C. Baer

Dicyrtomina (a type of Globular Springtail) seem to outnumber all other visible lifeforms on this speck of my planet, especially off-season. They are harmless. They are weird. And they are absolutely everywhere.

"Professor Sweet, the great American Phenomenon, will cross on a single rope, only 1¼ inches in diameter, from Pasque to Naushon (two of the Elizabeth Islands)... He will cross the rope blindfolded and backwards, after giving a variety of gymnastic feats of exercises..." - 1860 ad.

Ho Thuy Tuen, the abandoned water park in Hue, Vietnam, closed in the mid-2000s. Five stars from my son and I.

Da Nang in the mist, earlier this afternoon.

A group of people stands near the open doorway of a small shingled shack.

Church at Nomans Land, August 1912.

Students of the Locust Grove School, a public school on Indian Hill Road in West Tisbury, Mass., circa 1885-87. Horace Lovell, the teacher, vanished mysteriously in May 1909. Eight months later a trapper discovered his skeleton face down in a brook, a short distance from a path used by the children.

A man in a jacket and hat stands among crops in an extensive garden. A cluster of buildings lay in the distance.

"Freddie Punk" in West Tisbury, Mass. Frederick Lee "Punk" Norton (1879-1948) was a Vineyard Haven fisherman + day laborer who worked as a West Tisbury farmer for a spell during the 1910s and '20s. His brother Luther had a hen farm on Mill Road, near the Chilmark border, where Fred lived for years.

View east over Vineyard Haven, MA, toward Cottage City, 1880s-90s. Taken from a house on the hill near the corner of Center Street and what's now Pine Street.

(Photo: Up-Island fisherman Dan Look (1867-1924) stands beside a rare Great White Shark. Menemsha, circa 1910-20. No machine guns used.)

Samuel Mead of New York, a wealthy young firearm inventor, organized a “shark-shooting frolic” on Martha’s Vineyard in 1875. As he rushed to leave home with his new homemade machine gun, his hair-trigger weapon struck a piece of furniture, firing a bullet into his forehead and killing him instantly.

This Was Then: Parachutes and peacock plumes - The Martha's Vineyard Times By the mid-1890s, Cottage City (Oak Bluffs) was a resort town in decline. Massive fires had claimed the two largest landmarks in town — the Sea View Hotel and the Casino — in 1892, together with the H...

Prior to Broadwick, there were female aeronauts like Minnie Bonnette who would parachute from balloons in the 1890s. Bonnette wound up in a wheelchair after an 1897 accident. www.mvtimes.com/2024/09/11/p...

1915. “Big as a man, but rather short” with big white teeth, hairy body, and long tail, reported Forrest Bosworth. It "made for" Welcome Tilton, who fled. George Eustis watched it rob his henhouse. Martha Murray saw it off North Road and declared, “It wasn’t a man.” Remarkable stories were rife.

"Study Hall" cartoon - students in chaos

MY Mom saved a ton of cartoons she drew on index cards in high school. Here's one she drew in 1948, as a sophomore at Tisbury High School.

The life and death of Myra (Blankenship) Reehle (1866-1893) of Edgartown, Mass. and her husband Jacob, who was sworn to secrecy by U.S. President Grover Cleveland for his actions afterward.

This Was Then: The rich stories gravesites tell - The Martha's Vineyard Times In the Old Westside Cemetery on Robinson Road, just behind Edgartown School, stands a grave marker like no other. Amid stately rows of traditional granite, marble, and slate headstones, cordoned off w...

A curious monument in Edgartown, Mass., and a presidential secret offshore. www.mvtimes.com/2025/04/30/r...

I certainly don't intend to disparage anyone by digging this up, but I think many would be surprised at what once went down on this island. I also found inspiration exploring Weaver's long and successful career in TV, here and abroad - his work and contributions were not insignificant.

newspaper clipping

21 were arrested.

A racially-fuelled fight broke out on Martha's Vineyard in 1958 between 21+ teenagers carrying switchblades, pipes, and broken bottles. It made national news. Among those acquitted was Lloyd Weaver, 17, g-g-grandson of Frederick Douglass, who later became a producer at CBS News and Nigerian TV.

In 1883, Richard G. Shute of Edgartown, Mass., filed patent #284338 for a set of eight android shoemakers.

Providence gangster Joseph Fisher, one of two men charged in the 1929 robbery of the steamship company in Oak Bluffs. The Labor Day safe heist was probably the first time explosives were used on the island for criminal ends. By 1935 Fisher had become “Rhode Island’s Public Enemy No. 1.”

Interior of Bill Ripley’s diner, “Nonpareil” on Oak Bluffs Avenue, Oak Bluffs, MA. "This was a very popular place for the young night set in the 1920s," recalled my grandfather.

Spoiler: It wasn't built, its funding foiled by a school project proposed at the last minute to ward off school regionalization. In April 1926, angry Chappy voters responded by petitioning the Massachusetts legislature to secede from Edgartown. Not surprisingly, that plan failed, too.

The 632-foot Edgartown-Chappaquiddick bridge, designed in 1925. The 20-foot-wide cement slab roadway would rise 50 feet above the water and provide conduits for water, gas, electricity, and telephone wires. Chappy residents “will have the advantage of fire and police protection,” it was promised.

OPEN LAPTOP

Elijah became a carpenter + city watchman in Troy, NY until his death in 1845 upon "blowing out his brains with a pistol", according to the papers. His teen daughter married a whaler 21 years her elder and moved to Holmes Hole (now Vineyard Haven), Mass. What became of her two brothers is unknown.

My g-g-g-grandfather's math schoolbook, 1808, Nassau, NY. Many pages are dedicated to practicing conversions between New York dollars, New Jersey dollars, Massachusetts dollars, etc. ...At that time, every state had its own currency system, and their dollars were not equal.

Yup - Vineyard Haven

The Improved Order of Red Men (and its ladies' counterpart, The Degree of Pocahontas) was popular here in the early 20th century. The members, none of whom were Native American, wore long black wigs, feathered war bonnets, and fringed buckskin outfits. Until 1974, it was open to white members only.

Roaring Brook, Chilmark, MA. Ruins of the old brick factory.

In a 1939 affidavit, a Chilmark witness testified that “Luther B. West went to school with her older sisters, and was thought to be a girl and was named and called Mary A. West. When Mary A. West was in her teens, her name was changed to Luther B. West, and she was thereafter known as a male."