The ocean-facing beach around the treacherous breach at Norton Point Beach on the Chappaquiddick side was closed to swimmers yesterday following a fatality over the weekend.
An overhaul of the shuttered state lobster hatchery in Oak Bluffs has been approved by the Massachusetts Division of Marine Fisheries, and the commonwealth will now invest a significant sum of money to rehabilitate the facility for use by the Martha’s Vineyard Shellfish Group, Cape and Islands Rep. Timothy Madden announced yesterday.
Mr. Madden said the state DMF has agreed to invest at least $250,000 in the project in phases. Work began this week to replace the plumbing in the old hatchery that sits on the eastern side of the Lagoon Pond in Oak Bluffs.
It’s the quiet season now but it was hardly quiet at Bramhall & Dunn on Main street Vineyard Haven yesterday, where the phone was ringing off the hook. And there was Emily Bramhall herself answering, slightly breathless from so many calls, this time from a reporter.
The Martha’s Vineyard Land Bank added a small but significant piece of land to its holdings at the scenic Gay Head Cliffs this week with the purchase of a single acre near the historic clay cliffs in the westernmost reaches of the Vineyard. The seller was the Vineyard Open Land Foundation. The purchase price was $225,000.
The fourth grade theatre project, an unusual creative drama enrichment program for Island school children led by the Vineyard Playhouse for the past 17 years, will be suspended this year, playhouse director MJ Bruder Munafo said this week.
Ms. Bruder Munafo said she was surprised and baffled to learn that the Vineyard elementary schools had decided not to participate in the project, which through the years has given some 2,000 fourth graders the hands-on experience of writing, producing, directing, staging and performing an original play.
Whippoorwill Farm, home of the first Community Supported Agriculture program on the Vineyard, will move its operation from Thimble Farm in Oak Bluffs back to Old County Road, farm owner Andrew Woodruff said this week.
Blue Heron Farm, the Chilmark estate that President Obama and his family have rented for the past three summers for their August vacation, has been placed on the market for sale, Wallace and Co. Sotheby’s International Realty announced on Thursday.
The Massachusetts Appeals Court has solidly backed the town of West Tisbury in its ongoing effort to keep Rogers Path, an ancient way that leads to a Civil War-era cemetery in the North Tisbury section of town, open for public use.
A large brigade of Island firefighters, wearing their dress blues and standing straight and true, flanked the steps of the Old Whaling Church last Saturday afternoon, a fine May day flecked with sunshine and breezes. Joe Cressy would have called it a sailor’s day and he would have been right. Joe was right about everything — on this point there was general agreement amid laughter and tears, poetry and music at his memorial service on Saturday.
A pair who robbed a well-known elderly Oak Bluffs man of his life savings last month have been arrested, although Oak Bluffs police said they have not recovered all the money. Police said $85,000 was stolen from the man, whose name is being withheld, but only about $37,000 has been recovered.
The robbery occurred on March 19, when the man reported to police that his safe had been stolen from his home while he was off-Island visiting family for two days. It contained his life savings of about $85,000, police said.
