From Gazette editions of March, 1960:

Elsewhere appears the advertisement of the Mittark real estate agency of Gay Head, of which Lorenzo D. Jeffers is the proprietor, having been duly licensed and bonded. It is somewhat significant that Mr. Jeffers has chosen to call his agency “Mittark.” Mr. Jeffers is traditionally said to be a lineal descendant of Mittark and a hereditary chief in his own right, but more than that Mittark is credited with having entered upon a gigantic real estate deal of his own, back in the era of colonialization.

Although official records may not show it, there has been considerable written about the real estate transaction whereby Mittark sold to agents of the Earl of Dongan the whole of Gay Head, plus half of what is now Chilmark. Some writers have declared that not only did Mittark lack any title whatever to the land so sold, but that a considerable portion of it had previously been sold to settlers by the rightful owner before Mittark came upon the scene.

Now the descendant of Mittark enters the real estate business and humorously refers to the questionable acts of his ancient ancestor, who was neither licensed nor bonded, but whose scalp was sought in earnest by some of his Indian associates who were displeased with him.

If you see an unusual number of cars wending their way along the North Road, they will probably be manned by bird lovers, rallying to the rescue of hundreds of chewinks (towhees) which turned up the first of the week, and which are obviously weak from hunger, cold and exhaustion. No one knows whether they flew here willy-nilly because of the storm winds, whether they left the South for better times here, or whether they may have arrived during the mild days in February and been forced out by hunger. Mrs. Roger Engley says it was impossible to count the number of these favorite birds, but they seemed to be in better shape than when they first appeared, when they were obviously weak and had difficulty in flying up from the road and surmounting the snow banks on either side. It is often necessary to go into second gear to avoid the starving birds, thickly bunched on the roads.

One of the most eagerly anticipated events in the current opera season has been the re-introduction of Verdi’s opera Simon Boccanegra into the Metropolitan Opera’s repertoire. No little portion of the excitement that has been generated rested on the fact that the director of the new production is Margaret Webster, one of the theatre’s most brilliantly shining lights, who is a summer resident.

It was in 1950 that Rudolf Bing, then the newly appointed manager of the Met, approached Miss Webster about directing his production of Verdi’s Don Carlo. “I told him that I would, but that I wasn’t equipped for it, even though I could read a score. His reply was simple. ‘Go see a performance at the Met,’ he said, ‘and if you don’t think you can improve on what you see, we’ll drop the whole matter.’ Well, I went to the Met, knew I could do better, and that was that.” Miss Webster said that opera directing is very difficult. “What you learn in opera is boldness and breadth and a reduction to essentials.”

Red sails in the sunset have not been too uncommon, either in song or in Edgartown harbor. But what about red sails with golden dragons on them? Coming on a slow boat from China, Hong Kong to be specfic, is a 30-foot junk possessing such sails, destined to arrive in Boston about the first of June and in Edgartown harbor a little later. The junk was purchased in Hong Kong by F. Gordon Brown, who has been doing a bit of globe-trotting this winter and whose eye was taken by the beautifully proportioned and constructed Oriental vessel. According to word he sent Norton & Easterbrooks boatyard, he feels that American yachtsmen would do well to consider the junk seriously as a pleasure vessel. He himself has, and he intends to sail the junk at Edgartown this summer.

Since the big snow the air has been filled with tales of unusual happenings. Mr. and Mrs. Walter Jenkinson of the North Road keep pigeons, also hens, Rhode Island Reds to be exact. The pigeons fly down to peck grain with the fowl and hobknob with the barnyard poultry. Six weeks ago one of the pigeons was observed to be setting and no attention was paid to the bird until she came off the nest: instead of a squab, she had one lone Rhode Island Red chicken! The Jenkinsons, astonished that a pigeon could hatch out a hen’s egg, watched developments closely: while the mother pigeon did not lack affection, she was deeply disappointed at the slow development of the chick and did not object when the chicken was taken into the house the better to shelter and feed it. The Jenkinsons have no idea how this all came about or whether the chicken will suddenly take off and fly up on the roof with its mother’s kin.

Compiled by Cynthia Meisner

library@mvgazette.com