Art
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.
Vineyard artists Elizabeth Straton, with her daughter Suzanne, and Ellen McCluskey have decorated two of 80 lighthouse birdhouses that will serve as table centerpieces at Wellspring House’s Women Honoring Women luncheon on Monday, May 4.
Helping families light the way home is the theme of the luncheon, where 800 women are expected to be in attendance, including Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley. wThe event will be held at the Sheraton Hotel in Danvers, Mass.
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.
As cases of swine flu (H1N1) virus multiplied elsewhere, Island towns were quick to issue guidance this week about taking precautions and being prepared should the virus spread. In Massachusetts, Department of Public Health officials confirmed two cases in Lowell.
By HOLLY NADLER
In the good old Globe days, William Shakespeare’s audience welcomed the many hours it took to plow through one of his plays. What else did they have to do? There were no movies, no television, even books were in short supply: the richest citizens had two or three volumes per household, and at least one of them was the Bible.
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.