Phyllis Meras
I am penniless and without a passport right now in Istanbul, many of my friends believe. That’s not at all impossible. I could well be.
Every once in awhile when I was a child summering at East Chop, a four or five-masted schooner would come into sight, white sails filled with wind.
In 1973, when Pulitzer Prize-winning UPI journalist Lucinda Franks was 26, she was sent to interview U.S. attorney Robert Morgenthau, who had just been fired by Richard Nixon.
As President Obama begins his fifth Vineyard vacation and the Secret Service descends on the Island, I am reminded of when decades ago I was Stasi File No. 014204797Z to the East German secret police.
I am told that multiflora roses are invasive and that it was all a mistake when the first of them were planted in the 1950s or 1960s to border up-Island fields. It is true that I must now duck under a sharp-thorned multiflora rose bush to get to my compost heap, but why should I mind?
After 61 years, Yuval Elizur, Israeli journalist and former Israeli consul in New York, recently returned to the Vineyard for a visit. In the 1950s, he had honeymooned with his bride, Judith Neulander, at the Menemsha Inn. He nostalgically remembered losing his wedding ring on a swim there and enjoying evening slide shows offered by the late Alfred Eisenstadt, a fellow inn guest.
