This is the 30th anniversary of the Film Mao to Mozart, and of Isaac’s Stern’s historic trip to China opening it up to the musical West as written up lavishly in a recent New York Times article.

It’s been a remarkable summer. In early July this paper ran an article about the impact of the recession on Vineyard charitable organizations. It featured the results of a survey we, the Martha’s Vineyard Donors Collaborative, conducted that showed 56 per cent of Vineyard nonprofits experienced a decrease in contributions during the winter and 20 per cent saw them decrease greatly.

Thinking Outside the Lunchbox

Apparently fifty-six million students are expected to go to school across the country this fall. They may have spent seven-plus billion dollars in family clothing stores and more than two billion in bookstores to get ready for the day. They may carry an apple in their lunchbox, or, if anyone still does it, one for the teacher; those would be some of the nation’s nearly ten billion pounds of the shiny fruit produced annually in America.

Labor Day 2009

The national holiday on Monday is a singular celebration of American workers, and it stands apart from most other holidays in its lack of ritual — there is no music, no traditional meal and no parade that accompanies Labor Day.