Books & Ideas
English Classes
Nancy Gardella is offering a free weekly ESL class at the Edgartown Public Library on Tuesdays from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. The group will not meet on Nov. 11. For more information, call 508-627-4221,
In this year-long serialized novel set on the Vineyard in real time, a native Islander (“Call me Becca”) returns home after two decades to help her eccentric Uncle Abe keep his landscaping business, Pequot, afloat. Abe has a paranoid hatred of Richard Moby, the CEO of an off-Island wholesale nursery, Broadway. Convinced that Moby wants to destroy Abe personally, and all Island-based landscaping/nursery businesses generally, Abe is obsessed with “taking down” Moby.
Greg Watson is teaching a weekly portrait painting class at Featherstone. The class will study reproductions of master paintings. Mr. Watson will give demonstrations of different methods, and the students will have at least two hours per class to paint from a live model.
During the six-week class, students will explore drawing directly with paint in both a limited and an extended color pallet.
Autumn
Dear Crickets, doomed to die,
Bless you, for so am I.
How bravely your song of Autumn
Accepts without remorse
The ordaining of Winter.
Hidden in the hearth,
faith of future generations
Beyond the snow, beyond death:
’Tis humble your chirrup
And full of courage
As we too might be
If we could but see
Dog at the Funeral
For Dave Willey (1947-2008)
I didn’t see him when two planes did a fly-by,
one on the right peeling off in missing-man formation.
Not until I saw his picture with Dave and Dave’s family —
a big lug of a dog, a Great Dane, but smaller, a Doberman,
but ears cupped, long tail, bright eyes, and an open mouth.
He walked through the door as we sat, looking around
Marine paleobiologist Fred Hotchkiss will discuss horseshoe crabs at the Chilmark Public Library on Wednesday, Oct. 15, from 5:30 to 6:30 p.m.
A Martha’s Vineyard resident, the horseshoe crab plays an important role in our coastal ecosystem. The eggs of the horseshoe crab are a vital food source to migrating shorebirds. The adults are essential in biomedical applications and to the bait fishery. Sustaining the horseshoe crab for man and nature is a recognized priority from the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of Maine.