All around the Island this summer, at banks, at libraries, at the museum, at the Polly Hill Arboretum, at the offices of nonprofits and realtors, and at Morning Glory Farm, the pensive self-portrait of New Yorker cartoonist Jules Feiffer has been inviting us to understand the Vineyard. What the mysterious booklet asks us to understand is that the unique character, ecosystem and population of the Vineyard is under constant threat from overdevelopment, underemployment and cutbacks.
Island author, Pulitzer-prize winner and self-described “deep-green, feminist, tree-hugging” Geraldine Brooks recalled a thankless trudge through New Hampshire canvassing for then-Senator Barack Obama in 2007. Retreating to a diner on that frigid day Ms. Brooks ventured to canvass the dining patrons as well.
“As I approached a friendly-looking couple, I noticed that they, too, had clipboards,” Ms. Brooks said. “The cafe was filled with fellow Obama volunteers, except for one guy. He turned out to be canvassing for Edwards.”
It’s past time for Americans to have a conversation about race, a panel of cultural and academic luminaries agreed at a crowded Martha’s Vineyard Performing Arts Center on Wednesday. What the rules of that conversation are, who the participants are and where the conversation will take place is less certain.
By PETER BRANNEN
Tuesday’s agricultural fair parade was 150 years in the making, lasted half an hour and was worth the wait. Hundreds of well-wishers lined the streets and stone walls of the historic route that began at the town hall, wound down Music street and Panhandle Road and ended at a packed viewing stand in front of the Ag Hall.
It was a small-town classic and onlookers arrived early with beach chairs and blankets at the final bend in Panhandle Road to stake out the best seat.
In our own language the world of plants is reflected in expressions such as “to put down roots” as one of passive and enduring immobility. In fact, Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens plant curator Bill Cullina says their very survival depends on their ability to wander. This secret, itinerant life of plants is largely hidden from our view as it happens over generations, in geologic time — a scale that slips outside the view of a human lifetime. But Mr. Cullina says it is no less evolved or functional than the other great migrations.
On a blustery, damp Monday morning at the Grange Hall, U.S. Senator Scott Brown lamented the similarly dreary state of affairs in Washington, D.C.
“I too have been disgusted by the government’s complete lack of accountability to its citizens,” he said at yesterday’s appearance in West Tisbury as part of his three week “jobs tour” throughout the commonwealth, which he has represented in the senate since January last year. The event ended unexpectedly when a member of the audience was stricken with a medical emergency.
