Books & Ideas
Power Talk
The Aquinnah/Gay Head Community Association will host a wine and cheese gathering at the Vanderhoop Homestead on Aquinnah Circle at the Gay Head Cliffs on Monday, August 15 (rain date August 16), starting at 5 p.m.
The evening will feature a talk by Mark London, the executive director of the Martha’s Vineyard Commission, about the issue of wind power and how it will affect Aquinnah and the Vineyard generally. Advocates and opponents will be invited and questions will be taken.
This Sunday, August 14, is Founders Sunday at the Union Chapel in Oak Bluffs. As a part of this celebration, the Union Chapel is honored to have the Rev. Dean K. Denniston Jr. as its guest preacher. Born in Boston, and raised in Boston andon the Vineyard, Mr. Denniston is the grandson of the Rev. Oscar E. Denniston, who in 1907 founded Bradley Memorial Church, the Island’s first African American church.
Find out all you ever wanted to know about eelgrass restoration with conservation (elastic) moorings, from the director of the Mass Bays Program, Jay Baker, on Thursday, August 11, at 5 p.m. at the Tisbury Senior Center.
Did you know the Vineyard community is exploring the habitat and security benefits of elastic moorings? Why, you ask? Elastic moorings eliminate the scour that disturbs the bottom when a heavy anchor chain swings on a traditional mooring.
The world’s oceans need protection, a globe-traveling National Geographic underwater photographer told a large audience at the Tabernacle last Saturday.
After 35 years of photographing the oceans, Brian Skerry, 49, said he is troubled by growing evidence of degradation of habitat and the waste and loss of sea life. “I think the oceans are dying a death of a thousand cuts,” he said.
Bravo, Susan Johnson
The Friends of the Vineyard Haven Public Library are presenting an exhibit of landscape studies by painter Susan Johnson. The exhibit will be on display during regular library hours throughout the month of August as part of its Art in the Stacks initiative.
Change Is Coming
West Tisbury summer resident Jill Shaw Ruddock’s new best-selling book The Second Half of Your Life is part self-help book, part scientific treatise. It takes readers into the world of menopause and afterwards and argues successfully, in case anyone actually wondered, that there is indeed life after “the change.” But see for yourself.