Ocean Breeze Bedding
“Look again at that dot. That’s here. That’s home. On it everyone you love .” –Carl Sagan
President Victoria Riskin
CEO Raymond Pearce
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Editor Brittany Bowker, editor@bluedotliving.com
Senior Writer Leslie Garrett
Chief Financial Officer David Smith
Associate Editors Lucas Thors, Julia Cooper
Editorial Assistant Emily Cain
Copyeditor Laura Roosevelt
Creative Director Tara Kenny
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Design and Production Vesna M. Nepomuceno
Digital Projects Manager Kelsey Perrett
Digital Assets Manager Alison Mead
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Contributors this Issue Randi Baird, Bella Bennett, Kate Feiffer, Hermine Hull, Sheny Leon, Gino Mazzaferro, Lanny McDowell, Matt Pelikan, Peggy Zablotny, Stephen Zablotny
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Hello Readers!
Welcome to the off season — a time for projects. We at Bluedot Living wanted to wrap that theme into our Fall/Winter issue, as many of us take these slower months to pick up projects we’ve had to put down. This could mean big projects, such as installing solar panels on your roof, or little projects, such as crafting quilts or pressing flowers.
We explore two bigger “at home” projects in this issue. You’ll meet one couple, Ian Douglas and Kristin Harris, who built a modular home in Vineyard Haven, integrating as many sustainable practices as they could. You’ll meet another family (they’re on our cover) — Amy Cody and John Furst have had their Chilmark home for more than 20 years, and over the last few years they’ve worked to minimize their carbon footprint.
The projects get more granular: We learn about a mysterious beam that the Sayre family found after tearing down their old barn, revealing a piece of Island history, and reminding us why saving things is a great idea.
You’ll find other great ideas in this issue, including Kate Warner’s Magic Bus idea, which aims to increase the resiliency of the down-Island water departments using power from the VTA’s electric buses. You’ll also read an essay by Island illustrator Kate Feiffer, who makes the case that doodling is good for the environment, and an essay by Bella Bennett on what it was like growing up off the grid in Chilmark .
Another great idea: The VTA announced fare-free rides for the next 10 months. Starting November 29 through September 2025, people can take advantage of free public transportation, which cuts down on traffic and carbon emissions.
There're a lot of green things happening on the Island, and what you’ll find in this magazine is a sampling. Our team gets many ideas from our readers, so be sure to write to us at editor@ bluedotliving.com with any eco-friendly projects, pursuits, or curiosities.
Oh, and check out our new Bluedot Living Kitchen Magazine — sign up for a free sample here: subscribe.bluedotliving.com/ bdl_sample
Until then, enjoy the cozy season. And as always, thank you for reading!
– Britt Bowker
ENJOY MORE TIME OUTSIDE!
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Getting charged up about green projects.
Bowker
Feiffer
Woods Hole Terminal Reconstruction Project A Net-Zero
Energy Facility
One of the largest projects in Steamship Authority history is entering a crucial phase—the construction of the new Woods Hole Terminal Building and accompanying utility building. Nearly 10 years in the making, the landside portion of this project will be a net-zero energy facility with solar installations, geothermal heating and cooling, and the two most energyefficient buildings in the company.
Along with the three marine slips previously constructed, the terminal project is being constructed to modern resiliency standards that account for sea-level rise and flooding potential and will greatly increase the Authority’s ability to withstand and recover from weather-related events.
About the Project
• Terminal size: 5,418 net square feet
• Planned solar installations: 200 KW from two canopies plus photovoltaic panels on terminal roof
• Geothermal wells: 39
• Estimated completion: buildings in spring 2026, site improvements in spring 2028
For project updates, go to SteamshipAuthority.com/WHterminalreconstruction
Building Rendering: Main Entrance
Building Rendering: East Elevation
From left to right, Port Council Chair Robert S.C. Munier (Falmouth), Board Member Robert F. Ranney (Nantucket), Board President Robert R. Jones (Barnstable), and Board Secretary Peter J. Jeffrey (Falmouth).
Each Night Spent At The Nobnocket Helps Heal Lagoon Pond
By Lucas Thors
TThe boutique inn has signed onto Kind Traveler’s ‘Every Stay Gives Back’ program.
Kind Traveler website to see a tally of how much money the inn has donated, and how their contribution is positively impacting Lagoon Pond.
he Nobnocket Boutique Inn in Vineyard Haven, nestled in the center of two acres of sprawling clover lawns and pollinator gardens, is the first hotel on the East Coast to charge guests a “Community Impact Fee.”
According to Simon Hunton, co-owner of the Nobnocket alongside his wife, Annabelle, guests will pay $3 on top of their nightly room rate, and every cent of that fee goes toward the Lagoon Pond Association (LPA) in its efforts to protect and preserve the nearly 550-acre tidal pond adjacent to the Nobnocket. “A lot of hotels, in fact the majority, charge a resort fee of $3 per night per room — we thought about how we could put a twist on this conventional approach, so that guests actually feel like they are contributing to the community they are staying in,” Hunton said.
The Nobnocket’s new donation program will be managed by Kind Traveler, a sustainable tourism company that created a network of hotels and inns looking to support charitable organizations in their communities. Through Kind Traveler, people booking vacations can access a dashboard of resorts that support local conservation organizations, food systems, and more. Starting January 1, 2025, guests staying at the Nobnocket will pay the nightly Community Impact Fee, and be able to sign onto the
When asked why he chose to donate to the LPA, Hunton said he wanted to provide guests with the most proximate and perceivable example of an ecological resource that needs immediate help. Lawn fertilizers and nearby septic systems are leaching large amounts of nitrogen into the pond, causing excessive algae growth and diminishing water quality. The LPA is working to remediate nitrogen pollution in the pond and safeguard the delicate marine ecosystem. “We wanted to find something that made the most sense to people who visit the inn,” Hunton said. “We looked at a number of benevolent organizations on the Island aimed at preserving ecology and biodiversity, but the Nobnocket sits within the Lagoon Pond watershed, our guests go kayaking on the lagoon, so it was something that we felt very connected to.” Hunton added that the LPA doesn’t always get the same level of attention as other environmental organizations on the Vineyard, but said it deserves the same level of support and visibility.
Although the Community Impact Fee will go toward significant initiatives to keep Lagoon Pond a viable water resource for the Vineyard, Hunton said providing education and awareness to seasonal and year-round visitors is just as important as raising money. The Kind Travelers online dashboard will provide real-time data on various LPA conservation efforts, and the Nobnocket will offer educational resources to guests, according to Hunton. Additionally, the LPA is thinking about creating volunteer opportunities for Nobnocket guests who want to play a hands-on role. Whether that’s collecting water quality data from Lagoon Pond, or planting eelgrass as part of larger restoration
COURTESY OF THE NOBNOCKET BOUTIQUE INN
Simon and Annabelle Hunton, owners of the Nobnocket.
“A lot of hotels, in fact the majority, charge a resort fee of $3 per night per room — we thought about how we could put a twist on this conventional approach, so that guests actually feel like they are contributing to the community they are staying in.”
– Simon Hunton, co-owner of the Nobnocket
projects, Hunton said there may soon be opportunities for hotel guests to get out in the field.
The Nobnocket has implemented other eco-friendly practices on their property, including clover lawns that don’t require fertilizer, along with pollinator gardens containing native plant species. The hotel offers reusable aluminum water bottles in place of single-use plastic bottles; and although they haven’t entirely weaned off plastic toiletries, the Nobnocket partnered with Clean the World, a B Corporation that diverts plastic amenities from hospitality organizations away from the landfill. “We ship all our empty shampoo bottles and other empty containers to Clean the World, so they can be reused in third world countries as a sort of upcycled product,” Hunton said.
Now that the inn has signed onto Kind Traveler’s “Every Stay Gives Back” program, Hunton said he plans to connect with other hotels and inns through the Martha’s Vineyard Lodging Association, and encourage them to also become Kind Traveler destinations. If multiple hotels come together to support a few major Island environmental nonprofits, Hunton said the hospitality industry would be able to make a significant sustainable impact. “We think that this isn’t only the responsible thing to do for hotels like us, but also will draw in guests who want to travel sustainably and make a good mark on wherever they travel,” Hunton said.
Sustainability was a core principle of Hunton’s when he and his wife took over at the inn about nine years ago. Donating to the LPA, he said, is just a continuation of his efforts to not only contribute to the seasonal and year-round economy on the Vineyard, but also play an active role in protecting the rare and beautiful ecosystem that Islanders and visitors are lucky to enjoy. “Of course tourism is the greatest driver of our little economy here, but it has consequences when it comes to our environmental footprint,” Hunton said. “We need to consider every scale of impact we have, from the individual level, when it comes to our guests, up to the organizational level and the decisions we make as a responsible steward of our land.”
Webster’s Dictionary defines “cooperation” as: “operating together to one end; joint operation; concurrent effort or labor.’’ This accurately describes VINEYARD HOME IMPROVEMENTS’ culture and approach to every project. Our staff recognize the importance of partnership, and the ability to work as a team, as well as the necessity of being fair and flexible.
• Experienced in all phases of residential and commercial building construction.
• Skilled Craftsmen
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• Team Approach
Equipped to handle the more complex multi-story/multi-unit new projects, yet agile enough to execute the smaller jobs with the same degree of professionalism.
Gustavo M. Lioncio
Pelikan on the
Pelican
September washashore: brown pelican.
What was up with that exotic visitor on the Lagoon?
By Matt Pelikan Photos by Lanny McDowell
Short-term visitors are no surprise on Martha’s Vineyard, and among birders, the Island is legendary for its unusual avian out-of-towners. One recent example was a brown pelican, an iconic species associated with Florida and the Caribbean basin, that settled into the Lagoon for several days in early September.
Nearly driven to extinction during the 19th and 20th centuries by pesticide poisoning and indiscriminate shooting, this massive species has rebounded admirably since DDT was banned in 1972 and currently breeds north along the East Coast to the Chesapeake Bay. But the brown pelican is a formidable flier and shows a clear pattern of vagrancy northward, with wandering individuals reaching New England with some regularity
and occasionally even visiting the Maritime Provinces. Most records of sightings at our latitude are coastal, though this species does turn up sometimes on inland lakes.
S oo Whiting’s book Vineyard Birds II lists four Vineyard records for brown pelican sightings, in 1946, 1958, 1985, and 2000. A subsequent, well-documented bird, first observed by David Vanderhoop, hung around Menemsha in early November of 2012. There are several other plausible Vineyard reports that lack full documentation, including one in July, 2021, and a bird I watched labor westward into a brutal headwind along Norton Point on May 10, 2020. Brown pelicans can fairly be called a true rarity on the Island, though perhaps their visits are becoming more regular in recent years. This is what one would
expect, as numbers of brown pelicans continue to grow, and the breeding range of the species creeps northward.
L ooking beyond the Vineyard, people have spotted brown pelicans less than annually in Massachusetts, although lately, more years than not have produced a sighting. Often, vagrant pelicans remain in the same general area for weeks, moving among preferred locations, generating clusters of observations as the birds periodically relocate.
Th e Vineyard’s recent pelican, a juvenile bird that Lisa Maxfield first spotted near the drawbridge on September 5, illustrates just such a pattern. A pelican sporting the same plumage had been noted on September 2 in Bristol, Massachusetts, and then on September 4 in Barnstable. These three locations are separated by very
moderate flight distances for a species as large and powerful as the brown pelican.
A downside to relying on recreational birders for information on rarities is that once interest in a vagrant bird has faded, the bird no longer gets monitored. Hence it is not clear exactly how long this recent pelican remained on the Vineyard, but it must have been until September 9 or 10. Barry Burden took some fine photos of the bird and posted them in the Martha’s Vineyard Bird Alert Facebook group on the 11th, with a note saying they were taken “the other day.” That’s the last mention of the bird on the Island that I can find.
In any case, by the 11th, the pelican was apparently back in Bristol again. On the 14th, it checked out Plymouth before turning up once again in Barnstable on September 18. It was last
reported there on September 22. There is no absolute proof that all of these sightings were of the same bird, but the pattern of sightings — with all reports being of a juvenile bird and no instances of pelicans reported from two places on the same day — suggests a single bird.
At Martha’s Vineyard Hospital, we believe a healthy Island starts with a healthy environment.
Martha’s Vineyard Hospital was named a 2024 Mass Save Climate Leader by sponsors of the Mass Save program, for its commitment to energy efficiency. According to Mass Save, the hospital was recognized for its “long-standing commitment to energy efficiency through its significant upgrades and energy-saving measures over 10+ years.” MVH has received nearly $700,000 in incentives from Cape Cod Light Compact, saving 1.47 million kilowatt-hours over the last decade. The hospital has worked with TCI Engineering and Cape Light Compact to make changes to its physical plant that have led to improved efficiencies. Last year, the hospital replaced all interior and exterior lighting for a savings of more than 50% on its electric bill. And there are more efficiencies planned, including replacement of a cooling system for the hospital’s new CT scanner and an upgrade to the hospital’s solar panels.
www.mvhospital.org
W hile on the Vineyard, the bird remained quite faithfully on the Lagoon and was relatively easy to find and observe. Scott Dresser took spectacular photos of the bird on September 8, noting that it perched on oyster gear and roosted at the head of the Lagoon. Interestingly, I have heard no reports of anyone observing the bird feeding, either using the plunge-diving tactic that is usual for this species, or scooping up fish while swimming on the surface, which brown pelicans sometimes do. This most recent pelican visitor checked all three boxes for what makes a vagrant bird memorable: It was a rarity, people consider it a charismatic species, and this one was a cooperative individual that was easy to observe. I hope it enjoyed its tour of the Bay State’s southeastern coastline and that, once it’s satisfied its urge to explore, it finds its way home.
