Not many Islanders can say they had been born and raised in Tisbury, however Ben Robinson and his household are among the many few.
Mr. Robinson, his two siblings and his youngsters all took their first breaths within the Winery Haven residence the place his older sister Lillian now lives.
“Each my sons had been born in the identical room I used to be born in,” Mr. Robinson advised the Gazette, throughout a wide-ranging dialog early this week in his cluttered structure workplace overlooking Veterans Memorial Park.
Mr. Robinson, who turns 45 in April, nonetheless lives in Winery Haven for many of the 12 months. An elected member of each the Tisbury planning board and the Martha’s Winery Fee, he chairs the fee’s local weather motion job drive.
He additionally was not too long ago short-listed for the worldwide Island Innovator Award, co-sponsored by the Clinton International Initiative to acknowledge an island resident who, in keeping with the awards program web site, “has developed a number of options to island points which have achieved substantial constructive influence.”
The 12 judges for the awards embrace former heads of state from the island republics of Seychelles and Kiribati, in addition to United Nations officers, educators and activists from the U.S. and overseas.
Mr. Robinson was beneficial for the award by a bunch of Vineyarders together with fellow MVC members, fee staffers and Dukes County commissioners, in keeping with West Tisbury resident Bob Johnston of Technique Innovation Group, which co-sponsors the worldwide awards.
The quick listing was accredited final week, and finalists are actually being decided prematurely of the April 25 live-streamed awards presentation.
The environmental activism that earned him a shot on the award started within the twenty first century, however Mr. Robinson recollects changing into conscious of the earth’s fragility whereas a sixth-grader at Tisbury College within the late Nineteen Eighties, throughout the improvement of the Montreal Protocol on ozone depletion.
“I used to be writing a paper with my good friend [about the Montreal accords],” he mentioned. “That was my first realization that we had been on a finite planet and that we have now affect.”
Since then, he mentioned, “I all the time felt we wanted to rein in what we’re doing.”
He was nonetheless on the Tisbury College when he found his skilled vocation as an architect, stoked by an eighth-grade internship with then-emerging Hutker Architects in Winery Haven.
“I appreciated the design side of it, and I appreciated drawing,” recalled the graduate of Syracuse College’s five-year structure program. He additionally bought hands-on development expertise working together with his father, a builder.
Within the summers, and after commencement, Mr. Robinson took to the ocean.
“I labored on Shenandoah as crew . . . after which When and If,” he mentioned. The latter vessel, a schooner, was constructed for Gen. George S. Patton in 1939.
Different boats would observe. “I all the time appreciated crusing and I wished to journey, so I used crusing to journey,” Mr. Robinson mentioned.
Alongside the best way, round 2001, he met one other traveler, Elizabeth (Betsy) Ross Carnie, who would turn out to be his life accomplice.
The couple’s assembly echoes that of Mr. Robinson’s mother and father, Jeff — initially from New York — and Ingrid, who was Finnish. The 2 had met at sea, and lived aboard an Asian junk early of their relationship earlier than beginning their household on the Winery.
In addition they had been eager aggressive sailors, a trait that continues with their youngsters and grandchildren. Ingrid Robinson, who died of most cancers in 2001, is remembered with a prize in her title for the annual Pat West Gaff Rig Race in Winery Haven. Greater than as soon as, her relations have received it of their schooner Phra Luong.
Whereas making the Winery their residence, the elder Robinsons misplaced little time in introducing their youngsters to the broader world.
After younger Ben’s first month of kindergarten at Tisbury College, the couple relocated the household to Sri Lanka after which to Thailand, the place Jeff Robinson spent two years constructing Phra Luong whereas processing refugee requests for the U.S. Embassy in Bangkok.
His father’s job meant the youngsters may attend the worldwide faculty in Bangkok, which Mr. Robinson nonetheless recollects as remarkably well-appointed.
“In first grade, we had our personal science lab,” he mentioned.
Returning to the Tisbury College for second grade via eighth grade, Mr. Robinson went on to the regional highschool, the place he graduated in 1995.
After assembly Ms. Carnie just a few years later, the 2 traveled in Europe and labored aboard boats earlier than returning to the U.S., the place she attended graduate faculty at Columbia College’s Academics School whereas he labored as an architect.
Whereas residing in Manhattan, the couple returned to Tisbury for the delivery of their first son, Runar Finn. Now 15, Runar is called for his Finnish great-grandfather “who fought the Russians in World Battle II on skis,” Mr. Robinson mentioned.
By the point they had been anticipating their second son, Odin, now 12, Ms. Carnie and Mr. Robinson had been prepared to go away New York and decide on the Winery.
Like many different households, they’ve needed to do the twice-a-year Island shuffle between residences. In Tisbury, they’ve lived in a sequence of rental houses, most not too long ago settling in to a revolving winter tenancy at a classic residence close to the Winery Haven library.
In summer season, the household relocates to a cabin on the grounds of Barn Home in Chilmark, the century-old summer season colony throughout from Lucy Vincent Seaside, the place Ms. Carnie has cooked communal meals for residents for 10 years.
“That place actually spoke to us due to the ethos we had been making an attempt to stay by,” mentioned Mr. Robinson. “For the Winery shuffle, we’ve actually lucked out.”
He readily admits the stress between his structure profession, which nearly solely includes second houses, and his conviction that each one improvement harms the setting.
“I do battle with it at occasions,” he mentioned.
However he additionally believes that constructing initiatives will be designed in ways in which reduce their environmental influence — a perception that led him to start attending Tisbury planning board conferences till he was recruited as an alternate member, then appointed and eventually elected to the physique.
“I’ve all the time wished to be in Tisbury [but] I hadn’t realized I wished to be politically concerned,” he mentioned.
“What actually form of triggered my pondering was seeing initiatives the place I felt had one thing so as to add. Round 2014 I began to pay much more consideration.”
In 2016, Mr. Robinson was first appointed to the MVC by the Tisbury choose board, which renewed his one-year appointment a number of occasions earlier than the connection started to fray over his stubborn deal with environmental points.
“The final 12 months I used to be appointed, the board actually didn’t like what I used to be doing on the MVC,” mentioned Mr. Robinson, who ran for and was elected to the city’s at-large fee seat in 2020.
“They thought, as a result of they had been the appointing board, I used to be answerable to them,” he mentioned.
Whereas admitting the uphill nature of the battle to scale back greenhouse gases, Mr. Robinson factors with delight to a number of the MVC’s achievements throughout his current management on the local weather job drive.
Eversource is operating a fifth electrical cable to the Island, as a direct results of the duty drive’s work in exhibiting that demand on the Island was greater than the utility firm had projected, he mentioned. And the Eversource diesel mills on the Edgartown-Winery Haven Highway are attributable to be eliminated by 2025.
The duty drive can also be working with the U.S. Military Corps of Engineers on a research of the Winery provide chain, aimed toward making the Island extra resilient.
Mr. Robinson’s activism can also be exhibiting within the household’s subsequent era: Each his sons grew to become concerned within the student-led marketing campaign to ban single-use plastic bottles on the Island.
However he didn’t lead the boys to this marketing campaign, Mr. Robinson mentioned; They discovered it on their very own.
“When children get political, it’s simple to say their mother and father are utilizing them,” he mentioned.
“After they get entangled in stuff like that I attempt to step again, on function.”