Community
When most guests sit down to a dinner at Beetlebung Farm in Chilmark, they usually glance at the menu and then set it down again, absentmindedly imprinting it with grease and wine stains. But the more discerning will notice that the seemingly disposable item is actually a work of art — the design is innovative, the words have been selected for sound and form, and the ink has been elegantly fused with the paper.
Lynx Returns
The privateer Lynx, a 122-foot Baltimore clipper square topsail schooner, will be visiting the Vineyard next weekend. She arrives at Tisbury Wharf at noon on Friday, August 24 and will stay the weekend. This is a return visit. The ship was here last spring.
Lynx was built in 2001 in Rockport, Me. Her port of registry is New Hampshire; the foundation that runs her is based in Newport Beach, Calif. Jeff Wood, executive director of the Lynx Educational Foundation, said this trip is to commemorate the remembrance of the War of 1812.
Robert E. Kinnecom quit drinking 50 years ago. Today, the 81-year-old Oak Bluffs resident is absolutely certain he is alive today because of it and the unlikely help of a few fairly famous Vineyarders.
“My grandfather was a drunk. He was a barber and lost everything he had,” Mr. Kinnecom said.
After reading a recent Gazette about Vineyard House recently, Mr. Kinnecom decided to speak publicly about his personal journey to sobriety.
More than 60 participants traded in their books and bowls for sculpting tools on August 1 for the Edgartown Board of Trade’s annual sand sculpture contest, held at South Beach. Sand creations included a giant dog bowl, a mermaid, Pac Man and a shark chowing down on a swimmer’s leg, as well as a number of Olympic-themed creations. The winners, as judged by Jeff Donaroma, Libby Ellis, Bonnie DeSousa, Carlos DeSousa and Abbey Smith, are as follows.
Standing before the Enter sign at the Agricultural Society fairgrounds the week before the annual fair, there is a strong sense of anticipation. There’s not much to see. Foot-tall pink flags mark the spots for the vendors that will sell food and goods on the lawn. A few rides sit folded in the corner of the property. People drift in and out of the hall, submitting entries. The commotion is only beginning.
Last weekend, brightly-colored rides and parts of the ferris wheel began to appear on the Agricultural Society field in preparation for the annual fair starting this Thursday, August 16. Also on Saturday morning in Vineyard Haven, Tim Laursen put the finishing touches on another piece of fair-bound machinery: his hand-welded pig smoker.
This is Mr. Laursen’s and friend Everett Whiting’s third year at the fair doing business as Local Smoke, serving up pulled pork sandwiches from their Island-raised pigs.