FAVORITE THINGS:
The Oyster Book,
by Dan Martino
Dan Martino and his brother Greg have been raising oysters in the clean, clear waters off East Chop for the last decade, growing “the best damn oysters that we can in the most environmentally positive way possible.” They’re also farming sugar kelp, which you can read about here: bit.ly/MVSeaweed.
Combined, these crops (along with the clams they raise) create a baseline of regenerative farming, improving the biodiversity and the chemistry of the marine environment. In his spare time, Dan has written The Oyster Book, which came out in September (you can buy a signed edition on their website — corratecityoysters.com — along with other oyster goodies, and … kelp!).
The Oyster Book is “ an exploration of the past, present, and future of humanity’s relationship with the oyster, highlighting how humans can learn from our mistakes and harness the oyster’s potential for a more sustainable future.”
Great gift for your oyster-loving friends and family. Or yourself!
RANDI BAIRD
Dan Martino also farms kelp.
Oyster shells.
Chowder with sugar kelp.
mvbank.com
YOUR GUIDE TO Sustainable HOLIDAY GIFTING
Shop local, do it yourself, or gift an experience!
By Julia Cooper Photos Courtesy the Vendors
The holiday season is my favorite time of year because it allows me to shower my loved ones in gifts. Throughout the year, I note whenever a book catches my eye that one of my parents might love. I jot down whatever my partner mentions something in passing that would make his life easier, but that he’d never buy for himself. I am keenly aware of all my friends’ niche interests and hobbies. Few things bring me as much joy as surprising someone with a thoughtful gift. In my opinion, the most sustainable gift is one that someone will use, one that won’t gather dust on a shelf or get stuffed in the back of a closet. There are plenty of ways to keep sustainability in mind when we’re making our lists (and checking them twice) this holiday season: shop local, do-it-yourself, or gift an experience.
SHOP LOCAL
Featherstone’s Holiday Gift Show
Many of the Island’s local artisans will have space at Featherstone’s 22nd Annual Holiday Gift Show, running from 12 pm to 4 pm daily from November 12 through December 15 (closed on Thanksgiving). From pottery to photography to jewelry, there’s something for everyone.
Stori
the Label Jeans
Every pair of upcycled jeans from Stori the Label is totally unique. Bobbi Twohey pairs her love for vintage textiles with new and vintage denim to create gorgeous, wide-leg pants with character to boot.
TARA KENNY
Sharry Stevens-Grunden Pottery.
Find Stori the Label jeans at the Trust Shop.
Cut Paper Island Towels
I can’t get enough of the adorable sheep Robin Nagle prints onto her flour sack towels. Around the holidays, my kitchen is always in some state of disarray — having extra dish towels on hand is a blessing. Plus, Cut Paper Island’s prints are cute enough to keep out as yearround decor.
Conrado
Angela Sison’s boutique in Vineyard Haven celebrates sustainable, slow fashion. In addition to clothing, the Conrado boutique also features a curated selection of eco-conscious home goods, organic beauty products, and thoughtfully-crafted jewelry. Check out their Zero Waste Collection for stylish sleep masks, aprons, scrunchies, and more made from fabric scraps.
Above: Chappaquiddick Wood Company, Each product is from a tree that has its own deep history here on Martha's Vineyard.
Left: Hawkhouse pottery by Jessica Kramer. Mostly known for her crystal jewelry, Kramer makes amazing ceramics, too.
TARA KENNY
TARA KENNY
Organic beauty products from the Conrado boutique.
Cut Paper Island towels.
More gifts from Conrado.
HAND SCRUB
From getting paper cuts wrapping gifts to the stickiness of kneading dough for our favorite baked goods, our hands can take quite the beating during the winter months. Gift your friends and family a spa experience at home with this easy-to-make hand scrub.
INGREDIENTS
1 cup fine sea salt
3 Tbsps sweet almond oil
3 Tbsps coconut oil
1 Tbsp jojoba oil
1/2 tsp tea tree oil
(optional, skip for dry or sensitive skin)
10 drops peppermint essential oil
5 drops lemon essential oil
1 Tbsp liquid Castille soap
Small glass jars
DIRECTIONS
1. In a small bowl, combine sweet almond oil, coconut oil, jojoba oil, tea tree oil, and essential oils.
2. Add sea salt and liquid Castile soap.
3. Mix well to combine.
4. Scoop into jars and seal with a lid.
Vineyard
HOMEMADE VANILLA EXTRACT
This set-it-and-forget-it recipe for vanilla extract is sure to impress your friends and family this holiday season. You can find high-quality vanilla beans at grocers around the Island, including Cronigs.
INGREDIENTS
8 oz vodka (80-90% alcohol)
8 oz Clean Mason jar Small glass bottles
DIRECTIONS
1. Cut vanilla beans in half and place in an 8 oz glass Mason jar.
2. Fill the jar to the top with vodka.
3. Seal the jar and gently shake.
4. Store the jar in a cool, dark place for 6 weeks. Gently shake the jar weekly.
4. Strain the vanilla beans from the extract and use a funnel to divide into small glass bottles.
Note: You can also use orange peels to make orange extract, or fresh mint for mint extract!
Garden Angels
SHUTTERSTOCK
GIFT AN EXPERIENCE
Baking Classes With King Arthur Baking
King Arthur Baking School hosts live and on-demand classes online where participants can learn from professionals how to bake babka, bagels, biscuits, and beyond!
A Year of Mindfulness with Headspace
The holiday season can be stressful. This handy guide may help sweep away your gift-giving worries, but traveling to spend time with family brings its own headaches. I cannot think of a single person who wouldn’t benefit from the hundreds of guided meditations and mindfulness exercises on Headspace.
The Gift of Learning with Masterclass
For the lifelong learner, there’s no better gift than a subscription to Masterclass. My partner gifted me my Masterclass subscription a few years ago so I could watch
Time to rethink the way we consume
In a world of disposable goods, Bluedot simplifies sustainable shopping. We select brands and products that are better for the planet and its people. Our pledge: Buy less, but buy better.
David Sedaris's Storytelling and Humor class, and from there I’ve gone on to watch Robin Arzón’s Mental Strength class, RuPaul’s Self-Expression and Authenticity class, Ron Finley’s Gardening class, and so many more.
Online cooking classes make for great gifts. Find Bluedot Living's Cleo's Clean Cooking classes free online at bit.ly/CleosCleanCooking.
OLLIE BECKER
Unique Experiences from Uncommon Goods
Make wall art from succulents, taste spices from around the world, or explore the mystical worlds of tarot and astrology — Uncommon Goods is home to a wide variety of exclusive virtual experiences. With options for kids and adults, there is no shortage of phenomenal activities to choose from.
Serving the Community of Martha’s Vineyard
Solar System & Battery Installation
Commercial & Residential
Canopies & Pergolas
a friend a global spice tasting class.
Dear Dot: I Want to Eat a Plant-Based Diet. Where Do I Start?
Dear Dot,
I’ve heard all the stuff about how hamburgers are harming the planet and I want to shift to a vegetarian or vegan diet. But the idea of giving up meat entirely stresses me out (especially when my boyfriend is a dedicated carnivore). How can I do this and not lose my mind or my appetite?
– Maddy
Dear Maddy,
dot DEAR
Let me set the scene: Driving along a country road, Dot spots a transport truck loaded with pigs en route to the slaughterhouse. Ugh, I think, slowing down, averting my eyes. I can’t look at those pigs, Maddy. Their chubby pinkness, those snouts poking out of the metal bars. I sobbed at Charlotte’s Web, Maddy. Every single time, those doomed pigs stir me to vow that I will stop eating meat. And I did. For about four years when I had three Little Dots,
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I eschewed meat. My family did not. Partly because cajoling the Little Dots to eat even a carrot was a Herculean task. I couldn’t imagine taking meat off their plates, because if I did, with the exception of pasta, there wouldn’t be much left on them. (I did stick to buying meat only from a local farmer, so … there was that.)
Eventually, though, I abandoned my own vegetarianism. I woke one Sunday morning to the smell of bacon, and I caved. I attended a friend’s barbecue and scarfed down a burger. But those pigs continued to stir my conscience. And, as I’ve learned more about the outsized impact of meat on land use, carbon emissions, deforestation, and the animals themselves (and my children have grown into far less picky adults), I enjoy many meat-free meals and, when I do eat meat, it takes up significantly less space on my plate.
Dot’s approach — dubbed “flexitarianism” — is growing in popularity. One study reports that Gen Zers are driving the trend toward a flexitarian diet, with 87% adopting a greater (though not exclusively) plant-based diet. Some settle into long-term flexitarianism, while for others it’s simply the first step toward veganism. But any reduction in meat consumption is a good thing and not to be minimized.
Bluedot Santa Barbara’s Notes from the Home Front columnist Lizzy Fallows’ family of six eats exclusively plant-based meals. She recently wrote about it (bit.ly/plantbasedpath), and Dot invited her to share her best advice for someone keen to dig into plant-based eating. Lizzy worries that people think plant-based eating is more complicated or overwhelming than it needs to be. “I think people don't start because they think it has to be all or nothing,” she told me. She recommends that readers/eaters “take it one meal at a time.” Once one meat-free meal feels easy, move to two meals. “Take something you love to eat and swap the animal product out to make it plant based,” she says. “This means tuna salad becomes chickpea salad, chicken curry becomes tofu curry, spaghetti bolognese becomes spaghetti with lentil bolognese.”
She also urges the plant-curious to shift the focus. Instead of focusing on eating less meat, Lizzy says, focus on eating more plants. “Anytime someone is eating more plants, they
ILLUSTRATION ELISSA TURNBULL
are doing something positive/healthy for their body, the earth, and the animals. It's a radical act! A meaningful act.”
One of the reasons Dot didn’t move her children toward vegetarianism was their dislike of, well, vegetables. I worried that, without meat, they’d be deficient in important nutrients and minerals. Lizzy gets it. “A decade ago,” she told me, “I would stress and over-index on one nutritional dimension or another — calcium, omegas, protein!” What she’s learned, however, is that eating a wide range of foods in a whole foods plant-based diet meets her family’s nutritional needs. “Our family of six eats the rainbow,” she explained. “Purple cabbage and figs and potatoes, green okra and arugula, orange pumpkin and carrots, red pomegranates and lentils, white cashews and navy beans and tofu.” Consequently, she told Dot, “we have never experienced a deficiency of any sort.” She’s also a big fan of beans, which are great substitutes for meat.
Lizzy also does what she can to “amp up the nutritional density of meals.” Her kids’ oatmeal, for instance, will have added chia, hemp seeds, cinnamon, and peanut butter. Pasta is typically protein-rich red lentil pasta. Toast is sourdough or seed bread from a local bakery topped with avocado, nut butters, or tomato.
Her kids delight in Lizzy’s laissez-faire attitude when it comes to topping, letting her kids heap spoonfuls of tahini, pesto, cashew cheese, toasted nuts, and coconut yogurt on top of
whatever they’re eating. “Just as a squeeze of lemon or a dollop of chili crisp can transform the taste of a meal,” she said, “what you add at the last moment can amp up its nutritional profile.”
Vegans, en masse, have gained something of a reputation for being too strident. (Yeah, PETA, Dot’s looking at you.) Which is why I love Lizzy’s more laid-back approach. “I like a softness [around] being plant based,” she said. “Like, if my kids are at a birthday party and there’s an ice cream cake, my kids make their own choices, and they don’t need to come home and report to me that they had ice cream. I think it’s really important for them to make their own choices.” Besides, she says, “It’s what you do most of the time that matters.”
So, Maddy, you have both Dot’s and Lizzy’s blessing to move forward in your plant-based pursuit at whatever velocity and intensity works for you. You and Lizzy have inspired Dot to push even more meat off my plate. I want to be able to look those pigs in the eye next time I see them.
Plantfully, Dot
Check out our Daily Dot newsletter and get a Climate Quick Tip each weekday, and an answer from Dot each Saturday. On Sunday, Dot rests. Sign up here: bit.ly/BDL-newsletters
At School, Island Kids Learn About FARMING AND AGRICULTURE
Through the Vineyard’s farm-to-school program, students ‘can put their hands in the soil, taste a carrot, and find a bug that fascinates them.’
By Lucas Thors Photos courtesy Island Grown Schools
Kids on Martha’s Vineyard from preschool all the way through high school are taking part in a variety of farm- and garden-based educational programs that connect them with the natural world and the local food system.
Island Grown Schools (IGS) was created by Island Grown Initiative (IGI) shortly after the organization was founded in 2006, with the goal of embedding a broad farm-to-school curriculum in the public and private education system. The program teaches students about growing and harvesting food in
a sustainable way, and ensuring that the entire community has access to healthy, locally sourced food. “At this point, an entire generation of students have gone through the food education program on the Vineyard, which is really exciting,” IGI Education Director Emily Armstrong told Bluedot Living. “If we want to make these really big changes in the food system, we are going to start with kids.”
