Always wanted to write comedy? Find your comedic voice and take your ideas from page to stage in a four-day intensive comedy writing and performing workshop with Emmy-winning original Saturday Night Live writer Anne Beatts. The workshop will culminate in a live performance following the Saturday family matinee.

Gone are the grownup gatekeepers of movie merit — kids are the audience for the weekly Cinema Circus films, so kids are our reviewers. Each week the Gazette and the Martha’s Vineyard Film Festival bring you the big view from the smaller viewers with weekly kid critics.

Today summer kid Eva Stanley reviews The View from Above, a program of shorts which screens (along with plenty of larger-than-life children’s activities) on Wednesday, August 11, at 5 p.m. at the Chilmark Community Center (a prelude to dinner and a movie for the grownups):

Discover Your Voice

Vocal coach Heidi Carter’s program You Are Your Voice, Your Voice is You is designed to rejuvenate your speaking and singing voice. The program takes place today, Tuesday, August 10, at 10:30 a.m. at Woodside Village II in Oak Bluffs. The program is free, with donations accepted. For details, call 928-593-9473.

In Her Own Words:

Patricia Neal, 1926-2010

What follows is an edited piece by Patricia Neal that was published in the July 2003 Martha’s Vineyard Magazine, about how she came to the Vineyard. The actress died at her home in Edgartown on Sunday at the age of 84.

From a Gazette edition in 1958:

Martha’s Vineyard is famous for many things, not least of which are the waters which surround it. Explorers from the earliest times remarked upon the tidal phenomena which were and still are of unbelievable nature.

WITHOUT CAUSE

Editors, Vineyard Gazette:

It’s only just over a week before gates open on the 149th annual Martha’s Vineyard Agricultural Society Livestock Show and Fair on Thursday, August 19, but already it is time to sign up for jobs and prepare your entries for all categories — and time even to mark on your calendar earlier deadlines for next year’s extraordinary celebrations of the 150th fair.

Living on an Island can seem closed off from the rest of the world, sometimes leaving you itching to reach the mainland so you can go faster than 45 miles per hour. But it does have its benefits: we leave our cars unlocked with the keys in the ashtray and our doors wide open.

And we use the honor system at unattended farm stands across the Island.

Fleet Vision

The Menemsha Fisheries Development Fund presents Menemsha: Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow with Warren Doty on Thursday, August 12 at 5 p.m. at the Chilmark Public Library.

Mr. Doty will speak about the fishing fleet in Menemsha, what it was years ago, what it is today, and the hope for the future. He will speak about a new project called Fleet Visioning. “The year 2020 is just 10 years into the future. Where do we want to be when that day arrives?” Mr. Doty said.

Quarter Century in Eden

Eden Market and Garden Center is celebrating 25 years; on Friday, August 13 the garden center will host a party from 4 to 7 p.m. with games, gifts and prizes. Admission is free; all are welcome.