A thin crescent moon appears low in the southwestern sky this weekend. The moon will be visible on Sunday night when it appears next to the bright planet Jupiter. The two are in the zodiacal constellation Pisces.
Greenhouse Relief
Daylight saving is just a week away. Spring arrives in two weeks. Hmm, what to do with all of that additional light available other than simply soaking it up and restoring your levels of Vitamin D?
How about building a solar greenhouse. No excuses, either, about not knowing how.
On Tuesday, March 8, the Farm Institute begins a five-week solar greenhouse workshop. From soup to nuts, or rather from frame to roof, they’ll help you create a cozy dwelling to begin sprouting your crops.
Just after lunchtime on Saturday, Gregg Harcourt and his wife Mary Wolverton will begin poking around the Katharine Cornell Theatre, managing the tangle of wires and soundboards that come with producing a major concert. For well over a decade the duo — both professional woodworkers by day — have been not only managing the A/V equipment, but have served as the organizers, promoters and occasional performers of a concert series that has brought some of the world’s biggest and most respected names in traditional music to Martha’s Vineyard.
Lifeguard Class
The YMCA of Martha’s Vineyard is offering a lifeguard certification course beginning March 14.
The course will run over two weeks on Monday through Thursday evenings. Participants must attend all classes in order to receive the certification. Anyone interested must also be experienced swimmers and able to swim 500 yards in freestyle, sidestroke and breaststroke.
Waterfront certification is not included in the class.
Limerick Challenge
A public library by definition is free. However, on Sunday, March 13 at 3 p.m. the West Tisbury Library will be asking those willing to dig deep, not into their wallets but rather into their resources of wordplay.
It is the second annual limerick challenge. The rules are quite basic. A five line poem in the pattern of aabba. For those rusty with their poetry code that means the first two lines rhyme, the third and fourth lines rhyme and the fifth line rhymes with the first line.
Irish Alpacas
Skip the beer and go for the yarn.
Island Alpaca is having a St. Patrick’s Day open house on two consecutive weekends: March 12 and 13 and March 19 and 20.
Check out the alpacas on a self-guided walking tour, enjoy some hot cider and shop for one-of-a-kind alpaca products. Island Alpaca is located at 1 Head of the Pond Road in Oak Bluffs. Hours are 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., rain or shine.
For more details, call 508-693-5554.
Next Sunday, March 13, at 11 a.m. the Unitarian Universalist Society of Martha’s Vineyard is going vocal with guest preacher, Reverend Bill Clark and special musical guests, the Pleasant Street Quintet.
The quintet is on holiday from the First Parish Unitarian Universalist Church of Arlington, Mass. They are composed of flautist Mies Boet-Whitaker, French horn player John Chapin, clarinetist Michelle Markus, oboist Carl Schlaikjer and bassoonist Jean Renard Ward and will be playing music by composers Claude Paul Taffanel, Amy Beach and Joseph Haydn.
Winter Walk
The hint of spring is upon us. Although the cold weather has not completely given up, the light lingers longer these days and there are moments when the cold wind gives way to a breath of warm air while out on an afternoon walk.
But these glimpses of what is around the corner are fleeting and therefore do not give proof of what is to come. For more concrete evidence that the change of seasons is already upon us, it is best to turn toward nature.
Book Group Assembles
The Edgartown Library’s book group’s next meeting will be on March 29 at 4 p.m. The book under scrutiny will be The Fiddler in the Subway by Gene Weingarten.
Poet Rebecca Gayle Howell is a reader first and foremost. When she started to read in a serious way at the age of 11, Ms. Howell would sneak away with her older sister’s high school English textbook. That’s how she discovered T.S. Eliot.
“I read the Four Quartets, and for the first time I knew something had changed in me,” Ms. Howell said in a phone interview with the Gazette earlier this week. “I just kept reading from there.”
