to negotiate a solution, the owners of the trees, the Thomas and Ginny Payette family of Tashmoo Farm, remained intransigent and have now refused to talk further, except through their legal representative.
Red wine and cigarettes, dirty jokes and skinny dipping, late night sorties onto the streets of Oak Bluffs in outrageous costume — the manifestations of Abby Bender and Brent Alberghini’s 14-year relationship tend toward the risky and risque. But 12 years ago their offbeat ideas of friendship and community also nurtured something of an Island institution, the annual Built on Stilts community dance festival. The festival begins its week-long run this coming Friday.
Interviews by Mike Seccombe
Sen. Barack Obama should consider his defeated rival for the Democratic party presidential nomination, Sen. Hillary Clinton, as his running mate in November, political analyst David Gergen told a Vineyard audience on Wednesday.
Without tough political fighters like Senator Clinton working with him, Mr. Gergen said, Senator Obama risks being overwhelmed by the same Republican attack machine which had so effectively “Swift-boated” John Kerry’s bid.
It was billed as a public forum on race, gender, age and religion in the 2008 election, but right from the outset it was clear that one of the four topics would dominate the discussion held before a huge crowd of more than 900 people at the Martha’s Vineyard Regional High School Performing Arts Center on Wednesday.
Greg Craig first came to the Vineyard at the invitation of his future wife, Derry Noyes, for the end of summer 1973. A year later they came back for their honeymoon. As you might expect, it was a time of high excitement.
“We were married on July 27,” he recalled on Sunday, sitting on the lawn of the family place at Menemsha, “Three or four of the guests couldn’t make it because they were staffing the judiciary committee, which was taking votes on the articles of [President Richard Nixon’s] impeachment.
It is one of the enduring pieces of Martha’s Vineyard lore: you take your recycling to the transfer station, separate it as directed into containers for plastics, paper, cardboard, aluminum and so on, and then at the end of the day it all gets tossed in together and dumped.
Like glass, the myth recycles endlessly. But it is a myth.
