The Hungry Ghost

This weekend, the Portuguese American Club on Vineyard avenue in Oak Bluffs hosts the annual Feast of the Holy Ghost. An old Azorean tradition of sharing food, music and games, the feast is celebrated throughout New England. The Holy Ghost Club of Martha’s Vineyard has hosted one of the finest every July since the 1920s. The feast starts Saturday at 5:30 p.m. Catch the parade at 11:30 a.m. on Sunday. For details, call 508-693-9875.

Longtime friends of the Yard, Gus Solomons Jr and Carmen de Lavallade, return with Paradigm, their company of fellow luminaries, for a weekend of performances in the Yard’s intimate Patricia N. Nanon Theater. Island audiences may remember Carmen de Lavallade and Gus Solomons from last summer’s tribute to Patricia Nanon at the Martha’s Vineyard Performing Arts Center, in which they performed Three Scenes from Archy & Mehitabel.

Parenting expert Dr. Catherine Steiner-Adair will explain How Can You Be a Go-To Parent (or Grandparent)? in a talk on Thursday, July 16, at the Martha’s Vineyard Hebrew Center, in what promises to be a practical, intelligent, funny, insightful and timely Summer Institute event.

You can bring the kids for the stilt walkers and jugglers, for the popcorn, pizza and face-painting, for all the under-the-big-tent fun that is Cinema Circus at the Chilmark Community Center every Wednesday at 5 p.m. The main act, of course, is the movie. Here to review what’s on the big screen tomorrow is Island kid critic Gabe Merkel.

This week the Martha’s Vineyard Film Festival presents Animal Crackers, a series of eight short films, each featuring animals. I liked all of them, and especially enjoyed these:

Island artist Julia Mitchell’s work is on exhibit in Tapestries: Nature and Artifact, at Waverly Street Gallery in Bethesda, Md.

A designer and weaver of 40 years’ experience, her works are in private and corporate collections worldwide.

The art of tapestry is enjoying a resurgence in this country, thanks in part to two exhibitions at the Metropolitan Museum in New York, curated by its director Thomas Campbell.

When your grandfather is Grammy-winning Cuban pianist and composer Bebo Valdez and your father famed Cuban pianist, bandleader, composer and arranger Chucho Valdez, naturally you decide to be a baseball player.

So it was with Chuchito Valdez, the now-renowned pianist who will be playing on Thursday, July 16, at 7 and 9 p.m. at the Whaling Church in Edgartown.