IGS works with all seven public schools on the Island and with nine preschools, and reaches more than 2,300 students from ages 2 to 18. The program leads over 1,000 lessons each
Tisbury School students get ready to plant their bean seeds as part of the Island Grown Schools program.
Island Grown Schools works with all seven public schools on the Island and with nine preschools, and reaches more than 2,300 students from ages 2 to 18.
year through in-classroom learning, local farm field trips, and through the 15 school gardens IGS maintains throughout the year. “Our goal is to educate kids about food, where it comes from, and how to enjoy it,” Armstrong said.
IGS starts by introducing preschoolers to foundational aspects of gardening and farming. IGS educators in each preschool and kindergarten teach kids about seeds, plant life cycles, and different tools used to grow and harvest. Because young kids are naturally curious and “are natural caretakers,” Armstrong said it’s easy to set them up with appropriately-sized tools, and show them how to plant seeds and water them. At the end of kindergarten, students plant sunflower seedlings in their school gardens, and when they return to the gardens when they enter first grade, they harvest their fully-grown sunflowers.
In second grade, most Island schools hold a spring plant sale. Starting in January, kids begin researching what plants they want to grow, the different histories behind each plant, and then they start growing and spreading the word about the sale. Armstrong said the plant sale allows kids to learn about the business of farming and lets them work with addition and subtraction when calculating how much change to give each
shopper. All the money from the plant sale goes right back into the school garden, and students choose what plants and tools they will buy with the money earned.
In the fall, kids in grades K through 12, and even some preschoolers, go to the IGI farm hub and help glean. Last year, the IGI farm planted 15,000 pounds of carrots, and students helped harvest a large portion of them. “Those carrots will go to the food pantry for our meals program, and to the school cafeterias,” Armstrong said. “So this is giving kids the chance to engage in really meaningful work, and see how their efforts can help the wider community.”
Toward the end of the season, kids get ready to harvest their crops and taste the foods they grew. Kids at the West Tisbury School recently tried three different kinds of melons from their garden, and voted on which one was their favorite. Kids also get to taste their own tomatoes and peaches. For Armstrong, encouraging young students to experience new tastes and getting them excited about growing their own food sets them on the course to be involved in the local food system.
High school students on the Island can join the garden club facilitated by IGS, where they learn about every step in the food system, and how food on Martha’s Vineyard is grown by local farmers and distributed to organizations such as the Island Food Pantry and various faith-based food donation programs. Additionally, through a partnership with Slough Farm, IGS brings on six summer interns each year who work in the school gardens, the food pantry, and the IGI community kitchen. “A few of those students have gone to college to study food systems and agriculture, so it’s clear that these programs are inspiring young people to focus on feeding communities,” Armstrong said.
Astrid Tilton, Gleaning Manager at IGI, grew up on the
Tisbury School students take part in an "early human" farm forage.
Island Grown Schools offers education for students of all ages.
Island and attended the MV Public Charter School. For Tilton, the student programs offered by IGI were a formative experience, and led her to pursue a career in agriculture and food system management. While attending the Charter School, she started out by helping out in the school’s garden, and eventually began a mentorship program working on farm-toschool policy, which aims to use government grants to help schools and child care programs purchase local ingredients, prepare meals from scratch, and educate students about local food systems. “We would talk about what language we thought should be in the bill, and would call legislators to inform them — it made me think about food in this really expansive way, and turned me into a major advocate for healthy, locallygrown food in schools,” Tilton said. “I am really proud that Vineyard students played a role in helping draft the Massachusetts farm-to-school bill.”
When students head to the IGI farm on field trips, before Tilton starts lessons or instructions, the staff lets kids explore. Tilton said that it’s essential, especially in early childhood, to let kids experience all the tastes, smells, and sensations of being on a farm. “They can put their hands in the soil, taste a carrot, and find a bug that fascinates them,” Tilton said. “It’s so important for them to develop a foundational relationship with the natural world; it’s a lens that you can approach pretty much any kind of learning.”
Visit islandgrownschools.org for more information on how the program is working with classrooms, school cafeterias, gardens, and farms across the Island.
Students participating in Island Grown Schools programs get to plant, grow, and taste local produce.
“At this point, an entire generation of students have gone through the food education program on the Vineyard, which is really exciting. If we want to make these really big changes in the food system, we are going to start with kids.”
– Emily Armstrong, Education Director at IGI
Martha's Vineyard Regional High School students install native plants in the school courtyard.
Island Grown Initiative Gleaning Manager Astrid Tilton shows Rainbow Place students a freshly picked kale stalk.
Modular Net Zero Going and AT HOME
Vineyard Haven
Ian Douglas and Kristin Harris set a sustainable example with their new build. in
By Britt Bowker Photos by Randi Baird
If you drive down far enough on Franklin Street in Vineyard Haven, you’ll pass Ian Douglas and Kristin Harris’s gray, shingled home as you leave town. Their modest, two-story build is on the corner of Franklin and Clough Lane, across from Saint Augustine Church. The quarter-acre plot was an empty lot three years ago. The net zero home that stands there now embodies the many ways people can build sustainably on the Island. In constructing it, Ian and Kristin made a number of eco-friendly decisions — the first of which surprised even them: building modular.
“We had no idea what modular was,” Ian says, standing in his sun-soaked kitchen.
“We weren’t going to build modular,” Kristin reiterates.
But sustainability was a top priority for Ian and Kristin, who are from the Boston area but have spent many summers at Kristin’s family home in Oak Bluffs, a passive (now active) solar home built in the 1980s. When Ian and Kristin decided to live on the Island full-time in their retirement, they wanted to be environmentally conscious about it. Once they learned that modular is less wasteful and less expensive than a traditional
Modular homes are less wasteful and less expensive than traditional stick builds.
stick build, they were convinced. They chose to work with local builder Squash Meadow Construction, which has built more than 100 modular homes on the Island over the last 20 years.
Looking at Ian and Kristin’s house, you wouldn’t know it’s modular. It has a simple exterior, shingle siding, plenty of windows, plus a detached carriage house, a porch, and stairs that lead up to an Accessory Dwelling Unit (ADU). That’s where their daughter, Johanna “Jo” Douglas (a farmer of Fork to Pork and Leaf to Beef fame) lives year-round. Adding to the Island’s housing stock was another important box for Ian and Kristin to check.
“Knowing there’s a housing crisis on the Island, we felt passionately that if we were going to build a house for ourselves, we wanted to add housing stock for workers,” Ian says. “We were immediately
“Knowing there’s a housing crisis on the Island, we felt passionately that if we were going to build a house for ourselves, we wanted to add housing stock for workers.”
– Ian Douglas
thinking of Johanna, but we wanted it to be zoned in a variance such that if Johanna didn’t live there, then a nurse or a teacher or someone else would.”
Ian and Kristin custom-designed their home with help from Bill Potter of Squash Meadow Construction and designers at Westchester Modular Builders, who partner with Squash Meadow and build the modular homes in climate-controlled factories in upstate New York. That’s part
of what makes the process greener: there’s no weather damage during construction, and builders computerize everything so every piece of wood that’s used is premeasured and cut to its exact dimensions, leaving no wasted material. Modular homes are built in blocks, and it takes crews in Westchester about a week to construct them. Then, they ship the blocks via barge to the Island.
“It arrives with everything in it. The
Top left: The modular blocks arrive on Clough Lane. Bottom left: It took crews about seven hours to construct the home. Right: The modular blocks are stacked "like sticks of butter," Kristin says.
windows, light fixtures, bathroom fixtures, shower, toilets,” Kristin says, adding that they selected all those items themselves. (“That’s what we did during COVID,” she says.)
Kristin and Ian’s house is made up of four blocks: two of them make up the
downstairs, where Ian and Kristin live, and the other two comprise the upstairs, where Jo lives. They have photos on a laptop of the blocks arriving on Clough Lane on December 15, 2021.
“See, it’s like sticks of butter,” Kristin says as she scrolls through images of a
crane stacking the blocks on top of a foundation, and then on top of each other. It takes about a day for crews on the Island to build the house after it arrives. For Ian and Kristin, the blocks arrived at 7 a.m., and the house was complete by 3 p.m. Squash Meadow Construction then has an assembly line of local contractors on deck to plumb, paint, wire, and install the finishing details. The carriage house, porch, and staircase were stick-built later on.
“I think Bill said from beginning to finish, there were about 200 people who touched the space,” Ian says. “And there were never more than six people on the property at a given time.” The couple moved in in May of 2022.
Ian and Kristin chose an openconcept, one-story 1,200 square-foot home where they can age in place. It has one bedroom, two bathrooms, and a 400-square-foot basement ensuite, where they host their other kids and grandkids. The 600 square-foot upstairs apartment includes one bedroom, one bath, and a
The kitchen leads to a three-season porch.
Ian and Kristin use their space in multiple ways. The dining room is also Kristin's office.
porch with a staircase leading down to the driveway. Building a small home was another eco-driven decision.
“It’s not a tiny home, but we wanted to have a small footprint and be sustainable that way,” Kristin says.
South Mountain installed solar panels on the roof, which is south-facing and pitched to maximize the sun’s efficiency. The panels provide electricity for all the lights, appliances, and electronics in the house, and power for their electric car. Heat pumps in the basement provide the home’s heating and cooling.
Ian has an app on his phone that tracks their energy use.
“Every year we make the same amount of energy that we use, so we’re net zero,” he says. “Last year, consumption was 10.8 megawatts for both units, and our production was 11 megawatts. So there it is.”
Solstice Gardens designed the small pollinator garden outside with light pink and purple blooms. Instead of a
monoculture lawn, “whatever grows, grows,” Ian says.
“Vineyard Conservation Society talks about a Vineyard lawn, and that’s a high priority for us,” he says. “There’s no irrigation here. No fertilizer. We love clovers. We love dandelions. Sure, I cut it every week, but we have an electric lawn mower.”
Ian and Kristin also collect their food waste and give it to Jo to take to work to feed her pigs. They credit a lot of their commitment to sustainability to their daughter.
“Our kids have always led us, and while I think we were sensitive to the reality of climate change and environmental awareness, Johanna really invited us to take those steps,” Ian says. He checks with Kristin. “Is that fair to say?”
“It is,” she says.
Ian and Kristin sell their excess energy to Eversource and receive tax credits and rebates in return. Asked whether they have any more goals for further offsetting their
carbon footprint at home, Ian says: “Once batteries are up to speed, we could buy batteries, install them in the basement, cut the cord completely, and not have to use the grid as our battery. They buy from us, but if we can store that on site, then we wouldn’t have to do it through Eversource. But batteries aren’t there yet.”
Until then, Ian and Kristin continue to live their best Vineyard lives. They get up at dawn. They swim together. They go to CrossFit. Kristin is a substitute nurse at the school, and Ian is a retired Episcopal bishop and professor. The Island has always felt like home to them, and now it really is.
Kristin reflects on the moment she and Ian decided to make the year-round move, and the serendipity of finding the lot they live on.
“We were talking, and Ian said, ‘If anything ever happened to you, I would move to the Vineyard.’ And I thought, ‘Wow, if anything ever happened to you, I’d move to the Vineyard, too.’ And
A model casting wood burning stove in the living room for ambiance and extra heat in the winter.
then we thought, ‘Why are we waiting for the other person to die to move to the Vineyard?’”
So they started looking at real estate in 2020. One August afternoon they were driving around, and Ian noticed the empty lot on Clough Lane. He pointed it out to Kristin.
“Is it for sale?” she asked.
“No,” Ian said.
“Why are you even pointing it out?” Kristin asked. “We need to be able to buy it.” They both laugh thinking back to that moment, because about a month
later, Jo was driving down Clough Lane and saw a handmade for sale sign on the corner. She sent a photo to her parents. She didn’t know the conversation they’d had in the car a month before.
“I said, ‘Kristin, this is that lot,’” Ian recalls.
That was on a Monday, and by Friday, Ian and Kristin had bought the lot. The rest is history.
For more information on Squash Meadow Construction and their modular homes, visit squashmeadow.com.
“Our kids have always led us, and while I think we were sensitive to the reality of climate change and environmental awareness, Johanna really invited us to take those steps.” – Ian Douglas
Above: A screenshot shows Kristin and Ian's net-zero energy use last year.
Below: A Vineyard lawn and pollinator gardens help support biodiversity on the Island.
Ian and Kristin cook on an energy-saving induction stovetop.
Dining With the Douglas Family:
NOT YOUR AVERAGE BURGER NIGHT
By Lucas Thors Photos by Randi Baird
Jo Douglas and her parents, Ian Douglas and Kristin Harris, take family burger night to a whole new level. This weekly occasion for the close-knit family is a time to celebrate local food, the Island community, and the home they’ve built together over the past several years. I was lucky enough to attend one of these special gatherings, and it’s safe to say I’ll have a hard time finding a more welcoming group of dinner hosts, a cozier dining room, or a juicier burger.
When I arrived at the family home, centrally located in downtown Vineyard Haven, Ian was already busy cooking bacon on his energy-saving induction cooktop. This was no ordinary bacon; this bacon was raised by Jo as part of her Fork to Pork operation on the Vineyard. As everyone enjoyed a few drinks and
hors d'oeuvres, Ian plopped the bacon on a serving platter and headed outside to the grill to start cooking the burgers, also made with Jo’s local livestock.
