Wellness
Herbal Medicine
Holly Bellebuono of Vineyard Herbs returns to the Polly Hill Arboretum for her popular salve-making workshop on Tuesday, August 17, from 1 to 3 p.m. The workshop begins with a walk to identify and collect medicinal herbs and weeds on the arboretum grounds. Next, participants make their own oil infusions and beeswax-based ointments.
Yoga Class Gives Back
Bend it for the Bard, and all the other arts, by taking Johanna Hynes’s vinyasa yoga class on Tuesdays and Thursdays from 7:30 to 8:45 a.m. at Vineyard Arts Project, 215 Upper Main street Edgartown (parking available). Drop-in fee is $20, kids $12, and 20% of the proceeds go to benefit Vineyard Arts Project.
First In, First Aid
The American Red Cross will hold an adult CPR/AED and first aid class on August 14 at the new YMCA on the Edgartown-Vineyard Haven Road in Oak Bluffs, The CPR/AED portion will be held from 8:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. and costs $55. The first aid class portion of the class will then continue until 3:30 p.m. Cost for the CPR/AED and first aid is $65. Enrollment is available online at cciredcross.org or by calling toll-free 508-775-1540.
More than four years after the new Martha’s Vineyard Hospital was required, as a condition of its expansion, to spend $2 million on community health programs, not one dollar has yet been spent on initiatives not directly connected to the hospital.
Under the terms of approval by the state Department of Public Health, the hospital was supposed to begin distributing the money in January 2006. The five-year timetable for the expenditure meant it all should have been distributed by January 2011.
A fatal accident in downtown Vineyard Haven last Tuesday left a young mother dead, and her family and friends devastated; it also has badly distressed many Islanders who witnessed the sudden tragedy.
Services were held yesterday in Melrose for Dina DeCecca, the mother of two young children who died while bicycling with her family and friends from the ferry on State Road, when she fell under an 18-wheel tractor-trailer.
Islanders have long been acutely aware of the problems of health care access. Cut off from the larger medical community by Nantucket Sound, Vineyarders are twice as likely as other Massachusetts residents to be uninsured. On Friday afternoon Martha’s Vineyard Community Services held a panel discussion about the recent national health care bill, and how it would improve access as well as hit home.