Sam Bungey
The sounds of a bloody brawl direct me to the football field behind the regional high school where the junior varsity team is warming up for Saturday. Getting nearer, one cry stands out. “I want to see Balboni get killed!” I quicken my step, wondering whether I’m about to scoop an altogether more serious event.
Martha’s Vineyard junior varsity players, fully prepared to face the Nantucket junior varsity team this Saturday, were frustrated by a late cancellation from Nantucket. Citing a lack of numbers the Nantucket High School announced it would not be able to provide a competing team. “Obviously we’re not happy at all,” said Vineyard junior varsity coach Phil Hughes this week.
Preliminary plans for converting part of the old Edgartown School to a performing arts center were presented to Edgartown selectmen by the school reuse committee on Monday.
Committee co-chairmen Stuart Fuller and James Cisek detailed plans to convert the old gymnasium and cafeteria into a theatre space, along the lines of Tisbury’s Katharine Cornell Theatre. The group plans to seek $64,000 in community preservation act funding for initial design work and expects final building costs to reach $500,000.
SAT scores at the Martha’s Vineyard Regional High School have dipped below the Massachusetts average, according to a report submitted to the high school committee this week by guidance director Michael McCarthy.
Backstage at the high school performing arts center, director and manager Jim Novack, 61, has assembled a horror show of mangled pianos. A gnarly Hammond, salvaged for $50 from a Vineyard basement some years ago, is crammed into the darkened corner, next to an upright from the 1950s, with a missing front rudely exposing the instrument’s strings and hammers. To its right stands an Everett piano, manufactured for institutional use. Its keys stick, sounding flat notes in perpetuity until physically pulled back in to place.
The Edgartown selectmen two weeks ago quietly gave a nod of approval to a plan which would convert an area of the inner harbor between the Reading Room and the Edgartown Yacht Club into a marina with up to 100 slips.
A provisional plan for the marina was presented to the selectmen by Edgartown resident Michael Berwind at a Friday morning meeting on Oct. 19, three days before the regular selectmen’s meeting. The Friday meeting was legally posted.