Last year, Jo added three HerefordAngus heifers to her stock. According to her, cows have been her favorite farm animal ever since she took her first field trip to a teaching farm as part of a program offered through her day school. “Jo was only about four when she first went. I picked her up from her first day at the farm — she was so disappointed because the cows were on one side of the fence, and she and the rest of the kids were on the other side,” Kristin laughed.
After taking a quick tour around the family’s beautiful net-zero home, it was almost time to sit down for dinner. I asked Ian how often they all get the
chance to sit down and eat together. “We usually at least do lunch and dinner, pretty much every day,” Ian said. After doing the “Island shuffle” for years, Jo now lives upstairs in an attached accessory dwelling, so the family spends a lot of time enjoying each other’s company. “That’s one of the main reasons we moved to the Island — we knew we wanted to all be here together as a family, and we are so grateful for that,” Kristin added.
Once the burgers were done and everyone filed into the dining room, it was time to sample the fruits of Jo’s tireless efforts, and test Ian’s grill-master skills. My first bite into my bacon cheeseburger was illuminating. No wonder burger night is a household hit for Jo and her family. “I think this is the best burger I’ve ever tasted,” I said. “It’s just a little bit better than store-bought,
right?” Ian joked. “You can see why we never buy meat from the grocery store.”
The only animal protein the family eats is raised locally, either beef and pork provided by Jo, or the occasional chicken sourced from Mermaid Farm or North Tabor. They’ll also get fish from the Martha’s Vineyard Seafood Collaborative, and will sometimes cook up venison that Jo trades with hunters for her pork fat. “The hunters really like to use my pork fat for making venison sausage, so I’ll give them some fat, and they’ll give me meat,” she explained. “I have a really close relationship with some folks in the hunting community.”
According to Jo, “you are what you eat” — a motto for the family when it comes to eating local meat and produce. And while she’s cognizant of the quality of food that she feeds herself and her family, she’s also always thinking about providing the best nutrients to her animals. Right now, Jo’s seven beef cattle are doing the good kind of “Island
shuffle” — constantly moving to new pasturelands. Jo uses four different areas of farmland for her rotational cattle grazing schedule, which means that the cows’ diets are varied, and they’re consistently getting the freshest grass.
Jo’s Leaf to Beef and Fork to Pork programs are going strong, and Ian and Kristin are supporting her every step of the way, although they regularly reiterate that her success is derived from nothing
else but her own sheer determination and hard work. “She had a winning idea, and she worked twice as hard as everyone else to make it happen,” Ian said. “We’re very proud of her, and we’re lucky we get to share a meal and celebrate what she’s doing.”
Check out Jo’s new Leaf to Beef program at forktopork.com/leaftobeef, and read Bluedot Living’s story about her Fork to Pork operation at bit.ly/Fork-to-Pork.
The family gets together for meals often.
Ian preps the burgers.
Bacon from Jo's pigs. The family only eats animal protein raised locally.
Amy Cody and John Furst WITH RIGHT AT HOME
Planting local and creating habitat for native species is a top priority for Amy and John.
RIGHT AT HOME
Retired and living on Martha’s Vineyard full-time, Amy and John recently took on sustainable projects at their Chilmark home.
By Britt Bowker Photos by Randi Baird
Amy Cody and John Furst live in a beautiful twostory home in Chilmark that they’ve had for more than 20 years. Any day of the week during the summer, you can find them outside tending to the plants in their gardens, observing wildlife in the pond out back, and enjoying time in their sixteen by nine-foot saltwater plunge pool. They added 24 solar panels to the roof last year and bought an electric Volkswagen. They
also have a home “cone” composting system and a pesticide-free lawn. They are full-time residents and have kids and grandkids who love being on the Island just as much as they do. They hope to preserve their home here for the long haul, while also minimizing its environmental footprint.
“We’re just doing a small part, but we’re trying hard to keep doing more,” Amy says. She and John have four grandchildren now, and that’s a big part of what inspired them to take on more
green projects at home.
“We’re thinking about their lives and their future,” Amy says.
A former flower shop owner, Amy is captivated by her pollinator and natural gardens and is using BiodiversityWorks’ Natural Neighbors program to survey their property and make recommendations on what to plant to optimize biodiversity. “We were already doing a lot of what they suggested, but they kind of expanded the whole concept for me,” Amy says. BiodiversityWorks
also sent someone over to do a botanizing inventory, which is an extension of the Natural Neighbors program, “and that was really fascinating,” Amy says. “They come and they look at everything that’s natural and they make a huge list that includes the Latin names. And it’s more of what you want to preserve and what you don’t want to introduce.”
Amy’s botanizing inventory includes several dozen of the plants that inhabit
many years since the pond was first dug.”
Keeping the pond clear would require interventions such as dredging and culvert assessment/replacement. The analysis found that the plant community and pond ecology appear to be reasonably healthy, aside from the invasive Yellow Iris found sporadically.
“They said you could dredge it if you want to get the pond back, but then that would kill all the wildlife,” John says.
“There’s a lot of pinkletinks and frogs and otters, which is really unusual. So we don’t want to disturb any of the habitat. We’re going to leave it and see what happens.”
– Amy Cody
her property, and a note on what they look like and whether they’re native or invasive. The list includes sassafras, wild strawberry, beetlebung, sweet pepperbush, and many more. “It's amazing how many wonderful and diverse species we have on the Island,” Amy says.
There’s a pond out back that takes up an acre. Previous owners dug it some 80 years ago, but the water was completely clear when Amy and John moved in. The pond started filling in with plants over time, and Amy and John have since let all the lily pads, lotuses, and grasses grow in. Wilkinson Ecological Design (a nonprofit recommended by Felix Neck) surveyed the pond and determined that it was going through the natural process of eutrophication.
“In general, as most pond systems age, they accumulate nutrients that in turn stimulate the growth of plant and aquatic life,” according to an email from Wilkinson Ecological after they surveyed the pond. “Eventually, the accumulation of dead aquatic life and decayed plant material (some potentially resisting decay) may add up and begin to literally fill in edges and show areas of the pond. This is a long-term process, but it is likely what we are witnessing now after the
“There’s a lot of pinkletinks and frogs and otters, which is really unusual. So we don’t want to disturb any of the habitat. We’re going to leave it and see what happens,” Amy says.
Around front, there’s another body of water John and Amy have to think about. When they installed the plunge pool four years ago — something you don’t see every day on the Vineyard — their electricity
bills spiked because of the energy it takes to keep the water heated, circulating, and clean. It was time to offset those costs and carbon emissions. John says adding solar panels was something one of the Chilmark board members had recommended they do when they were getting approvals for the pool.
“We were happy they didn’t make us do it, but a year later, we realized it was something we wanted to do,” John says.
South Mountain installed the solar panels, “and they were amazing,” Amy says, “From beginning to the end, teaching us what it was all about, how it works, how they interfaced with the electrical stuff. Installing it was like a breeze.” They appreciate how South Mountain assigns clients a project manager to follow up and answer questions.
Not even a year into having them, Amy and John are thrilled with their solar panels and find themselves constantly checking the app (mySolarEdge) to monitor their energy use.
“I’m a little addicted,” Amy says. “Basically anywhere, anytime, you can open it up and you can see how much power you're making from your solar panels, how much is going into your house, how much you’re using or needing or drawing, and then how much is going back into the grid … I look at it when I’m
Twenty-four solar panels on the roof help power their saltwater plunge pool.
running the washing machine or the dryer, just to see how it changed.”
Amy and John’s home generates a lot of surplus energy, which they plan to donate through Eversource’s program that redistributes solar energy to participating nonprofits. They note that solar panels are a way to generate energy and give back to the Island — even when homeowners aren’t here.
Parked in the driveway is a Volkswagen ID.4 electric SUV with a light interior that John and Amy got last December. “This Island is so perfect for electric cars. The only downside is we don’t get to see our friends at Menemsha Texaco,” John says. (They still visit often to get popsicles.) They also installed a car charger in their detached garage. “When [South Mountain] put the solar in, since they had to do a lot of rearranging of the electrical capacity at the house, we had them put in the charger for our car,” John says. “It was part of this whole package and it was less money to do.”
Amy’s backyard composting system is just beyond her flower garden. Ordinarily, this garden is for growing vegetables, but
this year, Amy decided to do a cutting garden to make bouquets for friends. “I’m kind of feeling really happy about it,” she says.
As for the composting system, “I’m very excited when I do this,” Amy says, pointing out a staked-down black container about waist high that holds all her organic matter, and the cone. The cone goes on top of the organic matter, and its walls trap heat and create circulating air, which encourages bacteria growth to help break down the waste. She orders red wiggler composting worms once a year and drops them into the container to also help break down the organic matter over time. “But they don’t like citrus, so you can’t throw anything that’s citrusy in there,” Amy says.
The family collects food waste in a compost bucket in the kitchen, and Amy periodically empties it into the backyard composter. She turns and waters the organic matter a few times a week, and adds things like leaves
The compost falls into the wheelbarrow, and she collects the worms from the screen and drops them back into the container. Then she starts again.
Backyard composting is one way to keep food waste out of landfills.
The gold soil goes back into Amy's gardens.
Amy's flower garden.
from the yard. By the fall, the compost is ready. Amy brings her wheelbarrow down, covers it with a screen, and shovels the compost on top of the screen. The compost falls into the wheelbarrow, and she collects the worms from the screen
and drops them back into the container. Then she starts again.
“And then I get a full wheelbarrow that’s just packed with this gold soil, which is really just worm poop,” Amy says. “It goes into the vegetable garden
“This Island is so perfect for electric cars. The only downside is we don’t get to see our friends at Menemsha Texaco.” – John Furst
and then some of the shrubs around the base. So it’s this whole system.”
Amy and John see themselves as stewards of the Earth and believe that living more sustainably begins at home.
To learn more about BiodiversityWorks’ Natural Neighbors program, visit biodiversityworksmv.org. To learn more about South Mountain solar panels, visit southmountain.com.
The family's electric Volkswagen charges in the driveway.
A cozy sunroom welcomes visitors.
A Mystery Beam
in HavenVineyard
(And Why Saving Things is a Great Idea)
A barn teardown revealed a piece of the Island’s history. But … which history, exactly?
By Leslie Garrett Photos by Sheny Leon
The summer of 2019 was barely in the rear-view mirror when the backhoe arrived to take down the barn on Nevin and Stina Sayre’s property in Vineyard Haven. The barn had been well loved by generations of Sayres, starting
with Nevin’s parents, who bought the oceanfront property in 1950. The elder Sayre, Nevin’s father Francis Jr., poured a concrete floor inside the perimeter and added a bathroom but little else. Over the years, it was to the barn that Nevin
and his three siblings retreated for respite from the adults and privacy to party; it was also a creative space for Thomas, Nevin’s older brother, to paint. Nevin and Stina’s own kids similarly claimed the space for themselves and their friends.
But, by that early September day in 2019, the barn had reached its functional and structural end, and Nevin and Stina had plans to replace it with a newer outbuilding that could serve as both a studio for Stina’s creative pursuits as she wound down her retail clothing store, and a sleeping and lounging space for guests and kids.
Before the backhoe arrived, Nevin, sentimental about the space that had played such a large role in his youth and always concerned with sustainability, earmarked the parts of the barn he wanted to salvage: an old beam he’d spotted that could be repurposed, a ladder to reemploy for access to a second-floor loft, and some barnboard for interior walls that bore the paint marks of his brother’s brush.
A single swipe of the backhoe brought down the first wall and revealed something Nevin hadn’t known was there — another ceiling beam that had been hidden behind 2x4s. He hollered for a stop to the demolition so he could examine it. Obviously ancient, the beam had softened edges and bore a handful of carved names belonging to … whom exactly? That part wasn’t known, but this beam clearly held history, which for Nevin meant that it deserved continued utility. And scrutiny: What path had it taken to the family’s barn, which, just minutes after Nevin salvaged the beam, lay in ruins?
To settle on an answer, it’s worth revisiting some Vineyard Haven history. An abridged version goes something like this: Sailing vessels had long traversed Vineyard Sound when English families began building houses along the shore in the late 1600s and early 1700s. By the end of the 18th century, the shipping traffic through Vineyard and Nantucket sounds was second only to that in the English Channel. Vineyard Haven itself, known then as Holmes Hole, Homses Hole, or
Stina and Nevin Sayre in the barn.
Where did the beam come from? Whose names are these? Where were they from?
This beam clearly held history, which for Nevin meant that it deserved continued utility. And scrutiny: What path had it taken to the family’s barn, which, just minutes after Nevin salvaged the beam, lay in ruins?
“The thing to remember is that 19th-century Vineyarders — and I suspect this was true of New Englanders in general — were the embodiment of every stereotype about Yankees as being incredibly frugal and using things up in multiple forms, until they squeezed every possible bit of good out of them.”
– Bow Van Riper, MV Museum
Homes’ Hole (depending on your source), bustled with roughly 350 residents, plenty of inns and taverns, and an economy largely predicated on shipping. At the time, whaling was also flourishing.
“There would have been 50,000 to
Stina and Nevin use the barn as a studio and guest house.
60,000 ships a year going by the entrance to Vineyard Haven harbor,” according to Bow Van Riper, librarian for the Martha’s Vineyard Museum (as well as the Sayre’s neighbor, longtime friend, and early consultant on the provenance of the mystery beam). “It was an enormously, steadily busy place for ships to stop on their way from wherever they started to wherever they were going.”
