Just about everyone who lives year-round on the Vineyard has done it — made a booking for the last ferry of the day, on the off chance of running late, then driven onto an earlier boat.
It’s a convenient, no-cost precaution for customers of the Steamship Authority, but for the SSA itself, the practice is not convenient at all and certainly comes at a cost.
It means the last ferry of the day often runs with hardly anyone on it, particularly on weekends and holidays.
The Polly Hill Arboretum is full of special trees, but if there is one which is more special than all the rest, according to executive director Tim Boland, it is a magnolia Mrs. Hill planted more than 40 years ago.
What makes it extra special is not its beauty or it rarity, although it is both a gorgeous tree and one which really should not grow in these climes at all; it is the fact that it saved the arboretum.
Indirectly, but nonetheless it did.
It was not so much a matter of life imitating art as of life contradicting art.
More than 30 years ago, when they were filming the movie Jaws on Martha’s Vineyard, a young Jonathan Searle played the part of a kid who scared people out of the water by using a fake fin to pretend to be a great white shark.
But just a few days ago the same Jonathan Searle played a different role. Not the guy who carries out the shark hoax, but the police officer who busts the guy who carried out the shark hoax.
Almost a week after the devastating Independence Day fire which destroyed Café Moxie and severely damaged the Bunch of Grapes Bookstore, workmen finally began clearing away debris from the scene yesterday.
The smell of smoke still wafts along Main street Vineyard Haven, but the activity at last signals the start of the recovery process, delayed while insurance inspectors did their job.
Think of a someone older than dirt. Someone you would never expect to have made a discreet visit to Martha’s Vineyard. Someone who has political problems with religious fundamentalists.
No, not John McCain.
We’re talking about a woman, remarkably well preserved considering all she went through, often referred to by a single, four-letter first name associated with John Lennon and the Beatles.
Nope, not Yoko, either.
The name we’re looking for is Lucy.
No one would call the new book Island Lives a rip-roaring read. Certainly not its authors, Allan R. Keith and Stephen A. Spongberg.
“It’s dry as toast,” said Mr Spongberg the other day, talking about it, sitting beneath the trees at Polly Hill Arboretum. “Dry as toast,” he repeated. “The bibliography is the most important part.”
