Teenagers and young adults, some from the Vineyard, others from the Caribbean, were on an unusual bus tour of the Island last week, taking in the Dumptique, school gardens, Island Cohousing, the Farm Institute and Morning Glory Farm. The young group was part of the Stone Soup for the World Youth Summit, and the sight-seeing was designed to coax them in their contemplation of how they could build a more sustainable future.
If you weren’t one of the lucky 200 who showed up at the Tabernacle to see the first and likely-to-be annual Martha’s Vineyard Jazz Festival, then you missed out. It was the last event of the summer to be held at the Camp Ground but certainly not the least.
As Vineyarders are bogged down in renewable energy regulations and the Cape Wind project languishes, some Island kids are well aware of what adults are just beginning to understand; “solar ovens/ and solar cars/ will make you all/ into stars/ . . . to prevent global warming/ you can turn off lights/ when it’s storming/ you don’t fly your kites.”
These rhyming, truthful lines are part of the Energy Rap, a song composed by the campers at Sense of Wonder Creations, a day camp in Vineyard Haven run by Pamela Benjamin.
For a Vineyard kid, “when you first move away, there are two places: on-Island and off-Island,” said Kelley Callahan, viewing the exhibition by Marshall Pratt at the Periwinkle Gallery in Oak Bluffs which opened last weekend. In the show, A Vineyard Boy in Boston, Pratt uses photographs to depict this contrast, for instance by juxtaposing the image of a rock at Squibnocket and a similar rock in a Boston slum.
How do Jules Feiffer’s early comic strips hold up after half a century? For over 40 years, beginning in 1956, his provocative, often ironic cartoons appeared weekly in the Village Voice. Fantagraphics Books has just published Explainers ($28.99 hardcover), a complete collection of the first 10 years’ worth, from 1956 to 1966. The strips deal with politics and the battle of the sexes in an era when intellectuals obsessed about Marx and Freud and when humor might arise from observing hypocrisy in people’s politics and their intimate relationships.
You don’t need to surf to be a professional beach bum; if you get good enough, you can travel the world carving sandcastles with a palette knife and an ice cream scoop. That’s what Lucinda “Sandy Feet” Wierenga does. Ms. Wierenga was this year’s winner of the Travel Channel’s Sand Blasters competition. She’s in Italy now, giving castle-building demonstrations. And Ms Wierenga will be here from 2 to 5 p.m.
