Art
Talkin’ Otters
Wildlife biologists Luanne Johnson and Elizabeth Baldwin are hoping Island hikers will be on the lookout for otter trails and slides in the woods this winter. The two are studying the Island’s river otter population with a goal of mapping otter habitat and understanding the diet of these aquatic mammals — the top predators in our coastal ponds.
Review Your Rumi
The poet, Sufi mystic, theologian and jurist known as Rumi will be the subject of the three-week study group at the Vineyard Haven Public Library starting Tuesday.
Jim Norton, aided by special guest Demaris Wehr, will lead the series Conversations about Jalal al-Din Rumi, Persian Poet.
The workshop will study Rumi as a familiar outstanding religious figure among world religions, exploring the Persian and Muslim contexts of his work.
If you look up libraries on Wikipedia, you’ll learn that a golden age arose from 1600 to 1700 when cities all over the world had to erect a big, baroque building for books. If there’s ever been a new claim for a golden age, it’s right here, right now, involving our Island libraries, all of them, where circulation is up as never before (25 per cent at the Edgartown library alone), and community participation is off the charts.
Big Bike Ride for Cancer
Three Martha’s Vineyard residents raised $39,371 for cancer research and treatment at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute by riding up to 190 miles in the Pan-Massachusetts Challenge this summer.
The efforts of Erik Blake of Oak Bluffs, Roch Hillenbrand of Edgartown, and Eric Berke of Aquinnah helped the challenge raise $33 million and bring the organization’s 31-year total Jimmy Fund contribution to $303 million.
Atlantic: Great Sea Battles, Heroic Discoveries, Titanic Storms, and a Vast Ocean of a Million Stories, by Simon Winchester, HarperCollins Publishers, 496 pages, illustrated. $27.99.
It would be hard to live on the Vineyard and not have an interest in the Atlantic Ocean. So much of the Island has been colored and shaped by the sea. You can smell the ocean here and feel it all around you.
A new book, Atlantic, is a biography of the ocean. What is most striking about this long book is its scope.
What’s a body to do between Christmas and New Year’s? How about visiting Renaissance Vienna and a time when sexual debauchery rolled common as Vineyard winter potlucks.