So Van Riper isn’t the least surprised that a beam with carved names might end up in someone’s barn. “The thing to remember is that 19th-century Vineyarders — and I suspect this was true of New Englanders in general — were the embodiment of every stereotype about Yankees as being incredibly frugal and using things up in multiple forms, until they squeezed every possible bit of good out of them,” he explains. “So if somebody took down a barn, or if a ship was condemned as no longer fit to go to sea, it wouldn’t just be left to rot; people would take it apart and use salvageable timber to build a building or chicken coop or another barn or whatnot.”
A flagpole boom got reused as a railing.
Consequently, he says, “a lot of timbers from dismantled, worn out, wrecked, or otherwise at the end-of-their-lifespan ships would get repurposed on shore in building structures.”
One needn’t look further than the Sayre’s main house for evidence of this Yankee frugality. In the 1600 and 1700s, fishing shacks dotted the shore of the beach along a road that ran from Vineyard Haven harbor to what’s now West Chop. At some point in the 1800s, Nevin Sayre says, those shacks were replaced with larger buildings and a few of the cast-offs were cobbled together higher up on the bluff to eventually become the Sayre’s summer home and now full-time residence. (The road below was long ago swallowed by the sea.) It’s a not-uncommon story for many Vineyard homes, constructed of smaller scavenged buildings and materials and moved to wherever they were needed.
But a single beam? With carved names? Van Riper pauses to consider:
Theory number one: Salvage
“It’s entirely possible, even if the work
on the ship itself wasn’t being done in Vineyard Haven, that the salvage beam could have made its way to Vineyard Haven,” Van Riper posits. “Because even if the work on the ship was being done in Edgartown or New Bedford or Fairhaven, the whole Vineyard Sound, Nantucket Sound was a major maritime thoroughfare that made it easier for goods to flow back and forth locally, and it was
The mystery beam supports this wall at the end of the barn. Nevin used boards from the old structure that his artist brother had brushed paint onto.
nothing for a vessel from the Island to bop over to New Bedford and bring a cargo of whatever back. That beam could have gotten removed from its original shipboard use, made its way to the Island, and into a structure in Vineyard Haven.” There is, however, another, darker, possibility.
Theory number two: Storm “There’s certainly a long history
of ships sinking in Vineyard Haven harbor and Vineyard Sound,” Van Riper confirms, and indeed a fascinating exhibit at the museum details the many storms and shipwrecks off the Vineyard coast. “Something like 15 or 20 schooners went ashore in the Gale of November 9, 1898, for example,” he says, “and again, just like dilapidated barns or condemned ships, if a perfectly good piece of timber washes up after a storm, somebody is going to find a use for it. So that's also a definite possibility.” Unfortunately, he adds, “Without knowing the name of the ship that it came from, there’s probably no way to tell for sure.”
Nevin also salvaged a flagpole boom that had been stored in the family’s boathouse for a railing. “When we needed the railing, I went, ‘Wait a second!’ and I went and got that boom, and it fit perfectly,” he marvels,
Whatever its origin story, today that beam helps support the new barn, which is not a barn at all, but rather a lovely, sunny studio/guest house that is nonetheless now and forevermore “the barn.” Today’s barn also features the ladder-cum-staircase to the loft, for which
Did someone carve this while passing time in a bunk in a faraway whaling ship?
delighted that it, too, is “very old, and a piece of our property that was recycled and made into this cool thing.” An interior wall features his artist brother’s paintbrushed barn boards.
And at the ocean end of the barn,
high above everyone’s heads, is the storied beam, edges long ago sanded off, purportedly to protect the skulls of whaling crew in the belly of a lowceilinged ship. Etched into the wood are names and initials — W.A.C., Castinetti, Jennex — worn and somewhat illegible, leading whomever is reading them to say them aloud, to wonder at who they belonged to. Were they the signatures of sailors — bored, perhaps, because how else does one fill the hours and days of a months- or years-long sea voyage? The handiwork of long-ago summer kids finding refuge and privacy in a barn? Whoever they belonged to, their names live on, finally revealed, and read and repeated out loud by the Sayres or anyone else who comes by to share in the wonder of this ancient, mysterious beam.
Whatever its origin story, the beam helps support the sunny barn/ studio/guest house.
Off-Grid Growing up CHILMARK
in
How lucky are we?
By Bella Bennett
Ilearned how to turn on a diesel generator before I learned to read. It’s not simple to get grid access at the end of a two-mile ancient way in Chilmark — today or thirty years ago — so my family made our own power. We had a squat teal generator in a shed at the end of the driveway, which fed into a rack of batteries in our basement. In theory, it was a pretty straightforward affair — run the generator for several hours a day and generate
enough power to keep the lights on and the water pumping. In reality, it seemed like every other time I took a shower, the power would go out, the water would shut off, and I’d have to run down the driveway in my towel to start the generator before I could rinse out my shampoo.
I suppose, as a kid, I knew that being off-grid wasn’t common, but I didn’t spend much time thinking about it. It was how it was, and our combined system of the generator and roof mounted solar panels
worked. Most of what I remember are the funnier moments — the stalled showers, the look a beachgoer gave 5-year-oldme after I told him I was building a generator out of sand, rather than a castle. Though I was sometimes scared to open the generator shed door and face the darkness, I liked the familiar smell of diesel, the rumble of the generator acting as my alarm clock in the morning, and the security of our self-sufficiency.
To avoid misrepresenting our energy system, I’ve done some fact-checking with my dad, Bill Bennett, the person who designed and kept up the systems we used (and continue to use) for alternative power generation. From that conversation, I learned that we’ve always had some number of solar panels, which I’d thought were introduced later. In fact, my mom’s horse farm, Netherfield Farm, was solar powered from day one. The generator powered the well pump, but otherwise the farm was run on renewable energy.
I also learned that the most efficient way to use a diesel generator — cogeneration — captures both the electricity generated by the engine and the heat from combustion. My dad designed our system this way to maximize our fuel efficiency, and the heat produced by the generator heated the water that swirled through our radiators and kept our house warm in the winter.
Learning this tidbit led me to consider what I actually knew about all of the undertakings that provided the heat and electricity I mostly took for granted as a child.
In retrospect, I wish that I’d gotten more involved in systems of power generation, wiring, and efficiency as a young person. Though how often does that actually happen? When my dad’s job was primarily electrical work, I tagged along to job sites, enjoyed sorting wire caps and other electrical doo-dads into their respective boxes, and felt very important riding along in the backhoe when there was a trench to dig. When my dad and uncle Leo did service calls at my elementary school (the Martha’s Vineyard Public Charter School), I went
Bella with her grandfather at the off-grid Chilmark house, soon after it was built.
It seemed like every other time I took a shower, the power would go out, the water would shut off, and I’d have to run down the driveway in my towel to start the generator before I could rinse out my shampoo.
The house in 2019.
Bella with her dad, Bill Bennett.
The main horse barn at Netherfield Farm, with solar panels. Bella's Aunt Anna and cousins Mira and Lilly visit with Bella's pony, Ziggy.
Around the time I was learning to drive, a wonderful neighbor of ours walked through the woods and offered us a grid hookup via his own — or at least that’s how the lore goes. Rather than become more conventional when we gained access, we ramped up solar energy production and sold it back to the grid.
into the crawl space with them to learn about the building’s inner workings, and when my great aunt Marty’s generator acted up, I tagged along to check it out. I wish I better remembered the electrical lessons of these experiences alongside the way they made me feel.
Around the time I was learning to drive, a wonderful neighbor of ours walked through the woods and offered us a grid hookup via his own — or at least that’s how the lore goes. Rather than become more conventional when we gained access, we ramped up solar energy production and sold it back to the grid. This coincided well with the national perception shift toward renewable energy production, and grew into a new career phase for my dad and — albeit briefly — for me as well.
As a teenager, I worked a host of interesting summer jobs, one of which was helping install ground-mounted solar arrays alongside my best friend Katherine. We were primarily tasked with setting up racking, placing panels, zip-tying wires — the things best suited for bendy teens with backs unbothered by prolonged crouching. On one of these job sites, at a property with beautiful stone walls and views of the ocean, we got some of the worst poison ivy rashes I’ve ever seen. I smile with pride every time I drive by that array, still making power fifteen or so years later.
Now arrays like that one are visible all over the Island, and I hope the larger international trend toward renewable energy will continue to grow and spur technological advances in efficiency and longevity. As an environmental scientist interested in Earth hazards and environmental justice, I’m a big proponent of reducing energy consumption and transitioning to renewable energy sources
to mitigate the impacts of climate change. One of the biggest tragedies in the climate crisis is that those most responsible are least impacted by the effects of climate change, and the people most at risk of environmental hazards exacerbated by climate change are most often those with the fewest resources. Even though we’re a small Island community, our ongoing efforts to increase renewable energy production count, and because we’re a major tourist destination, what we do can have a bigger educational impact than it otherwise might.
The Vineyard is a community where people tend to help each other out, which is part of what makes it so special here. I think the world can also function in this way, and we can collectively work toward better global outcomes by continuing to diversify our energy sources and embracing renewable energy projects. Even if you’re on the fence about climate change being caused by the rapid emission of greenhouse gasses, you might agree that being heavily reliant on a finite resource unequally distributed around the planet has its downsides. At the very least, what’s not to love about local production and community self-sufficiency?
Over the years, my dad has continued to upkeep and update the power system of his home, and of a handful of other arrays across the Island. Today, he still has a generator — apparently it’s the third and best model yet. He runs it semi-frequently to keep it healthy, and it certainly comes in handy when there’s a power outage. The batteries, now sleek and wall mounted, have been upgraded as power storage
technology rapidly progresses. They’re primarily charged by solar energy these days, so a sunny day continues to bear extra meaning in our household.
Now on the brink of 30, I’m trying to learn some of the intricacies I didn’t quite grasp before. As I should have anticipated, knowing my father, this morphed into a lesson in tractor driving. (So much for learning how to turn on the new generator…) At the end of September, I drove the rumbling orange machine slowly through the woods, with my dad standing on the trailer hitch behind me, merrily coaching me along. We towed a wood splitter to loan to our neighbor, and I thought about the importance of community, and how special it is to have a neighbor to share resources with — including the intangibly important gift of grid access. As my dad always says “How lucky are we?!”
Bella and her dad in New Zealand, 2016.
PEGGY TURNER ZABLOTNY'S
EvergreenGarden
Using nature as inspiration and medium.
By Hermine Hull
Photos Courtesy Peggy Turner and Steve Zablotny
Peggy Turner Zablotny lives in a world as visually rich and layered as her artwork. She surrounds herself with color: vibrant, juicy, intense. The home she shares with her husband, Steve, also an artist/designer, and Zeeky Boy, the cutest wire fox terrier puppy ever, feels like a carefully curated collection of anything and
everything that catches her or Steve’s eye. Imagine a world where everything is beautiful, every dish, every chair, every tiny figurine, every vase filled with the flowers that are the soul and images of Peggy’s collages. Even Zeeky’s dog bowls are artfully placed. If you already know of Peggy’s collages, you have a picture in your mind of flowers that may be left whole and/or taken apart,
petal by petal, to rearrange into a work of art. She grows many of them in shaped garden beds filled with an exuberant collection of dahlias, cosmos, black-eyed Susans, heliopsis, verbena bonariensis, nicotiana Langsdorfii, petunias, marigolds. Her rich palette of colors includes purple, orange, yellow-gold, chartreuse, magenta, blue, crimson, purple-that-looks-black, the range of whites from ice to cream. Leaves, grasses, curling or linear vines, pieces of bark also are included in the artist’s collection of possibilities.
Peggy tends her garden, watching for the moment when her flowers are at their best. She cuts them and brings them into her studio to prepare for pressing. She may press a whole flower, a leaf, a petal, or dissect a flower into small thinner pieces that are carefully spaced on layers of newsprint, blotter paper, and the masonite dividers of her press. She slowly applies pressure with the wing nuts to press the layers together, tightening them slightly every day to ensure a good pressing. “That step is tricky,” she says. “A perfectly dried flower or bud or petal may result, but sometimes they don’t come out of the press as I expect. They may be too old or too wet or stick to the pressing paper. Sometimes they just don’t work.”
But mostly they do. When material comes out of her press, she lays the pressed materials between layers of newsprint to keep them organized, labeling them by whatever she was working on: date, color, idea, type of flower, then stores them in clear bags that go into bigger storage boxes for reference or later use. “I may not use something I press for years,” Peggy says. “I always have an idea of how I want to use it someday. It might be a color, a flower, a day, an event. I composed a collage for 9/11. I have done them for pets, people, places, thoughts, events, or just because.” On her website (peggyturnerzablotny.com) are a series of pieces that follow the months or the days of the months. They are a perfect visual diary.
Making art relies on the artist’s vision. Peggy always has something in mind before she chooses which flowers to press. She uses her flowers and grasses to
SAM MOORE
From left: With Seed and Soil, With Sun & Rain, With Cultivation & Care
produce something that transcends those materials, much the way a painter uses tubes of paint and brushes of varying sizes and thicknesses to produce something that transcends those humble materials.
My thought was to use the flowers as my medium, my pigment. From a distance or very small, one might see the colors but maybe not the flowers until one got close or the image got bigger.
