Every Islander knows the drill: stuck in a line of traffic, slowly navigating one of the inescapable left-turn-fueled bottlenecks that bedevil our Island. Bored and possibly annoyed, we turn to our radios, hoping for a distraction to help pass the time. This was my plight a few years back, crawling toward Cronig’s Market in Vineyard Haven in my old Jeep. Summer congestion at least affords an opportunity to explore the dial. I gambled with the scan button, prepared to be disappointed.…
History is like the shoreline: constantly changing and evolving based on both gradual processes and sudden, dramatic events. History, and the way it is recorded here on the Island, lies at the center of this edition of Arts & Ideas. The phrase “living history” has always been enticing for me, one that breathes with a wonderful double entendre. On one side of the phrase, we are indeed living through history, especially these days, when we find ourselves in a truly historic moment for…
Art has the power to move us. It can soothe our souls and shift our perspectives. Not surprisingly, then, research reveals that art has a positive effect on health. We on the Island are fortunate to experience this firsthand at Martha’s Vineyard Hospital, which boasts a unique collection of artwork. Every one of the more than 1,000 pieces in the Edward F. Miller and Monina von Opel Art Collection was created by an artist connected to the Island. All were donated, most often by the artists themselves,…
Meet the Fleet scallop-shucking contest. —Larry Glick Stacks of lobster traps line the corridor of Menemsha Harbor, and gear is piled haphazardly so high among brightly painted buoys and plastic totes that it reaches to the roof of the shacks that skirt the edge of the shore. Copper streaks bleed from the edges of old nails on wooden traps, and on the ground, lines of rope are coiled like snakes. A weathered sign from 1994 proclaims Chilmark’s tricentennial, a piece of history that harkens back…
Roy Scheffer’s hands mapped a different era of the Martha’s Vineyard waterfront. Etched by decades of running thick, tar-treated longline and calloused from the rough skin of swordfish, Roy was at the helm of the Island’s heyday of commercial fishing, and later pioneered its rebound in aquaculture. It was a pursuit that spanned thousands of miles of open ocean, chasing the horizon to land heroic hauls before circling back to end his career where he started in his youth: hunting for scallops…
Tom Maley’s larger-than-life, frolicking white sculptures have brought joy to countless people since he displayed the first figure in front of his home and studio in 1970, in a meadow where the Field Gallery now stands. They reflect not only the essential spirit of the man himself, but also the spirit of the time and place, and community, he worked in. The works, which gambol about the lawn, are synonymous with the gallery. To walk among them is to immerse yourself in decades of West Tisbury’s…
The Flying Elbows is a foot-stomping string band that has kicked butt around Martha’s Vineyard for the past half-century. Its roots go back to Gale Huntington. Huntington is a legend among Vineyard musicians for his lifelong fascination with sea chanteys and fiddle tunes. Starting in 1928, an up-Island group of fiddle aficionados, helmed by him and including Artie Look and Hollis Smith, played square dances, parties, and weddings. As time passed, others joined in — even Thomas Hart Benton, when…
After graduating from theater school, I never imagined my career in the arts would require so much math. To my surprise, I learned to love the numbers. They offer another lens for seeing the story, understanding what has happened, and anticipating what may come next. Numbers create evidence for what can otherwise feel intangible. After college, I worked with theater companies and in film production, and I discovered that numbers were another way in. In a room full of artists, I was often the only…
Travel back 100 years ago to Martha’s Vineyard. It’s the end of the Roaring Twenties, which will soon collapse into the Great Depression. The Island population is under 5,000, and by the early 1930s, one-third of the population is on some form of government relief under Roosevelt’s New Deal. In this uncertain and relatively idle time, people pulled together for Sunday gatherings, and a new game called softball was just becoming popular. The lore is that the game was invented in 1887 on…
A reconstruction of the Liberty Pole. —Nicole Galland Vineyarders active during the American Revolution have names sounding familiar to 21st-century ears: Mayhew, Daggett, Norton, Look, Smith, Cottle, Bassett, Athearn, and Manter. Some Islanders were sympathetic to the rebel cause, others were loyal to the Crown, and some were unpersuaded either way. The same was true for all Americans: Many remained loyal to the Crown, and some were just uncertain. In 1776, America was a backwater land of merchants,…
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