Dancing and Darjeeling

Belly dance is derived from folk dances and traditions of Middle Eastern and North African cultures. Like any dance form, it is great cardiovascular exercise. Find out more at the Tisbury Senior Center’s Tea and Talk on Oct. 24 at 2 p.m. The Vineyard’s own Belly Dance and Revue will dance and talk about the history of belly dance while you enjoy cookies and tea. Dancers are Pat Szucs, Betsy Smith, Jamie O’Gorman, Suzanna Nickerson, Shela Rayyan and more.

THE DAY THE EARTH CAVED IN: An American Mining Tragedy. By Joan Quigley. Random House. 2007. Hardcover. 223 pages.

Before he began sinking into the ground, 12-year-old Todd Domboski noticed a wisp of smoke floating from the ground “like a smoldering match buried under damp leaves.”

In Centralia, Pennsylvania, where an abandoned coal mine had been burning beneath the town for 19 years, the book explains, tiny fissures often punched through the topsoil, trailing bands of sulfurous steam.

Learn more about your family, your community and the Island around us: explore methods of conducting oral history interviews in a workshop at the Martha’s Vineyard Museum, 59 School street in Edgartown.

The first meeting will be on Saturday, Nov. 3, from 1 to 4 p.m., with a follow-up meeting at a time to be determined by participants.

Environmental medicine specialist Dr. Lisa Nagy will discuss the causes, symptoms, complications and treatments for chemical sensitivity at the Chilmark Public Library on Wednesday, Oct. 24 at 5:30 p.m. Her talk, Environmental Health: The Controversial Connection between Chronic Lyme, Depresssion, and Alcoholism and living in a moldy home, is free, open to all and sponsored by the Friends of the Chilmark Public Library.

Sun Porch Books at 45 Circuit avenue in Oak Bluffs, now in its fifth autumn of operation, is bowing to America’s love of books and coffee under a single roof.

Currently in the bookstore, three tables with chairs occupy the front of the store, and a portion of the counter holds coffee, tea, hot chocolate, sodas, water and cookies.

Owner Holly Nadler says, “I now feel more than ever that my bookshop is my living room on the town.

Buddhism is on the rise in Brazil, and West Tisbury journalist Perry Garfinkel has some ideas on why.

He’s the author of the 2006 national bestseller Buddha or Bust: In Search of Truth, Meaning, Happiness, and the Man Who Found Them All. When the Portuguese edition of the book was released in June, Mr. Garfinkel traveled to Brazil, where the national census shows the percentage of Roman Catholics there has dropped from about 90 to 70 per cent since 1980.