– Peggy Turner Zablotny
She begins by composing her “actuals,” as she calls her original collage constructions, on acid-free matboard. They are small, only a few inches in dimension, protected by glass laid over the top. She lays a paper cut-out, or mask, over the glass to serve as a frame and a place for notes, titles, dates, crop marks, etc. When completed, they will be photographed, enlarged, and printed in the rich, intensely colored, detailed presentation for which Peggy is well-known. The completed prints are usually only one size, embodying the original vision with which she began. She does have some that are two or three sizes, but not many.
Peggy in her garden with Zeeky Boy.
Peggy always has something in mind before she chooses which flowers to press.
Peggy told me that her art-making process is purely intuitive. She just begins. But even without preliminary sketches, either loose thumbnails or carefully rendered finished drawings, a work of art doesn’t appear fully realized. It can take a long time or a short time, as long as is needed. It is the setting down, observing, leaving what has been placed, or making changes that may be minute or substantial. That is the fun of it, the magic that fills an artist’s day without time seeming to pass at all.
Her one exception was for “Composition For a Celebration, 2010,” for the fortieth anniversary program of the Martha’s Vineyard Chamber Music Society. It was inspired by “Quartet #1 in
C Minor, op.15” by Gabriel Faure, “the only piece I ever did a preliminary drawing for.” Seeing the drawings and artist’s notes is fascinating. It allows us a peek at the pictures in her mind, an unexpected glimpse of what is usually hidden.
Peggy created the TwentyFive Series in 2019 to honor the 25 years she had been making her flower collages. She had amassed quite a collection of pressed, but
unused, flowers she decided to organize by color. The colors had softened over time, appearing closer in shades of color and value. Peggy said, “My thought was to use the flowers as my medium, my pigment. From a distance or very small, one might see the colors but maybe not the flowers until one got close or the image got bigger.”
The actuals for this series are as large
Peggy composes Twenty Five, Composition 1.
Grapevine Haven. Cosmos Heaven.
Peggy's cards at SBS.
as the finished prints, 22 by 22 inches, with no enlargement or reduction. Peggy used multiple layers of plant material built to thicknesses of ⅛ to ¼ inch. Though most of her collages have multiple layers, none are as thickly composed as those of the TwentyFive Series. The result is a more abstract surface, more of an overall pattern that deconstructs the reality of the individual flowers. I found the whole concept intriguing.
There are four completed compositions. They are all complex, each surface completely covered. All together, they gave me a sense of the seasons, but
one needn’t make that analogy. Art is made by the artist, then it’s left to the viewer to see what they will see. Be sure, though, to accept the invitation to carefully and closely examine each surface after taking in
the overall images from afar.
In the TwentyFive Series, Composition 1 glows from within with energy and light, seemingly contained only by the edges of its matrix. It is composed of softened colors that move across its surface: cream/green to yellow/ red to purple/lavender blue. When I walked up close to it, I could see the individual flowers, florets, and petals. They seem to be summer flowers and the feeling of summer warmth is how the piece felt to me.
Composition 2 made me think of winter, of a quiet walk through woods of desiccated leaves, fern fronds, seed pods, and grasses curling across a path. Blotches of white birch bark from the tree in Peggy’s yard could be patches of snow, although there is really no reason I have to make it into anything real or realistic; it is what it is, a composed surface of lights and darks, of different sizes and shapes, softened edges and sharp ones, close values and stronger contrasts.
Composition 3 has the most active surface. It is tightly constructed like Composition 1, with an allover pattern that reminded me of another sort of woodland walk, of fallen leaves and faded autumnal hues. Peggy has played the complementary greens, gray-greens, and still-vibrant yellows of her background against a complexity of red cuphea
Peace, Love, Equality, Harmony.
Embrace Empathy, Equality for Everyone Everywhere.
flowers, their stems attached, that make a strong directional movement like pointing arrows across the whole surface.
Composition 4 is composed mostly of spring flowers and spring colors. Black or cream-colored violas, heads of hydrangea and verbena separated into single florets, ruby-colored cosmos, leaves that are newly -green or faded from the season before. Several dark red orchids appear, their five distinct petals like dancing, high-kicking Rockettes amidst the rounder, softer shapes. Colors are arranged in a darkto-light diagonal sweep.
Throughout my visit, Peggy shared with me her enthusiasm for her beautiful garden, and her careful drying and collecting of the seeds she will plant again when the weather warms next spring. She showed me her studio, her collection of art books, the flower presses she built herself to accommodate her requirements, her boxes of pressed flora, several of the actuals that precede the photographing and printing process of her final work, and those finished pieces, framed and artfully arranged on the walls of her house. It was an afternoon I will not forget. Nor will
I forget my deeper understanding and appreciation for the work that Peggy does. She told me: “For me, it’s about searching, looking and seeing these discoveries and understanding how
amazing the world is right in front of us each and every day.”
Find more of Peggy's work at peggyturnerzablotny.com
Composition 2 made me think of winter, of a quiet walk through woods of desiccated leaves, fern fronds, seed pods, and grasses curling across a path. Blotches of white birch bark from the tree in Peggy’s yard could be patches of snow …
Twenty Five, Composition 2.
Robert Riskin, father of Bluedot's founder and president, Victoria Riskin, coined the word doodling in his 1936 screenplay "Mr. Deeds Goes to Town," starring Gary Cooper.
Good Is Doodling
Environment? For the
PAn inveterate doodler ponders the benefits of her habit.
By Kate Feiffer
Picasso doodled. So did Leonardo Da Vinci and Winston Churchill. About doodling, famed children’s book author and illustrator Maurice Sendak (Where the Wild Things Are) said, “It's my way of stirring up my imagination to see what I find hidden in my head.” The best-selling and groundbreaking author Judy Blume (Are You There, God? It’s Me, Margaret) once revealed, “I doodle a lot and often get my best ideas with a pencil in my hand.” John F. Kennedy doodled while being briefed on the Cuban Missile Crisis. And JFK wasn’t the only doodlerin-chief — Herbert Hoover, Dwight D. Eisenhower, Lyndon D. Johnson, and Ronald Reagan all doodled on official White House stationary.
In spite of these heavy hitters scribbling circles and other whatnots, doodling has traditionally had more detractors than
defenders. In recent years, however, studies have started to show that the distracted hand can be good for your brain. Articles in major newspapers and magazines are promoting the benefits of the doodling habit. Instead of the tired refrain, “Put that pen down and pay attention,” doodling is inspiring headlines like “The Power of the Doodle: Improve Your Focus and Memory” (Wall Street Journal) and “The Cognitive Benefits of Doodling” (The Atlantic).
I’d like to add another benefit of doodling — one that hasn’t gotten much, or any, press until this time. To wit: doodling is a sustainable art form. Think about it. People doodle on used napkins, receipts, and in the margins of books. They scribble circles on envelopes and newspapers, and intersecting lines connecting rectangular boxes on paper bags and clothing tags.
MR. DEEDS GOES TO TOWN, COURTESY COLUUMBIA PICTURES
“Doodling is a sustainable art form. Think about it. People doodle on used napkins, receipts, and in the margins of books. They scribble circles on envelopes and newspapers, and intersecting lines connecting rectangular boxes on paper bags and clothing tags. Doodlers reuse and they repurpose; they make use of the resources at hand.”
Doodlers reuse and they repurpose; they make use of the resources at hand.
Without reaching for a dictionary, I’ll define doodling as the free flow of pen to paper. It is drawing without forethought, ideally without any thought. It is the release of a line, a circle, a shape — pure and uninhibited. Doodles aren’t aspiring to anything. They aren’t self-conscious. Often doodles are nothing to note, but some doodles transcend simple shapes to enchant and delight, and they often do this on paper that is meant for another purpose.
Most people doodle, or at least they used to when there were more pens and pencils around the house. I have long been a compulsive doodler. If there is a pen near me, and there usually is, little faces and people are dropping out of it. These doodled people populate pretty much every piece of paper in my house, be it an envelope or an important document that probably shouldn’t be drawn on. I doodle when I’m talking. I doodle when I watch TV. I recently was the scorekeeper during a game of scrabble, and my doodles were weaving through and sometimes over our scores. I would doodle in my sleep if I could.
It may be a stretch to call doodling an artform, but people have made the case. Medieval manuscripts often have drawings that are delightful, erotic, or fanciful in their margins. Should we consider those examples of marginalia doodles, or illustrations?
Top: Ronald Reagan's doodles. Bottom: Notes from Harry S. Truman. Courtesy the National Archives
People have labeled them both. You might say it’s unclear where that line is drawn.
In 2022, curators Francesca Alberti and Diane Bodart put together an exhibition of work that was shown in both Rome and Paris, entitled “Scribbling and Doodling. From Leonardo da Vinci to Cy Twombly.” Ironically, the organizers described the show in language infused with artworld speak, rather than what I’ll call doodler’s diction, but their elevated intent was to highlight the importance of commonplace doodling in the artistic process, even amongst the masters. As the press
Above: Edgartown Books doodle by Kate Feiffer.
Left: Doodles on a medieval text. Courtesy of University of Glasgow Archives and Special Collections, MS Hunter 232 (U.3.5) folio 38
material for the show stated:
“by exploring the multiple features of the practice of scribbling and doodling, the exhibition unveils how these experimental, transgressive, regressive or liberating graphic gestures have punctuated the history of artistic creation.”
And while the curators of this exhibit discussed doodling in Da Vinci’s time, it should be noted that the word doodle, as used to describe a form of drawing, didn’t exist until it was coined in the 1936 film Mr. Deeds Goes
. Robert Riskin, the father of Bluedot’s founder and publisher Vicky Riskin, wrote the screenplay for the film and is the man who gave us the word as it’s commonly used now. “Other people are doodlers,” Mr. Deeds (who was played by Gary Cooper) says. “It's a name we made up back home for people who make foolish designs on paper while they're thinking. It's called doodling.”
Scientists started getting involved in 1938, when they undertook the first comprehensive study of doodling.
“Art in all its forms has functioned as an important messenger in the environmental and conservation movements.”
W. S. Maclay, E. Guttmann, and W. Mayer-Gross collected and analyzed 9,000 doodles and produced a paper titled “Spontaneous Drawings as an Approach to some Problems of Psychopathology.” In 2009, psychologist Jackie Andrade asked two groups of twenty people between the ages of 18 and 55 to listen to two and a half minutes of monotonous voicemails. One of the groups doodled while listening to the messages. When asked to recount the contents of the voicemails, the doodlers remembered significantly more information than the focused listeners. Then, in 2016, a study done with Harvard Medical School students revealed that half an hour of doodling helped them to retain difficult information, which means that now the doodlers amongst us even have Harvard on our side.
But that’s not all. Ask Chat GPT what the benefits of doodling are, and you will find out that doodling enhances
creativity, improves focus, reduces stress, boosts memory, encourages flow, expresses emotions, and fosters problem solving.
Chat GPT does not mention that doodling also helps limit waste by reusing materials. Perhaps after this article is published it will.
Of course, if I’m making the case that doodling is an environmentally friendly artform, it should also be noted that doodling produces no acrylic microplastics lingering in a jar of water that will be dumped down a drain, or turpentine to dispose of after brushes have been cleaned. I am in no way suggesting that landscape or any other artists abandon painting with acrylics and oils, or any other medium they use. Art in all its forms has functioned as an important messenger in the environmental and conservation movements. In fact, America’s national parks might not even exist were it not for Thomas Moran’s extraordinary painting “The Grand
A doodle done by JFK during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Papers of John F. Kennedy, Presidential Papers
Canyon of The Yellowstone,” which is said to have inspired President Ulysses S. Grant to create Yellowstone National Park, the country’s first national park, in 1872.
Let’s doodle on that for a while.
Kate Feiffer’s doodles and drawings have been published in newspapers and magazines and in the book “The Lamb Cycle.”
Kate is also the author of eleven books for children and the novel Morning Pages.
Kate doodled on a book's dedication page.
Data breach doodle by Kate Feiffer.
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Gourmet How I Became a
Story
by Laura D. Roosevelt
My mom taught me a lot of things, including how delicious food can be when made at home.
The first time I sat down to dinner alone with my mother — just the two of us — I was 12 years old, and my parents had recently divorced. Before, I’d eaten dinner with the grown-ups only on holidays like Thanksgiving. They had a busy social life, and even when they dined alone at home, they ate at what was then the fashionable dinner hour among their set — about 8 p.m., which was too late for a kid with a bedtime of 8:30.
My sister says that our mother learned to cook by watching Julia Childs’ TV show, but I’m not sure when that occurred. Prior to their split, my parents had a cook named Claudia who prepared all their meals. Yet here was my mom, dishing up our first dinner together, that she herself had made. It was lamb chops (yum), scalloped potatoes (yum), and a blob of green mush (yuck!) that turned out to be puréed peas with mint. When she noticed that I wasn’t going near the peas, my mother put down her fork and knife, gave me a stern and resolute look that filled me with dread, and declared, “Laura, I am going to teach you to appreciate gourmet food if it kills me.”
And in short order, she did. Sure, we ate plenty of ordinary meals (roast chickens, spaghetti and meatballs, baked salmon), but under my mother’s tutelage, I also learned to love shad roe with bacon, calves’ liver smothered in caramelized onions, braised leeks in cheese sauce. My mom was an expert gardener, and many of the fruits and vegetables that appeared on our plates came right out of our backyard. She grew upscale items like raspberries,
haricots verts, and fraises du bois. When arugula was still little-known in this country, she brought back a packet of seeds from a trip to Europe, and the next thing I knew, an explosion of spicy, pleasantly bitter flavor was punctuating our salads.
