One hundred and fifty-six students gathered under the roof of the Tabernacle for one last time Sunday as they prepared to graduate from Martha’s Vineyard Regional High School as the class of 2012.
In the moments before the ceremony began, families, friends and teachers chatted anxiously about the lack of sleep they suffered waiting for this day, using graduation pamphlets to fan away the heat — or perhaps their nerves.
Inside the Polly Hill Arboretum office on Monday afternoon sits Collections and Grounds Manager Tom Clarke with a number of black oak twigs and branches on his desk, one just brought in by arborist John McCarter an hour earlier. With acorns dangling and new foliage sprouting, the twigs are seemingly healthy.
Look closer and each twig has hundreds of miniscule holes; the once smooth, skinny branches are now bumpy and swollen.
Once emerging from these tiny holes were the cynipid gall wasps currently attacking black oak trees up and down the Island.
When Laura Roosevelt, the Yard’s new president of the executive board, first started funding the arts in the early 1990s, she did not “get” contemporary dance.
On Sunday afternoon 156 seniors were preparing to graduate from Martha’s Vineyard Regional High School as the class of 2012.
On Tuesday morning, 68 seniors of the Martha’s Vineyard Regional High School graduating class hopped on a school bus and headed off-Island for the day.
“A lot of kids can talk the talk and nothing actually happens,” said school adjustment counselor Amy Lilavois on Monday morning. “But sure enough, they got a list of kids going, sold tickets during lunch, and tomorrow we are taking two buses to Six Flags.”
In the morning Diana Reilly puts on her garden gloves and travels around the Island with a gardening crew.
At night she turns into DJ Di and makes dance parties bloom with her beats.
“I’m like a vampire,” she joked.
Leading this double life makes for long days, but for Ms. Reilly it is worth it, and she is not alone.
“By day we are doing our money thing and by night we are swinging our art.”
