Arts & Entertainment
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.
During the last presidential campaign, the poet Naomi Shihab Nye had the daunting task of introducing Caroline Kennedy at an Obama campaign event in San Antonio, Texas. The honor was made particularly formidable because Ms. Kennedy’s plane had been significantly delayed.
Breathe, Smile, Relax is the self-evident exercise that Buddhist teacher Lama Surya Das promotes in his new book, Buddha Standard Time: Awakening to the Infinite Possibilities of Now. It’s a meditation that, as he puts it, “can help us collect ourselves and reconcentrate our energy and attention. Learning how to do this prevents the cupful of golden vitality poured into us at birth from being continuously drained away.”
Lectures, those events featuring knowledgeable experts discussing their subjects, are such yesterday’s news. How about instead a person actually becoming their subject and acting out the period in question?
Summer is on the wane and now, admit it, you’re thinking, yikes, in trying to do everything, be everywhere, have the best summer ever, you forgot how to relax on your vacation. Never fear, there is still time to change course.
Night at Opera Provides Musical Education
On Thursday, August 25, beginning at 7 p.m. Vineyard audiences will be treated to the luscious music provided by Opera Noire. Luscious may seem an odd way to describe opera, but the performers provide so much more than great music that new and more fully-formed ways of describing the experience are needed.
