'Tis the Season to Embrace Differences
The Christmas holiday season can be a challenging time for American Jews and yet according to Rabbi Joshua Eli Plaut, PhD, former rabbi of the Martha’s Vineyard Hebrew Center, this has not always been the case.
Nicholas Bradley
Tiger Eyes, written by Judy Blume, is the story of a teenage girl, Davey, who moves to New Mexico with her mother and younger brother after her father is killed at the family’s convenience store in New Jersey. While there she meets a Native American boy named Wolf whose father is suffering from cancer. Ultimately, Davey learns to cope with the death of her own father.
The stage at Flatbread was packed with instruments on Monday night and the dance floor filled with fans standing shoulder to shoulder. Deer Tick, an alternative rock band from Providence, R.I., was back in town after a two-year hiatus.
The band jumped feet-first into their set. Their style is shamelessly and classically authentic. The vintage whirl of a Hammond B-3 organ blended beautifully with a pair of rancorous guitars.
“When I say Barrington, you say Levy!” shouted a man onstage wearing gold-framed sunglasses. “Barrington!”
“Levy!” the crowd roared back at him.
The chant continued, ultimately dissolving into raucous cheering as Barrington Levy, reggae revolutionary, took the stage at Dreamland in Oak Bluffs on Friday night.
With the opening notes of Edward Elgar’s traditional processional music Pomp and Circumstance, two long columns of graduates made their way down the aisle of the Tabernacle Sunday afternoon. The audience turned and erupted in applause for the Martha’s Vineyard Regional High School’s Class of 2013, 184 strong.
Students chatted excitedly as they took their seats, practicing the proper method for receiving diplomas (right hand to shake, left hand to take) and looking back at the rest of the audience, which spilled out of the open-air Tabernacle onto the lawn.
Some are accomplished writers. Others are star athletes. Still others are artists. They have opinions and passions and disagreements among themselves. Their interests are so wide-ranging that even the students themselves are hard put to find a description for the class of 2013.
On Saturday afternoon the Yard dance residency program hosted a performance at Mytoi Garden on Chappaquiddick. The performance was a collaboration between The Yard and The Trustees of Reservations and featured modern improvisational dance by members of Dance The Yard and What’s Written Within, another Island dance group.