Chapter Six: On Commerce, Insular

In this serialized novel set on the Vineyard in real time, a native Islander (“Call me Becca”) returns home after many years in Manhattan. Her uncle Abe requires assistance to keep their landscaping business, Pequot, afloat. Through Mott (Pequot’s general manager) she’s met Quincas (a Brazilian) and the rest of Pequot’s staff. Her Uncle Abe has an intense loathing of Richard Moby, the CEO of Broadway, an off-Island landscaping business.

Classical Music Students Offer Sunday Recital

Martha’s Vineyard music students will display their violin, piano, viola and flute skills at a concert Sunday, June 29, at 4 p.m. in the Whaling Church on Main street in Edgartown.

The program includes a flute and piano duet by sisters Rebekah and Kaija Nivala. Rebekah is the winner of this year’s Caroline Worthington Prize, named for one of the founding musicians of the Chamber Music Society.

Aquinnah Music Festival Spotlights Island Lineup

Why didn’t anyone think of it sooner? The first annual Aquinnah Music Festival is shaping up for July 19, from noon to moonrise in the circle atop the cliffs of Gay Head, on Lighthouse Road.

Dance Classes

Dance Classes

Vineyard Dance will offer a six-week summer dance course from Monday, June 30 to August 9, at the Oak Bluffs School on Tradewinds Road off Wing Road. Adults and teenagers may join at any time. Ballet, modern dance, modern jazz and floor barre classes will be taught by Kathy Joyce Costanza. For more information, call 508-693-2257.

carpenter

Grab Your Tools, It’s Time: Hunky Carpenter Contest

Outerland is calling all male and female carpenters, builders, electricians, plumbers and other handy types to compete in its third annual hard-hatted hunky carpenter contest. The thrills begin Friday, June 27 when club doors open at 7:30 p.m. — the drills and skills tests begin at 9.

Beauties from Barn Yard, and Skies at Field Gallery

The Field Gallery invites all to a free artists’ reception Sunday June 29, from 5 to 7 p.m. for an exhibition of new work by Ben Johnson and Janet Woodcock.

Returning artist Ben Johnson’s paintings celebrate the natural world. Images of birds and their surroundings depict the landscape in a bold and colorful style. Mr. Johnson draws his inspiration from the spacious landscape of Martha’s Vineyard. Recently reviewed in American Art Collector (June 2008), he is certainly an artist to watch.

Stunning Stewartia

Stunning Stewartia

On Wednesday, July 2, from 10 a.m. to noon join Polly Hill Arboretum director Tim Boland for a look a stewartias, a stunning small flowering tree. Stewartias are notable for their multi-season appeal — sumptuous flowers, beautiful fall color, and attractive bark.

Many types of stewartia thrive in abundance at the West Tisbury arboretum, where Polly assembled a nationally recognized collection. After an illustrated talk Mr. Boland will lead a tour of the arboretum to see these trees at peak flowering time.

Citizen Cope

Music to Connect With, not to Categorize

Trying to define the musical blend of Citizen Cope is a difficult and perilous exploration into the depths of a nearby thesaurus.

The musician’s voice often is described with frequent uses of the words soul and folk. His guitar has the whine of the blues as it slopes across the scale over the steady pulse of a hip-hop beat... Something like that, plus more adjectives.

Hebrew Center Film

Hebrew Center Film

At Home in Utopia, a documentary by Michal Goldman., screens Sunday, June 29, at 7:30 p.m. at the Hebrew Center in Vineyard Haven.

As the Filmmakers Collaborative tells it, this film set in the mid-1920s tells of the thousands of Jewish immigrant garment factory workers managed to catapult themselves out of urban ghettos by pooling their resources and building four cooperatively owned and run apartment complexes in the Bronx.

Michele

History Lives on at Four Generations, As Gallery Continues Without Patriarch

“Art is a way of life in many ways for the family,” Michele Ortlip says. “My generation, the generation before me, the generation before them my grandfather’s father was an artist, my great uncle, my two aunts everybody.” It goes without saying that, included in the generation before her is Michele’s father, Paul Ortlip, the shining star of the family’s serious crop of artistic talent. The fourth generation of Ortlips, under custody of their father, grew up in a Fort Lee, N.J., home overlooking the Manhattan skyline.

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