Books & Ideas
Friends Take the Cake
At their annual meeting on August 31, the Friends of the West Tisbury Library were presented with a surprise birthday cake to celebrate the organization’s 30th anniversary.
The anniversary comes at a propitious moment in the library’s history. In July of this year, the Massachusetts Board of Library Commissioners announced that West Tisbury would receive a $2.98 million grant to help pay for renovation and expansion of the library building it has severely outgrown.
Vineyard seasonal resident Dr. Mache Seibel, the author of a recent book aimed at providing simple, lifesaving information, believes that one of the most common reasons people die in a medical emergency is they don’t know when to call 911 or what to do, or not to do, after they call.
Al Hurwitz will speak to members and guests of Vineyard Village at Home on the art of children’s drawing on Thursday, Sept. 15, from 3:30 to 5 p.m. at the Chilmark Library.
Dr. Hurwitz is the author of Children and Their Art and has taught children from preschool to the Harvard graduate school of education. He is a recent recipient of the National Art Education’s Lifetime Achievement Award as well as a former Art Educator of the Year and is the former world president of INSEA, UNESCO’s International Society for Education Through Art.
On Thursday, Sept. 15, Philip Weinstein, a professor of English at Swarthmore College and a part-time resident of Aquinnah, will lead the first of four in a series of book discussions entitled the Fictions of Colonial Encounter. Each discussion will focus on a particular novel that relates in some way to the idea of colonial empires, and the effects of their gradual decline.
Next Thursday’s lecture will focus on The Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad and take place at the Aquinnah Public Library.
Irene
No turbines in the Sound yet
wind makes its presence
felt the old-fashioned way
my old Vic of a house
rocks and sways with gusts
blowouts of freed-up energy
Plants take up residence in
the safety of inside next to
hammock, porch chairs and grill
tables fend for themselves
bushes and shrubs wear Wilt-Proof
PIANIST, A Biography of Eugene Istomin. By James Gollin. Ex Libris. Illustrated. 474 pages. $23.99 paperback, $35 hardcover from Amazon or Barnes and Noble.
In 1946, noted pianist Eugene Istomin summered in Menemsha. He shared a house with Rae Gabis (who later made Chilmark her year-round home and was a founder of the Thrift Shop) and her daughter, Shirley. A year later, Istomin made another summer visit, in which he and Shirley played Mendelssohn’s Allegro Brilliante together in the auditorium on the second floor of the Chilmark town hall.