Given her determination to improve my palate, I’m not sure why it never occurred to my mother to teach me to cook, or why I never thought to ask her to do so. She did, however, assign me the task of keeping the house stocked with homemade sweets. She suggested I start with chocolate chip cookies, and, using the directions on the back of the Nestle’s package, that’s just what I did. To my astonishment, they came out perfectly — the first time! — which taught me a valuable lesson about the utility of following a recipe. By the time I left for college, I was a seasoned baker, turning out meringues, macaroons, shortbread, pecan bars, and at least a dozen other delicacies to keep our cookie jar full and our sweet tooths satisfied.
My freshman year at the University of Virginia, I lived in a dorm and ate school food, but in my second year, I moved into a house with four friends. There, I learned to make bread from Peter (for whom bread-making was all about the sensuality of getting one’s hands into warm dough and kneading, kneading, kneading), and hash browns from my Southern roomie, Sandy, who believed in big, hearty breakfasts. (He also, famously, once brought home a groundhog he’d shot over the weekend on his family’s nearby cattle farm, insisting that it was “good eatin’.” It wasn’t. After marinating it for hours in vinegar for alleged
Photos by Randi Baird
tenderizing, he roasted it in the oven, and it was still tough and gamey and sporting a few stray hairs when it reached the table.)
In the decade after college, I was too busy with a new job, then grad school, then more new jobs, to have much time for cooking. At home, I ate more pasta with bottled tomato sauce than I care to admit. But eating out helped broaden my tastes. In the early ‘80s, for example, a friend from my job in D.C. introduced me to sushi — a concept that, I admit, I initially found repugnant, but after one bite, I was hooked. Not far from my apartment I found a family-run, hole-in-the-wall Vietnamese restaurant where I tried — and loved — cold rolls dipped in peanut sauce and rice noodle salads in fish-sauce dressing, topped with strips of grilled beef, fresh basil, cilantro, and scallions. Later, living in New York City, I discovered the joys of gourmet take-out. If there was a type of food you couldn’t order by phone in that city, I never discovered it. When I married my husband in 1990 and moved into his apartment on the Upper West Side, there was even a Himalayan restaurant nearby that delivered (I liked their vegetable curries and the little dumplings called momos).
Then, in 1995, we moved to Martha’s Vineyard. In that era, pretty much the only take-out food on this Island was bad Chinese and pizza, and my husband, who’s gluten-free, couldn’t eat pizza until years later when they finally invented GF pizza crusts. I quickly figured out that if we were going to eat the kinds of foods we loved, I was going to have to learn to make them. Armed with a few great cookbooks (notably Madhur Jaffrey’s World Vegetarian, Ruth Reichl’s The Gourmet Cookbook, and the good ol’ Joy of Cooking, all on Amazon), I taught myself to cook dinner — meals that were both balanced and yummy. To my delight, Cronig’s carried items like garam masala, pomegranates, and fresh lemongrass; for more obscure items, like fresh curry leaves, kombu, and rosewater, I traveled to Boston or hit the internet.
canned tomatoes. I can always add a pinch or two at the end if it’s needed, or let diners sprinkle on their own. The weirdest thing I’ve learned is that when a dish seems to “need something,” it’s almost invariably a dash of ume plum vinegar — it’s salty and tangy, and it spruces up a soup or stew every time.
Of course, the environmental benefits of eating locally are significant, but in addition, I’ve learned that local fish, poultry, eggs, yogurt, breads, and cheese are almost always more flavorful than their store-bought counterparts.
When I’m trying out something new, which I do frequently to continue broadening my repertoire, I almost always use a recipe as a starting point. But I’ve learned enough over the years to know when modifications will make it better. When a recipe calls for two cloves of garlic, for example, I usually use four. When a dish contains fresh spinach, I often substitute other greens from my garden, like Swiss chard, collards, or tatsoi, and I always add more than suggested, since greens cook down to next to nothing. Because I like strong flavors, I tend to be heavy-handed with fresh herbs and with spices like cumin, coriander, and chili powder. On the other hand, I generally ignore instructions to add salt, especially when recipes call for ingredients that already contain salt, like chicken broth or
I’ve taken a leaf, if you will, out of my mother’s book and become a serious gardener (see Laura’s Garden to Table series: bit.ly/GARDEN-TABLE), largely because produce straight out of the garden simply tastes better than what you buy in a grocery store. Arugula and herbs are stronger-flavored, radishes are spicier, asparagus is so sweet that it’s best eaten raw and just-picked, and there is nothing — absolutely nothing — that compares to a fat, juicy garden tomato, sliced while still warm from the sun, topped with a drizzle of olive oil, a sprinkling of salt, and some shredded basil from the herb patch, eaten on a piece of toast rubbed with home-grown garlic. Of course, the environmental benefits of eating locally are significant, but in addition, I’ve learned that local fish, poultry, eggs, yogurt, breads, and cheese are almost always more flavorful than their store-bought counterparts. Prufrock cheese from the Grey Barn, anyone? (See our story: bit.ly/GreyBarn) Or a North Tabor Farm chicken? (Here’s a recipe for that: bit.ly/NorthTabor-chicken.) Mermaid Farm yogurt? Some freshly caught squid or tautog (read this story about tautog, with recipe: bit. ly/TautogMV )? A Blackwater Farm egg? Yes, please. Nowadays, my husband and I rarely eat out, because the food at home is just so much better. I usually decide what to make based on what needs eating in my fridge or freezer, and, during the season, what’s in abundance in my garden. Like my frugal mother (see my essay about her: bit.ly/Pinchpenny), I loathe waste — especially food waste. If you spend as much time tending a garden as she did and I do, the last thing you want is to let your garden’s bounty rot. Unlike my mother, I had my kids eat dinner with us from the get-go, every night, including when we had other adults over. My husband has also become an excellent cook over the years (albeit mostly on weekends), and because we (and many of our friends) are “foodies,” my children grew up listening to a lot of food talk and meal analysis at the table. What could we have done differently or better? Was the fish overcooked? Does this need more garam masala? Would quinoa have been better than rice with this Thai green curry? I didn’t exactly teach my offspring to cook, but they learned a lot about food through osmosis, and by watching me make dinner while they did their homework at the kitchen table. I’m proud to say that they’ve both grown up to be excellent cooks and lovers of good food — and I didn’t even have to threaten to turn them into gourmets if it killed me!
ENCHILADA CASSEROLE
Serves 6
DIRECTIONS
1. Preheat the oven to 375 degrees. Brush or spray the bottom and sides of a 9”x12” baking dish with olive oil.
2. Heat 2 tablespoons of olive oil in a saute pan. Add the onions and garlic and cook, stirring, until softened. Add the ground meat, breaking it up with a wooden spoon. When the meat is mostly cooked through, add the tomatoes, cumin, coriander, chili powder, and salt, and mix well. Cook, stirring occasionally, until most of the liquid from the tomatoes has evaporated. Taste and adjust seasonings as needed. Remove to a bowl.
3. Add 2 tablespoons of olive oil to the same pan (no need to wipe
it out), and when it’s hot, add the mixed vegetables and cook for about 5 minutes until they’re softened. Add the vegetables to the meat mixture and stir to incorporate.
4. Line the bottom and the sides of the prepared baking dish with tortillas. You will need to fold and tear them a bit in order to get the surfaces fully covered. Pour in the meat-vegetable mixture and spread it out evenly. Cover the top with more tortillas.
5. Pour the enchilada sauce over the top of the tortillas, then spread the cheese on top. Bake for about 45 minutes, until the dish is hot throughout and the cheese has melted and browned. Cut into portions and serve.
This is a wonderful recipe for using up odds and ends in the fridge — half a zucchini, a slightly wilted pepper, a few odd leaves of kale — basically any veggies that need using. Plus, it’s delicious, and when my kids were small and wouldn’t eat most vegetables, they’d eat them in this dish without noticing. It’s amazing what some Mexican spices, enchilada sauce, and a generous amount of melted cheese will cover up!
INGREDIENTS
1 large onion, diced
4 cloves garlic, minced
4 Tbsps olive oil, divided, plus more for the baking dish
1 lb ground meat (I use venison, but beef or turkey is fine, too, or use crumbled extra-firm tofu for a vegetarian version)
4 medium tomatoes, diced, or 1 15 ounce can diced tomatoes with their juices
2 tsps cumin
1 1/2 tsps coriander
1 tsp chili powder
1/2 tsp salt
3 (or more) cups of mixed vegetables, diced small (here, I used mushrooms, fennel stalks, cilantro stems, zucchini, the kernels from an ear of corn already cooked, jalapeños, a green pepper, carrots, and a few string beans)
8-10 corn tortillas
16 oz enchilada sauce (either red or green, or a combination)
about 8 oz melting cheese like Colby Jack
BRAISED LEEKS WITH CHEESE SAUCE
Serves 4
as a side dish or starter
INGREDIENTS
For the leeks
6 medium leeks
2 Tbsps olive oil
Salt and pepper to taste
1/2 cup dry white wine
Vegetable stock
For the cheese sauce
1 Tbsp butter
1 Tbsp flour
1 cup milk (I use 2%, but oat milk and other alternatives will also work)
1/4 tsp freshly grated nutmeg
1 cup grated strong cheddar cheese (or jarlsberg, manchego, or
DIRECTIONS
1. Trim off the bottoms of the leeks and cut off the dark green leaves. Cut the leeks in half lengthwise, and place them in a bowl of cold water to soak for 10 minutes. Drain, and rinse off any remaining dirt, checking between the layers at the top ends.
2. Heat the olive oil on medium in a heavy-bottomed skillet large enough to fit all the leeks in a single layer. Put the leeks in the pan cut side down and cook for a few minutes until the bottoms are slightly browned. Flip them over and cook for another 3 minutes, browning the other sides. Sprinkle salt and pepper over the top and turn them over again. If the outer layers have become papery, remove them.
3. Add the wine to the pan and cook for a minute. Then add enough vegetable broth to just cover the leeks, bring to a boil, then simmer for about 20 minutes until most
she died. Most were typed on 4”x 6” index cards, stained with oil and drips and annotated in handwriting (“Bottoms blacken; try 325°,” “Use Cuisinart!”), but somehow, the recipe for the braised leeks in cheese sauce of my early adolescence was missing. This is my attempt to recreate it, and I think it turned out well. Note that instead of drizzling cheese sauce over the braised leeks, you could sprinkle them with some grated parmesan or cheddar while they’re still in the pan, then pop the pan under the broiler until the cheese melts.
of the liquid has boiled off and the leeks are cooked through and easily pierced with a knife tip.
4. While the leeks are braising, prepare the cheese sauce. Melt the butter in a small saucepan over medium heat. Whisk in the flour and cook for a minute. Then slowly drizzle in the milk, whisking continuously. Add the grated nutmeg.
5. Cook, stirring, until the mixture is slightly thickened, about 3 minutes. Stir in the cheese until it’s melted and fully incorporated. Season with salt and pepper to taste, and add additional milk if you want a thinner consistency.
6. To serve, place the leeks on a platter and drizzle generously with the cheese sauce.
INDIVIDUAL DACQUOISES WITH BERRY SAUCE AND SHAVED DARK CHOCOLATE
Serves 8
INGREDIENTS
For the meringues
4 egg whites
1/4 tsp cream of tartar
1 cup granulated sugar
1 tsp vanilla extract
For the berry sauce
1 cup frozen raspberries
1 cup sliced fresh strawberries
12 amarena cherries (see note), roughly chopped
2-3 Tbsps amarena cherry syrup (from the can or jar)
For the whipped cream
1 pint whipping cream
1/4 cup granulated sugar
1 tsp vanilla extract
3 oz good quality dark chocolate, grated or shaved
DIRECTIONS
1. Make the meringues: Preheat the oven to 225 degrees. In a mixer, whip the egg whites and the cream of tartar on high until stiff peaks form.
2. Gradually pour in the sugar, add the vanilla, and whip until the meringue holds its shape.
3. On two baking sheets lined with parchment paper or silpat mats, drop 10 dollops of meringue and use a silicone spatula or a wooden spoon to flatten them into round-ish shells about an inch thick.
4. Bake the meringue shells for 1½ hours, shifting the trays after 45 minutes from top to bottom and bottom to top. For crisper shells, cook a bit longer, or leave them in the oven after turning it off until they’re cool.
5. When cool, use a spatula to remove the shells from the parchment or silpat, and set aside.
6. While the meringues are cooking, make the fruit sauce. Combine the
For my birthday, my mother used to make my favorite dessert: meringues topped with vanilla ice cream and homemade chocolate sauce. Some years ago, after my friend Rachel (see more recipes at bit.ly/RachelRecipes) brought a fabulous dacquoise cake to dinner one night (meringue “cake” layers interspersed and topped with whipped cream and berries), I decided to try my hand at a combination of the two, and I came up with this recipe, which is always a hit with dinner guests. It has the added advantage of using up eggs — we have a few too many chickens. (I add the unused egg yolks to our dog’s dinner, and he’s grateful.)
frozen raspberries, strawberries, amarena cherries, and amarena syrup in a bowl and let sit. As the raspberries melt, they’ll add liquid to the cherry liquid, which is good.
