Taking Stock of the Summer Season and ICE Concerns Continue
Summer for local businesses was a mixed bag, with July a bit slow and August on fire. And concerns about an immigration crackdown led organizers to again postpone a Brazilian festival.
The mood was buoyant Wednesday night, as a small group of high school students gathered with friends to share a meal and conversation. Handshakes and hugs passed as greetings at the door, and when everyone had settled, one student pulled a long piece of cloth from her belongings.
In a last-minute reversal of principal Stephen Nixon’s recent decision regarding appropriate graduation wear, the Martha’s Vineyard Regional High School district committee voted last night to allow seniors, Brazilian and otherwise, to wear personalized scarves over their graduation gowns.
The vote followed an impassioned speech from former high school student and recent Emory University graduate Alex Parker.
Lyndon Johnson Pereira is all but forgotten. Just a handful of the Island’s some 3,000 Brazilian residents have heard of him. Other pioneering Brazilians who came in the late 1980s and early 1990s are now Island personalities, including Elio Silva, owner of the Tisbury Farm Market and other stores, and Paco Santana, a painter.
Oak Bluffs School principal Laury Binney will be showing a short film and speaking about his recent travels to Brazil on Tuesday, Oct. 21 at 7 p.m. It is free and open to all.
Mr. Binney, who took an unpaid sabbatical last year, and his wife Marcy, a reading teacher, spent six months visiting elementary schools in Brazil in an effort to gain insights into addressing the needs of Brazilian-born students on the Vineyard. The talk takes place at the Oak Bluffs School.
Danubia Campos dreams big. A law degree, or maybe one in international relations. Possibly a career with the United Nations or even one as a Supreme Court Justice.