Books & Ideas
Watercolor Workshop
A Watercolor Workshop with Priscilla Levesque will take place at the Camp Ground in Oak Bluffs on Saturday and Sunday, May 16 and 17, from 9 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. Priscilla lives in Cataumet on the Cape and makes frequent painting trips to the Island. She has taught drawing and watercolor at the Cataumet Arts Center and the Falmouth Community School. Her work can be seen at the Granary Gallery and at priscillaart.com.
The fee is $100 per person. In case of rain, meet at 32 Bayview avenue in Oak Bluffs.
Child Care Class
The American Red Cross, Cape Cod and Islands Chapter is organizing a Childcare Provider class on May 9 for residents of the Vineyard. The class will be held at the YMCA at 57 Pequot avenue in Oak Bluffs.
Infant and Child CPR will be taught on Saturday, May 9, from 8:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. The cost for this class is $45. For students who add first aid in the afternoon from 1 to 3:30 p.m., the cost will be $60.
The Edgartown Public Library will present an evening program with Island poet, artist and printer Dan Waters on Wednesday, May 6, from 7 to 8 p.m.
Mr. Waters is a man of many talents and seemingly boundless energy. A former poet laureate of West Tisbury, he is proprietor of the Indian Hill Press and the author of three books of poetry, Robert Frost’s Answering Machine, Remembering the Islander and Needing Winter.
Donna Blackburn, the resident artist on the staff of the Edgartown Public Library, will lead two free, four-week art classes at the library this May.
Basic Watercolors, a class for adults, will meet from 6:30 to 7:30 p.m. on Tuesdays, May 5, 12, 19 and 26. Enrollment is limited to six people. To sign up and for details on what supplies you’ll need to bring, contact the library at 508-627-4221.
In this year-long 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 fears and detests Richard Moby, the CEO of an off-Island wholesale nursery, Broadway. Convinced that Moby wants to destroy Abe personally, and all Island-based landscaping/nursery businesses generally, Abe is obsessed with “taking down” Moby.
Fanny Howe of West Tisbury was honored last week with the 2009 Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize, awarded annually by the Poetry Foundation to a living American poet for lifetime accomplishments that warrant extraordinary recognition. The $100,000 that accompanies the award is one of the largest literary prizes in the nation.