After a brutal three years working at a job I can only describe as the equivalent of placing my hand in a meat grinder, I took the proverbial leap off a cliff. I quit my job and fell into the abyss of unemployment. This action was precipitated by a call I received from my sister who had just found out that my employer hired an armed guard to protect me at one of my business meetings. She asked one simple question. “What are you doing?”

My wife and I spent the last week of July relaxing at the southwestern tip of Prince Edward Island. There’s not much there except a small harbor filled with lobster boats, a lighthouse, an inn, a restaurant (we stayed in a sweet little apartment above the restaurant — from our balcony we looked at the beach, the harbor and the Northumberland Strait), endless cropland stretching to the horizon in every direction, and 55 giant wind turbines towering over the fields.

Rosabeth Moss Kanter, Harvard Business School profes sor, loves her Vineyard home not so much as a place to get away from it all as a place to think about it all.

“It’s a place to stand back and think big thoughts,” she said, seated on the patio of her home overlooking the Edgartown Great Pond. “We get so short-term in this country, so focused on the crisis of the moment.”

There is, she said, something clarifying about reconnecting with the timeless, something about nature that arouses a deeper contemplation of real values.

Fair Puppets

Puppetoke, a five-time returning puppet troupe, will be performing once again at the Agricultural Fair.

Each year the Island-based troupe performs a new puppet musical created especially for the fair, a 10-minute story geared for children with wry asides for adults to enjoy. Shows will be Saturday at 10:30 a.m. and Sunday at noon, 1 and 2 p.m. sharp.

Art historian Peter Miller will present a lecture on the artist Philip Guston on Tuesday, August 24, from 5 to 6 p.m. at the Aquinnah Town Hall as part of the Aquinnah Public Library’s late summer speaker series.

By Tyler Lewis

The Carol Craven Gallery has on display a portrait of our country’s first black cabinet member, Dr. Robert Clifton Weaver (1907-1997), commissioned in 1968 to be painted by Island artist Stan Murphy.

Mr. Weaver was the first United States Secretary of Housing and Urban Development.

A new exhibition of paintings by Harry Seymour opens at Carol Craven Gallery with a reception for the artist on Sunday, August 22, from 5 to 7 p.m. and the public is welcome.

This will be Mr. Seymour’s second exhibition at the gallery, and he will present his most recent works of egg tempera paintings and scratchart etchings. He draws his inspiration from the beauty of the Vineyard as well as its richly diverse multicultural community.

As a landscape painter, Allen Whiting can feel the seasons. He has an eye for light and movement that can make you hear the wind howl in the dead of January at South Beach, or feel the spring sunshine bounce off the oak trees in Chilmark in April. Mr. Whiting has been painting for almost 40 years, and he knows his strengths and weaknesses.

And for him, summer is not a time to paint.

Marafanyi

The Marafanyi beats go on, from Sunday, August 22, through Tuesday August 24: workshops where adults, children and families together can learn West African drum, dance and song will be held at the Chilmark Community Center. For details and registration, e-mail Mary Ambulos at mvmar@comcast.net or see online marafanyi.com.

Estate Auction

An auction of estate items from several Vineyard homes will be presented by MV Auctions on Saturday, August 21 at 6 p.m. at the Grange Hall in West Tisbury, on State Road near Alley’s. The preview of fine antiques begins at 1 p.m. and the preview party with wine and cheese is set for 5 p.m.

There is no admission charge. Partial proceeds will be donated to Habitat for Humanity of Martha’s Vineyard, providing simple, decent housing for Island families. For details, call 508-743-7955.