Arts & Entertainment
The Chilmark Library will hold a big used books sale, just in time for holiday shopping. Great bargains — hardcovers, books on tape and videos are $1, paperbacks are 25 cents, from Dec. 15 to 19. Everything goes half price Dec. 20 to 24 and then it’s free Dec. 26 to 31. Open during normal library hours, as follows:
Saturday, Dec.15, 10:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m.
Monday, Dec. 17, 10:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m.
Tuesday, Dec 18, 10:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m.
Wednesday, Dec. 19, 10:30 a.m. to 7:30 p.m.
For the past three years, the static of nearby stations filled radio frequency 93.7 FM. On Friday morning a week ago, the static was replaced with silence. Around 4:30 p.m, there was a beep. And then a song came over the airwaves.
So that night, even as a slew of Island musicians took the stage at the Chilmark Community Center to raise money for an Island family, and as Islanders took cover from the steady drizzle and caught up with friends over freshly baked cornbread and homemade chowder, a radio from a car parked outside blared a steady stream of music.
Maritime Art Show
Sail Martha’s Vineyard’s Maritime Art Show is receiving an enthusiastic response from the community. The open house reception this past Sunday night welcomed more than 60 guests to the Sail MV building on Main street in Vineyard Haven, where gifts and work produced by 21 artists are on display.
More than 14 pieces have been sold, raising funds for Sail MV to continue its sailing and rowing programs on the Island. The show will run through Dec. 22.
Actors to play the voices of Zeb Tilton, the historian Henry Kittredge, and the writer and Mystic Seaport curator John Leavitt are being sought for the film Zeb — Schooner Life. Open auditions will be held at the Vineyard Playhouse on Tuesday, Dec. 18 from 3:30 to 8:30 p.m.
Interested parties should call Detrick Lawrence Productions at 508-627-8844 to make an appointment.
Screenplay Winner
Dick Upson, a longtime Chilmark summer resident as well as a former Vineyard radio personality on WVOI-FM, just won the 2007 Horror Screenplay Competition’s Grand Prize from the Rhode Island International Film Festival for a horror film that is set on the Vineyard.
Mr. Upson is a professor of communications at Roger Williams University in Bristol, R.I.
Again and again, it seems, Christmas brings us face to face with the same old question. Where does a rabidly materialistic society like our own get off celebrating the man who taught poverty by reveling in a superfluity of consumer goods? Perhaps they didn’t juggle exactly the same paradox, but the monks of 12th century England labored over the same vexing question of how best to reconcile Christian piety with the pull of earthly delights.
