West Tisbury Library

Receives Generous Gift

Summer resident Betty Franklin has donated $50,000 to the Friends of the West Tisbury Library, one of the largest gifts ever made on behalf of the library.

Susan Wasserman, president of the Friends, announced the gift at a joint meeting of the library trustees and the Friends on Jan. 17.

Auditions for One Acts

Island Theatre Workshop will be presenting two programs of one acts on the second and third weekend in March.

Open auditions for these productions are on Saturday, Jan. 26, at 11 a.m. Katharine Cornell Theatre.

Leslie Stark, who made his directing debut in last year’s one act program, will return with another new play, This Seat Is Taken. Xavier Powers will offer Eugene O’Neill’s Sniper. Artistic director Lee Fierro and Kevin Ryan have not selected the works they will present.

The Aquinnah landfill is legal.

Selectmen last week said the town received a landfill license on Jan. 14 from the state Department of Environmental Protection.

Receipt of the license ends a year of environmental department reviews and inspections, which followed a town paperwork snafu several years ago that led to a failure to renew the license.

Selectmen also voted to place three articles on the Feb. 12 special town meeting warrant.

Just about every game this season for the boys’ high school basketball team has gone right down to the wire, which has provided last-minute thrills for some fans but conversely has caused something like an ulcer for coach Mike Joyce.

“All these games seemingly are decided by a single shot in the final seconds,” Mr. Joyce said following the Vineyarders’ 86-85 loss to Wareham on Tuesday. “It may be great for the fans, but it’s not easy on the coach. I think they’re trying to give me a heart attack.”

The Martha’s Vineyard Hospital’s Center for Women’s Health has announced that Nancy Leport, a certified nurse midwife, has joined the center’s medical practice.

Ms. Leport, a longtime Island resident, completed her midwifery training at Columbia University in 1997. She previously served the Vineyard community as a nurse in the maternity department of the hospital.

In 1964, spurred to action> by the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, a group of Vineyard residents from all walks of life and all ethnicities joined together to carry on the charge for change and hope the president had urged. They held their initial meetings at St. Andrew’s Episcopal church in Edgartown and quickly became the first and only Island chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.

Dean’s List

Jacqueline Panek of Vineyard Haven made the dean’s list at Nichols College in Dudley for the fall 2007 semester.

Open Mike at Island Co-Housing, a new monthly series that continues Friday, Feb. 1 at 6 p.m., is designed to encourage any and all youngsters to play and enjoy each other’s music.

When organizer Paul Lazes read an article in the Gazette a few months back about surveys revealing the alarming attempted suicide rate at the high school, he decided he needed to take action. “It is my firm belief that a vibrant music scene of young performers is achievable on the Vineyard,” he said.

The best planetary show of the month takes place early in the morning. The two brightest planets in our night sky appear together as a close pair. Venus and Jupiter are doing a planetary dance and they can be seen close to the horizon an hour before sunrise.

HOLLY NADLER

508-693-3880

(sunporch@vineyard.net)

The moon has been so dramatically full this week — so fat and blazing and low on the horizon — that some people have had to break out sunglasses for their evening stroll with the dog.

The moon’s glow was particularly taunting on those extremely freezing nights earlier in the week when you had to wonder how a heavenly body could shed major light and zip heat.