The news that the Bunch of Grapes Bookstore would be moving hit me hard. Granted, it’s only to a space across the street. And I shouldn’t have been surprised. For years now, I’ve seen the great independent bookstores of New York and the Bay Area downsize or close up shop. Whether you blame mega-stores, the digital era of e-books in general or Amazon in particular, it’s an undeniable truth that the way that people are reading and buying books has changed.
When speaking with Thomas Bena, the founder and creative director of the Martha’s Vineyard Film Festival, there is no hesitation when he talks about his guiding principle. The films shown at the festival are always diverse in subject matter, a mixture of documentary and feature, and representative of many cultures. The common denominator is good storytelling.
Each year the Bravencore Theatre Troupe, made up of students from the Martha’s Vineyard Regional High School, creates an original work for the Massachusetts Educational Theater Guild’s (METG) annual high school festival. Kate Murray, the theater arts teacher at the high school, views this as a badge of honor as not all of the other high schools create their own shows.
