Arts & Entertainment
If your New Year’s resolution is to quit smoking, Jay Schofield has an offer to help you do it.
For free.
Mr. Schofield, a West Tisbury resident and retired high school teacher and coach, has been hosting smoking cessation classes since 1974. He has helped over 1,000 Islanders quit smoking.
And as 2009 begins, he has decided he would like to give something back.
“I just think everybody is hurting. People don’t have money. So I am doing this as a good will thing,” he said.
The Louisa Gould Photography and Gallery annual holiday party is on Saturday, Dec. 27 from 4 to 6 p.m. A new exhibit, The Portrait Paintings of John Holladay and Louisa Gould, will be on view. Other artists showing new works at this time are: Anne McGhee, Meg Mercier, Rachael Paxton, Ovid Osborn Ward, Marjorie Mason, Ed Cohen, Russell Carson, Debi Gero, Donna Blackburn, Gail Rodney, Robert Jewett, Caryn King, Leslie Smith, Jeanne Campbell, James Murray, Laura Roberts, Steve London, Janet Messineo, Jeffrey P’an, Maya Farber and Gray Park.
This was painted in 1884 by John Noble Barlow, who was one of the earliest members of the Providence Art Club. Now Chris Ratcliffe is researching the painting, which has been in his family for some years, and would like Islanders’ help in identifying the scene.
Chris Ratcliffe writes:
Good Luck Juliet Benoit
West Tisbury native Juliet Lynn Benoit is in Orlando Florida this week to compete in the world-famous Millie Lewis Actors, Models and Talent Competition, which runs from Dec. 30 to Jan. 4. Ms. Benoit was one of only 24 performers selected to participate in the competition out of an audition pool of 400.
Three Falmouth Academy students from Martha’s Vineyard have earned places in competitive, high school music festivals — the Senior Southeast District Music Festival, which will be January 9-10 at Brockton High School, and the Cape and Islands Music Festival to be held February at Barnstable High School.
In this yearlong serialized novel set on the Vineyard in real time, a native islander (“Call me Becca”) returns home after two decades to help her eccentric Uncle Abe keep his landscaping business, Pequot, afloat. Abe has a paranoid hatred of Richard Moby, the chief executive officer of an off-Island wholesale nursery, Broadway. Convinced that Moby wants to destroy Abe personally, and all Island-based landscaping and nursery businesses generally, Abe is obsessed with taking down Moby.

