Independence Day 2008

Small American flags flutter around the gravestones at the Westside Cemetery in Edgartown, where Bobby Hagerty has trimmed the old cedars and maples in time for the Fourth of July. The cemetery is a peaceful place to pass through on the short walk from uptown to downtown, all dusky grass and yellow sedum. The town superintendent doesn’t like the sedum and wants to get rid of it, but Bobby, who is a veteran tree and plant man, has told him he should leave it alone.

Bobby is right; the sedum is pretty.

Today signifies the casting-off of the yoke of British oppression. The date we thumbed-off King George 3rd, denouncing his imperialist abuses and told him and his twit subjects to leave us alone.

I say us — I mean you. You see, I myself am English scum.

The recent decision by the United States Supreme Court that will in essence allow all members of the country to arm themselves “to protect themselves” has been met in some quarters with gloomy portents of a nation that will be scarred by increasing gun fire and the dire results thereof. Others have taken a much more roseate view of the court’s action. Nowhere was the 5-4 pro-gun action met with more whooping and cheering than here on Martha’s Vineyard led by an exultant turkey population.

Ringing in the Fourth

From the Vineyard Gazette editions of July, 1983:

Church bells rang at midnight on the Fourth of July when Gratia Harrington was a little girl.

It was the Methodist Church in the village of Vineyard Haven that rang the bells, she remembers. She knows it wasn’t the Catholic Church, for those bells had a different tone. And it couldn’t have been the Episcopal Church, she says. “The Episcopalians weren’t that well organized in those days.”

FOUNDATION GONE ASTRAY

Editors, Vineyard Gazette:

As a great nephew of Caroline Tuthill and a longtime supporter of Sheriff’s Meadow, I am completely aghast that this once well-respected, august conservation organization could have lost its way by straying from its core mission of preservation and conservation. It saddens me greatly that the efforts of so many on the Island to preserve and protect has been undone by greed, negligence and naivete.

A Dancer’s Legacy

Pretty straw hats hung in the trees on Saturday afternoon at The Yard, a quiet adornment to the hushed, leafy campus off Middle Road in Chilmark that has served as a summer colony and retreat for dancers and choreographers for thirty five years. A small crowd gathered to remember the life of Patricia Nanon, the woman who created this place which is the Vineyard’s Jacob’s Pillow.