Columbia University professor and former provost Jonathan Cole will discuss The Great American University: Its Rise to Preeminence, Its Indispensable National Role and Why It Must Be Protected, on Thursday, August 12, at 8 p.m. at Chilmark Community Center

Always wanted to write comedy? Find your comedic voice and take your ideas from page to stage in a four-day intensive comedy writing and performing workshop with Emmy-winning original Saturday Night Live writer Anne Beatts. The workshop will culminate in a live performance following the Saturday family matinee.

Fleet Vision

The Menemsha Fisheries Development Fund presents Menemsha: Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow with Warren Doty on Thursday, August 12 at 5 p.m. at the Chilmark Public Library.

Mr. Doty will speak about the fishing fleet in Menemsha, what it was years ago, what it is today, and the hope for the future. He will speak about a new project called Fleet Visioning. “The year 2020 is just 10 years into the future. Where do we want to be when that day arrives?” Mr. Doty said.

Pulitzer prize-winning film critic Joe Morgenstern will present an evening of conversation about the movie industry, at the Martha’s Vineyard Hebrew Center on Thursday, August 12.

Mr. Morgenstern has entitled his talk Quo Vadis — Not the Movie, the Movies, and he promises “an extended and informal conversation with the audience (their questions and my answers, plus some hopefully relevant stories and selected snippets of gossip”) about the state of the movies and where they seem to be going.”

If you’ve eaten a chocolate bar in the past year, you may have contributed to the world’s growing slavery program. Have a pair of Levi’s jeans? You’re mostly in the clear. Sporting a new pair of Sketchers? You may want to return them.

“There are so many invisible connections we have to slavery that we perpetuate without even knowing it,” said Brant Christopher, artist in residence for the anti-slavery organization Not For Sale. “We tell the story of what’s happening with human trafficking in the world today.”

Rather, it is in the shorter history of America,

not England, not Italy, that we find ourselves

in the perfect middle of a rainy, summer afternoon

inside a 1930s shingled boathouse long since

beached on a low hill out of water’s reach,

and plumbed and electrified for habitation.

No effort has been made to hide its origins.

Old masts and spars wait in the overhead rafters.

Blocks and tackle, coiled in figure eight knots,