Magical Marionettes

Dan Butterworth and his Magical Marionettes perform today, July 25, at 6 p.m. at the Tisbury School for the community.

Bring your kids, bring your parents, for Mr. Butterworth travels the world with a menagerie of characters — all moving on his intricate stage, into the air, and right out into the audience.

After the show, he will offer a demonstration of the tricks that lie behind the effects, so be sure to stay for insight into a rare art form.

For a long time people viewed the dearth of affordable housing on the Vineyard as a daunting and seemingly insurmountable problem. Even those who work in the field of affordable housing — which now has become its own industry on the Vineyard — will readily admit there are no easy solutions to the problem.

It’s a benefit bivalve banquet: come to the annual clambake and auction to raise money for the Vineyard Nursing Association, the Island’s only home health care agency, on Wednesday, July 23, at 6 p.m. at The Field Gallery in West Tisbury.

Store Battles Cancer

A month after the launch of the Triple Winner Game, Stop & Shop’s annual campaign to raise funds toward research and treatment of pediatric cancer, the company’s Vineyard Haven store has raised $4,144 toward the effort. The chain so far has collected $1.4 million in this year’s campaign.

“You are not my enemy/ my grandmother my grandfather.

I built walls between us./ Rubble made sound

sand scattered plastic bags all around

rifles and checkpoints/bright lights into your eyes...”

“I landed in Cottage City in February of 1882, after a short stay on the mainland,” wrote the late Manuel S. deBettencourt in an open letter to the citizens of Oak Bluffs. The letter is undated, but Oak Bluffs town archives show that Mr. deBettencourt was first elected selectman in 1925. The letter was a plea for reelection.