Film producer, director and Chilmark resident Arnie Reisman will show and discuss his newest film, The Powder & the Glory, at the Martha’s Vineyard Museum this Saturday, March 7. The showing will celebrate the opening of the museum’s new exhibit, Voices of Vineyard Women.

When people ask Vineyard Haven clothing designer Lorraine Parish if she got her start while studying at Rhode Island School of Design, she laughs and tells them, “No, it was ninth-grade Home Ec.” Her career in fashion took off from there.

To celebrate the reopening of her Main street, Vineyard Haven gallery, Louisa Gould is offering free art tomorrow.

Louisa Gould Gallery has been under renovated since a pipe burst of Jan. 2, but it will reopen tomorrow, Saturday, March 7, from noon to 5 p.m. And as a thank you to customers, Ms. Gould is offering a deal that if you purchase one of her photographs at full price you may take home a second piece of original art (of the same or lower price) for free. In addition, Louisa Gould paintings will be offered at a 20 per cent reduction.

Sheila Bracy, Executive Director of Women Empowered, stumbled on a unique idea for her March 8 fundraiser. “Zephrus is offering a wonderful opportunity for Women Empowered to celebrate International Women’s Day with its supporters and to raise money for our program.” Dinner this Sunday is open to the public, and 20 per cent of the proceeds go to Women Empowered.

Why do we tell stories?

Under the blanket of interminable Vineyard winter, the answer that jumps to mind most readily is claustrophobia; the need to leave our own the immediate situation and rediscover vastness; to escape ourselves for long enough to see our own contours a little bit more clearly.

By Lynne Irons>

Thank you so much — you know who you are — to all the callers willing to give me information about locating peanut seeds. Honestly, it is humbling to think you are all out there reading this. What I don’t know about gardening is a lot. I do make up for it in enthusiasm and love of the subject.

Methodists in March

The three United Methodist churches — Christ, Edgartown and Trinity United Methodist — will join together for Sunday morning worship at the Trinity United Methodist Church at 10 a.m. during the month of March. Worship is followed by coffee hour and adult bible study. For more information, please call the United Methodist Cooperative Ministry office at 508-693-4424.

In this year-long serialized novel set on the Vineyard in real time, a native Islander (“Call me Becca”) returns home after two decades to help her eccentric Uncle Abe keep his landscaping business, Pequot, afloat. Abe fears and detests Richard Moby, the CEO of an off-Island wholesale nursery, Broadway. Convinced that Moby wants to destroy Abe personally, and all Island-based landscaping/nursery businesses generally, Abe is obsessed with “taking down” Moby.

Our adventures in Botswana will have to wait for next week as the birds take precedence.

Bird Sightings:

We appear to have a new early record for the sighting of an osprey over the Island. Will and Sue Geresy of Chappaquiddick spotted a very high flying osprey over Poucha Pond on Chappaquiddick on March 1. The bird was heading north and the Geresys heard the bird call once as it flew by.

Birds are changing their winter ranges as a result of climate change. Average temperatures in January have increased more than five degrees Fahrenheit in the continental United States between 1966 and 2005, and the ranges of many species of birds in the early winter have shifted northward.