7. Grate or shave the chocolate and set aside.
8. When ready to assemble, whip the cream. Place cream in a mixer and gradually increase the speed as the cream begins to thicken. Slowly pour in the sugar, and add the vanilla. Whip until the cream holds its shape, but don’t over whip, or it will develop a butter-like consistency.
9. To assemble, place one meringue shell on a dessert plate and top it with a generous smear of whipped cream. Stir the fruit mixture, taste, and add more amarena syrup if you want it sweeter. Pour a few spoonfuls over the meringue and whipped cream. Scatter a smattering of grated or shaved chocolate on top. Repeat with seven more meringues, and serve. (There will be two meringues left over; enjoy them on their own later!)
NOTE: Amarena cherries are small, dark Italian cherries cooked in a sugar syrup and often used in desserts as decorations and/or flavor enhancers. They are available from Amazon or other online sources.
FIELDNote
To: Bluedot Living
From: MV Commission, Vineyard Conservation Society, BiodiversityWorks, Polly Hill Arboretum
Subject: New Educational Materials Available for Nurseries, Homeowners, and Landscapers to Encourage Native Planting
Martha’s Vineyard Commission, in partnership with BiodiversityWorks, Polly Hill Arboretum, and the Vineyard Conservation Society has created new educational materials for nurseries, homeowners, and landscapers to advocate for the integration of native plants to support the Islands' biodiversity and climate resilience. The initiative is part of the Climate Action Plan, a detailed plan with longterm goals for the Island to achieve by 2040; including maintaining and promoting habitat health, connectivity, and resiliency.
“All the Island’s natural resources are stressed by climate change and human activity. Restoring native habitats is healing. It’s something we can all do to make a positive difference.” Liz Durkee, Climate Change Coordinator for the MV Commission said.
Native plants are more resilient to extreme weather brought about by climate change because they have adapted to the Island’s soils and have developed deep root systems that are drought-tolerant and require less water. Local plants also play a critical role in providing food and habitat for various native wildlife.
Unfortunately, native plants are threatened by habitat loss due to development, land clearing, and the introduction of non-native plants that often take over. A 2022 botanical study by Polly Hill Arboretum found that the Island has lost nearly 80 native plant species since 1998, while non-native plants have increased by over 200 species. These changes degrade the health of our ecosystems and make them less resilient to weather extremes.
“BiodiversityWorks' Natural Neighbors program has been working to help private landowners transform their yards into stepping stones of habitat across the Island to increase connectivity between parcels of conservation land,” said Luanne Johnson, Wildlife Biologist and Director of BiodiversityWorks.
“Restoring native habitats is healing. It’s something we can all do to make a positive difference.”
– Liz Durkee, Climate Change Coordi nator for the MV Commission
“We are excited to roll out these native plant outreach materials with our partners to help guide everyone in our community towards nature-based landscaping.”
The education guide highlights the top 20 native species to plant, as well as problem plants and invasive species. Detailed and colorful dioramas, such as gardens based on a specific property’s habitat, are inspiring and educational. Quick guides for landscapers and nurseries outline the importance of integrating native species into gardens, stocking native plants regularly, and promoting them to clients.
The guides are available at Donoromas, Gayle Gardens, Vineyard Gardens, Jardin Mahoneys, and Middletown. Materials are also available to download online (bit.ly/ plantlocalMV). The project was made possible by a grant through the Massachusetts Municipal Vulnerability Preparedness program.
IAN DOUGLAS
Pollinator gardens, like this one in Ian Douglas and Kristin Harris's yard (see more of their property on page 23), attract native species such as bees.
VINEYARD POWER Leads the Charge in Renewable Energy Resiliency
The organization is focused on generating renewable energy on-Island, storing solar energy in batteries, and increasing access for income-eligible households.
BY LUCAS THORS
What does it mean for a community to be resilient? In the energy space, resilience is defined as meeting the demand for electricity at all times. Most approach resilience through the framework of emergency situations, like when a major storm knocks down power lines and disrupts power from the grid. But as we transition from energy that is generated by burning fossil fuels, our understanding of resilience becomes more nuanced.
Vineyard Power is leading the way when it comes to energy resilience strategies on the Island, and it’s working with towns on various solar and battery storage projects.
In Massachusetts, offshore wind is our most abundant renewable energy resource, and it will help the state achieve its climate goal of becoming net zero by 2050. Solar is another reliable resource, and it’s easy to install and relatively inexpensive. Together, these two forms of energy will make up the largest shares of non-carbon emitting renewable electricity production on the Island. Unlike traditional forms of generating electricity through coal-, oil-, or natural gasfired power plants, production from offshore wind and solar depends on weather and time of day.
“These resources, though vast, are intermittent in nature,” said Luke Lefeber, Controller and Renewable Development Manager for Vineyard Power. “The sun is not always shining, nor the wind always blowing, when you need to produce energy.”
Similarly, periods of high production from offshore wind and solar do not always align with high energy demand. Energy storage, which allows for storing excess energy when it is produced from intermittent renewable resources and distributing it when production is low or grid power is disrupted, is critical for a resilient grid. Battery storage is perhaps the most versatile and easily deployable form of energy storage technology available to us, and is playing a crucial role in resilience planning for the Island.
As part of Vineyard Power’s Community Benefit Agreement with Vineyard Wind, Vineyard Power secured $7.5 million for the Island community to develop a Resiliency and Affordability Program (RAP) with two goals: (1) increase resilience at critical government, nonprofit, and Tribal facilities through the deployment of local solar and battery storage projects, and (2) provide electricity cost benefits to incomeeligible ratepayers.
Collaboration is instrumental to Vineyard Power’s work. They established an advisory committee comprising members that represent all six towns and the Wampanoag
The West Tisbury Library, the town’s designated heating and cooling shelter and public water source, is considered a critical facility by Vineyard Power.
Power and the advisory committee have identified over 30 potential solar and battery storage projects for critical facilities on-Island, which range from emergency shelters and wastewater infrastructure to town buildings and the Island Food Pantry.
Progress on the first of these projects is already underway. Vineyard Power and the advisory committee identified the Martha’s Vineyard Airport Wastewater Facility, Tisbury Senior Center, and West Tisbury Library as high priority, bid-ready projects, and granted them $1.5 million to subsidize solar and battery development. They will also get technical assistance.
“The technical support and financial commitment from Vineyard Power was instrumental in getting the wastewater solar and battery storage project off the ground,” said Geoff Freeman, General Manager at the Martha’s Vineyard Airport. “The wastewater facility is some of the most important infrastructure for the airport and the business park. We just completed a major upgrade to the system, and we’re excited by the prospect of increasing resilience at the facility with renewable energy that is generated and stored on site.”
These solar and battery projects are some of the first of their kind for municipal facilities. Batteries will be charged by onsite solar and then discharged as the primary source of backup power in the event of an outage. For most outages on the Vineyard, one battery discharge is sufficient. But for prolonged power failures, Lefeber said batteries can act as the “first call” for resilience, then existing fossil fuel generators can be used as a backup. “Once that battery is depleted, you can use the generator until the battery is charged again, then discharge that battery and restart the cycle,” Lefeber said.
Equally important, these projects participate in the state’s Demand Response program, which means they get financial incentives to discharge batteries at times when electricity
Tribe of Gay Head (Aquinnah). Vineyard
COURTESY VINEYARD POWER
demand spikes. “Particularly between 3 pm and 7 pm in the summer months, when everyone is coming home from work or the beach, turning on their air conditioners, their televisions, their lights …,” says Lefeber.
To meet current demand spikes, the Island has a network of large fossil fuel generators — some at the MV Airport, some at the Eversource facility on Edgartown-Vineyard Haven Road, and some in the powerlines district in Tisbury that are mostly diesel powered, high-emitting resources. “Instead of firing up those generators during peak demand periods, imagine you have a network of batteries across the Island that have stored all this excess energy. You discharge those batteries simultaneously as we reach that peak period, and now you don’t need to rely on those high-emitting generators,” Lefeber explained.
and Aquinnah as part of the Energy Transitions Initiative Partnership Project, sponsored by the US Department of Energy through the National Renewable Energy Laboratory. The plan is to install microgrids for both town complexes.
“Once they are ready, Vineyard Power will help those towns subsidize the cost of implementing those projects.” Lefeber said.
In addition to their work in resiliency, Vineyard Power has also made strides to increase renewable energy access and reduce the cost of electricity for income-eligible residents on the Island. This year, the organization committed to grant $250,000 to help install solar at Island Housing Trust’s Meshacket, Southern Tier, and Kuehn’s Way affordable housing projects.
Vineyard Power is working closely with other Island municipalities that want the same level of resilience from the next round of projects. For example, Lefeber recently participated in a microgrid feasibility study for Chilmark
“These projects are a model for the community, and really are integral in this wider goal to implement renewable energy solutions,” Lefeber said.
To learn more about Vineyard Power, visit vineyardpower.com, follow them on social media, and subscribe to their newsletter.
Diagram of a grid-tied solar array with battery backup for energy storage and resilience.
of ideas about my next message for the fair.” She doesn’t elaborate, “because [then it] won’t be a surprise,” but she hopes that the quilts can be another medium for her advocacy around climate change. “People don’t come to the fair for a climate message, but maybe they see it,” Kate says.
“I think the big question at this point is, how is it that not everybody is engaged with climate change?” Kate says. She hopes her narrative quilts can act as everyday reminders for people to care about the environment.
Someone who saw her Give Earth A Chance quilt told her it reminded them of the work of Sister Corita Kent — the artist, designer, educator, and nun who lived in Boston and was known for her innovative designs that often referenced social justice themes. Kent designed the rainbow-colored gas tank in Dorchester, for example — a landmark that every Boston commuter knows well. Those yellow, red, blue, green, and purple swatches were a source of controversy for years, because when the design debuted in 1971, some people thought they saw the profile of Ho Chi Minh on the left side of the blue strip. This was during the Vietnam War, and people thought Kent was trying to send a political message. Kent has never revealed whether or not she intentionally designed it that way.
“I think the big question at this point is, how is it that not everybody is engaged with climate change?” – Kate Warner
Kate’s reaction to being compared to Kent was “Wow, I wish.” But it’s been fodder for thought. “She did some really beautiful and clever things,” Kate says. “I think there’s a lot of room for me to work on this here.”
Kate’s been studying new quilting techniques, learning from local quilter Pam Flam, who, Kate says, makes “the most beautiful quilts on Martha’s Vineyard.” She also draws inspiration
from quilter Zak Foster, who creates narrative quilts out of recycled clothes. “It seems like he comes up with about a quilt a week,” Kate says. “For me, it takes me a while to quilt. I think about it when I’m napping.”
Hurricanes are top of mind for Kate at the moment. The devastation caused by Hurricanes Helene and Milton has Kate thinking about prolonged power
outages and how the Vineyard would fare under similar circumstances. She’s working on a few resiliency projects with the MVC and Eversource. One is already funded through the US Department of Energy and the National Renewable Energy Lab, and the group is working on a resiliency strategy for the three down-Island water departments. (Chilmark and Aquinnah received a separate grant for a microgrid project at their town centers.)
“The question is how to increase the resilience of those water departments beyond that of generator power, so that if we do have an extreme weather event, and power lines are down, we can provide potable water to the downIsland towns,” Kate says. “I do think we are in danger of having a big hurricane, and so we need to have greater resilience on the Vineyard.”
What’s her plan? “I call it my Magic Bus Idea,” she says. “The idea is to use the Vineyard Transit Authority's electric buses, drive them to one of the well pump sites, of which we have 12, and spell the generators for two or three hours by using the power from the bus. So you’re using the stored energy in the battery of the bus. We’re looking at what would be needed to interface between the bus and the well pump … It wouldn’t provide endless amounts of power, but it would help,” Kate says. She plays the song Magic Bus by The Who every time she hosts meetings where she talks about the project.
The sign outside Kate’s house used to say Vineyard Bread Project. Now it says Give Earth A Chance. It’s a window into what she’s up to, and one of the many messages she’ll continue to leave for us.
Kate with her blue ribbon-winning quilt.
LOCAL
HEROES
KATE WARNER
She’s the MVC’s Energy Planner and known for her solar expertise. Now, she’s making quilts that send environmental messages.
By Britt Bowker Photos by Gino Mazzaferro
Kate Warner typically has many projects going on at once. She’s the Energy Planner for the Martha’s Vineyard Commission, and she also serves on the West Tisbury Energy Committee. She’s been involved in climate work since the ‘90s. In 1998, she was one of the first people to bring solar energy to Martha’s Vineyard, installing the Island’s first grid-tied solar array at her West Tisbury home, after which she founded the organization
that became Vineyard Power. Her parents raised her from an early age to care about the environment and the world. Her father was an academic, and he and Kate’s mother often took her and her siblings out of school to go to peace marches in Cambridge, Boston, Ann Arbor, and St. Louis.
Kate is also known for founding the Vineyard Bread Project, a weekly community-supported bread program, but she’s stopped baking due to a wheat sensitivity. Instead, lately she’s begun
making quilts that send environmental messages. Her most recent one won a blue ribbon at this year’s Ag Fair, and its message is clear: Give Earth A Chance.
“That was a peace slogan, probably from the original Earth Day movement,” Kate says. “I’m embarking on a new path,” she adds. “Quilting has been kind of sporadic for me, but now I have a lot of
Continued on page 63
LUCAS THORS
Kate Warner working on one of her quilts.
The sign outside Kate's home in West Tisbury.
508.696.9999
508.645.2628
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