Books & Ideas
Book Reading
This Thursday, all are invited to a reading and signing for a book is titled Airlift to America: How Barack Obama Sr, John F. Kennedy, Tom Mboya and 800 East African Students Changed Their World and Ours, written by Tom Shachtman with a foreword by Harry Belafonte. The event Thursday, August 27, from 5 to 7 p.m. at Midnight Farm in Vineyard Haven. Mr. Shachtman will be introduced by Cora Weiss of Aquinnah, who was executive director of the foundation that administered the unique initiative from 1959 to 1963.
Path to Happiness
H.H. Phakchok Rinpoche, the 22nd throne holder of the Riwoche Taklung Kagyu Lineage, will present a public talk, The Key to Happiness, on Tuesday, August 25 at 7 p.m. at The Yard in Chilmark. The talk will expand on the simple path to happiness originally described by the Buddha: All beings, whether insect or human, seek happiness and to avoid suffering. The talk is open to all, and the suggested donation is $15 to $30. For details, e-mail [email protected].
Nodding to Professor Henry Louis (Skip) Gates Jr. at his Whaling Church panel discussion Achieving Equality in the Age of Obama last night, Princeton professor Melissa Harris-Lacewell shook her head and said: ”If you had told me this time last year, when we were all pretty emotionally up and excited, even though George W. Bush was still our President, that we would actually feel worse a year later, when Barack Obama was our President, about questions of race in America, I would have told you you were lying.”
As a prize-winning sociologist and Harvard professor of education, Sara Lawrence-Lightfoot possesses the curriculum vitae of one of the most successful women alive — in that achievement-oriented way that we worship in the ambitious classes of America. And yet she radiates the serenity and contemplative qualities of a genuine holy woman.
Operation Solomon, when more than 14,000 Ethiopian Jews were transported to Israel over an intense 36-hour period in May 1991, was one of the most dramatic rescues of modern times. On August 27 at 7 p.m., the Martha’s Vineyard Hebrew Center will host a panel discussion featuring two women with firsthand knowledge of that fraught, but ultimately successful effort to fulfill the longing of Ethiopian Jews to “return to Jerusalem” after thousands of years of separation from mainstream Judaism.
A devoted, multigenerational crowd gathered at the Judy Blume book signing at Bunch of Grapes Bookstore last Saturday afternoon, the first jointly held book signing between the store and Riley’s Reads.
Ms. Blume was signing any and all of her 28 releases, including the newest, Friend or Fiend? With the Pain and the Great One.