What began as a lark on a summer’s day in Vineyard Haven 10 years ago has grown to become a national phenomenon.
How’s Your News is a groundbreaking piece of programming in terms of the way popular media portrays disability, and its origins can be traced directly to Camp Jabberwocky, the Island’s well-known summer camp for people with physical and mental disabilities.
And now it has found its way to cable television and the entertainment channel MTV.
The line for breakfast was long at the Oyster Bar on Circuit avenue last week, but well worth the wait. “Are you going to eat? Because if you are, you’d better hurry. It’s good,” said Natalie Dickerson, president emeritus of the Martha’s Vineyard chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.
And good it was: cheese grits, collard greens, thick-cut bacon and home fried potatoes were just a smattering of the breakfast goods on offer at this, the chapter’s annual Martin Luther King Jr. Day brunch.
Tuesday will mark a day in history, the inauguration of Barack Obama as the first black president, elected only 44 years after Lyndon Johnson’s Civil Rights Act of 1964 granted suffrage to African Americans, and sworn in one day after the Martin Luther King Jr. national holiday.
And while it remains to be seen how President Obama will navigate the chop ahead, his message of hope has set expectations high, and his entrance to the Oval Office is cause for celebration among all Americans.
John Sundman is a Tisbury-based science fiction writer. He has recently self-published his third book, The Pains, a dark, satirical vision of 1984 America that blends George Orwell’s classic dystopia with a surreal version of the real-life Reagan-era. According to the author, it is a “story of faith in a world that appears to be falling apart. It tells the story of Norman Lux, a 24-year-old novitiate in a religious order, who becomes afflicted with something akin to stigmata.”
It is said that the concept of celebrating the New Year has existed for as long as earthly agriculture, as farmers were the first to notice and record the cyclical nature inherent in the procession of seasons.
About 4,000 years ago, the people of ancient Babylon welcomed the new year in what is now known as March, with an eleven-day festival during which class distinctions and social conventions were set aside for the sake of a really good party.
Rose Treat turns 100 on Sunday. At 99, she is genial, relaxed and aware, if a bit hard of hearing. Though she uses a walker to get around, she is energetic and excited to share. She stands no more than five feet tall, and yet the strength of her character fills the room. She is without question an Island treasure. Her history is long and as full of life and variety as the sea by which she lives.
