When the new weather vane at the bandstand in Ocean Park is unveiled, it will be a product of a centuries-old trade brought to new life by Anthony Holand of Tuck and Holand Metal Sculptors.
For the Jim Thomas Spirituals Choir, the history is as much a part of the experience as the music. Tracing the evolution of American music through the Underground Railroad and the Middle Passage, Jim Thomas and his chorus sing a story of our cultural past.
The shores of the beach at Herring Creek, which flows into Menemsha Pond, are clear. A string of rocks tapers out into the cove, a lone rowboat floats at high tide. In the morning the water stands still, rippling from the occasional gust of wind, resounding the chirps and chatters of coastal birds. Gone from the shoreline are the black, netted bags that served as oyster pods in the attempt to revive the shellfish population in the pond over the last decade.
Where the Coast Guard boathouse once stood in Menemsha harbor, the shore slopes slowly down to the sea, revealing a beach long hidden from view. Stretching out from this new landscape stands a concrete dock, a gray slab cutting across the view to the Sound.
This panorama, a significant alteration of how this small fishing harbor looked for almost 70 years, comes into view one year after the massive fire that ravaged the Coast Guard boathouse and much of the drive-on dock.
As this year’s Fourth of July parade approached its grand finale at the Old Whaling Church on Main street in Edgartown, the faint whistling of fife and drum could be heard above the roar of the crowd, signaling the arrival of the parade’s leaders, the Island’s veterans, at their final stop.
As police lights flashed and sirens wailed through the heavy fog that settled in over Moshup Trail, 100 children, clad head to toe in their red-white-and-blue finery, paraded down Old South Road in Aquinnah.
What started nine years ago as a group of eight children strolling on Philbin Beach has transformed into a neighborhood event every year on the Fourth of July.
