Opinion
It was a perfect New York art storm — Kandinsky, the Bauhaus, Monet, Georgia O’Keeffe, Hockney and Richard Serra — for starters. And it was all happening as winter gales descended on the rock, a good time to get away.
My cousin Lanny McDowell and I fought our way through Wednesday’s snowstorm, passing three jackknifed trucks and at least two cars nosed into snow banks (one of them a state police patrol vehicle) to arrive in late afternoon. Two days wasn’t nearly enough. What follows is a sample.
There is a song about a light in the sky above Bethlehem, and a baby born in a manger. The light draws people from far and wide, to celebrate an emergence from darkness, the birth of salvation, the dawn of a new age. In their hearts, the people recognized that this child, however full of potential, needed them, and whatever they had to offer. And that neither the light nor the child were, in and of themselves, the solution. Together they were a beacon, requesting the attention and participation of humankind to create for themselves the structures and bastions of a new world.
So, you promised to make Christmas cookies with the kids, but you’re feeling rather Scrooge-like.
Aesop, two dozen centuries ago, allegedly wrote that you couldn’t make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear. (Or perhaps it was more recent and it was Bill Shakespeare and it was a velvet purse.) Modern science, either by evolution, revolution, or glorious accident, has proven that now it can be done. That transformation is exactly what our Island needs. Both Oak Bluffs and West Tisbury can be considered to be in the phase known as the sow’s ear.
Eli Dagostino, a freshman at Martha’s Vineyard Regional High School is the Stone Soup Leadership Institute’s new media intern working with Martha’s Vineyard Community Television. To launch his year-round internship, Eli served as the institute’s youth delegate to the Caribbean Media Exchange Conference on Sustainable Development early this month on the island of St. Lucia. Eli joined youth delegates from Canada, New Jersey and the Caribbean islands of Barbados, Dominica, Martinique, St. Vincent and students from St.
Redesigning Bradley Square
Launched with much fanfare in August at a ceremonial groundbreaking that included Gov. Deval Patrick, Bradley Square, the celebrated project of the Island Affordable Housing Fund, is foundering.