He was an artist and historian, author and harbor master, boat yard owner and model maker, designer of homes, builder of lobster boats and family yawls, a husband, father and grandfather. Three times he was denied the chance to enlist in the armed forces after the attack on Pearl Harbor. He finally joined a volunteer ambulance service working with the British army and was present at the liberation of Bergen-Belsen.

It’s a question that vexes local planning agencies and inflames passions from homeowners builders, and residents on both sides of the issue.

When it comes to houses, how big is too big?

This issue has special resonance on the Vineyard, where land is limited and residents have a history of fiercely protecting — and debating — the Island’s character.

Islanders seem to voice the complaint nearly as often as they grumble about summer traffic backups at the blinker light and spiking prices at the gas pump:

You can’t find a primary care doctor on the Island.

Story will be fending for itself this summer on the stages of Martha’s Vineyard. Stripped like the economy (and because of it), this season promises something much more seductive than blockbuster pretense, jaw-dropping set design, or celebrity leads: a glimpse at the so-called creative process.

The remnants of a shipwreck turned up on South Beach near Wasque last weekend, following a series of winter storms that have pounded and eaten away the south-facing shoreline of the Vineyard in recent weeks.

The large piece of what appears to be the hull of a ship was spotted about 100 yards east of the Norton Point Beach opening by Skip Bettencourt, who saw and photographed it. The ship remnant is about 35 feet long and four feet wide.

“There’s my hero,” said Martha’s Vineyard Surfcasters Association president Janet Messineo as Emanuel Thompson walked into the Beach Plum Inn on Thursday morning. It had been a day since Mr. Thompson, an Air Force veteran from Virginia, had caught his derby-leading 34.72-pound striper on Capt. Buddy Vanderhoop’s charter boat Tomahawk out of Menemsha, but he was still beaming.

Martha’s Vineyard is growing rapidly more populous, older and more diverse according to the most recent figures from the U.S. Census Bureau.

Overall, the population of Dukes County grew 10.3 per cent in the decade 2000-2010, well down on the 29 per cent growth of the previous decade, but still the highest by far of any county in Massachusetts.