Memorial Day weekend is almost here, and along with it, the annual Friends of Family Planning Art Show Benefit. This event supports the Family Planning of Martha’s Vineyard clinic, which provides reproductive health and family planning services to our community.

While other recent natural disasters may have drawn the international news media’s attention elsewhere, Haiti continues to struggle against widespread corruption and popular fear in the effort to rebuild itself in the aftermath of an earthquake that struck of the beleaguered island several months ago.

The Vineyard Haven library does its part in keeping Islanders updated on the situation faced by our southerly sister at 7 p.m. on Tuesday, May 25, with a free screening of a film, Burn!, followed by post-earthquake updates.

The Summoning of Everyman, sometimes known simply as Everyman, is a play focused on morality and mortality within a Christian context that dates back to 15th century England, where it was penned by author/s unknown.

Senior Health and Fitness

Island Elderly Housing is celebrating National Senior Health and Fitness Day for our residents on Wednesday, May 26 between 10 and 11:30 a.m. at our Woodside 2 community room. There are several fitness activities planned for residents including a walk from 10 to 10:30 a.m., a Wii bowling tournament and a lasso golf round robin tournament.

A family painting of a long-gone square-rigger that has hung in the parlor of an old West Tisbury house for as long as anyone can remember, took a trip this week to San Francisco, to a new permanent home. The painting of the ship Niantic will now reside in the city where the actual ship has rested, most of it burned and buried, for 159 years. The painting will soon be on permanent display in the San Francisco Maritime Museum, which houses a collection of artifacts from the lost ship.

Asher and Shyfra Scharf were ready for their trip. Their Uzbek visas were current, though they hadn’t set foot in the country for more than 60 years. All they needed now was a reason to return. They didn’t know how or when the call would come, nor did they have a reason to believe it would come at all. But still, they waited.

So, you all know about the giant Jack met up that beanstalk, right? But did you know that giant was the reason all those kids ended up in that old woman’s shoe? Here’s how the children themselves explain it, in song:

“The giant, big and mean and mad, made himself a snack of our moms and dads; now they’re gone and deep inside his belly, and we’re in his shoe all wet and smelly.”

Garden Club Plant Sale

The Martha’s Vineyard Garden Club will hold its annual plant sale and open house on Saturday and Sunday, May 29 and 30, from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. at the historic Old Mill on Edgartown Road in West Tisbury.

The mill, located across from the Old Mill Pond, has been the home of the club since 1942. A great variety of plants grown in the Garden Club’s greenhouse through the winter will be offered for sale to members and the public.

Grow Brazilian

Island Grown Initiative in collaboration with UMass Amherst is hosting a transplant sale at Morning Glory Farm in Edgartown, on May 22 and 23. Taioba, maxixe, jilo and okra will be available as well as information on cultivation, cooking and nutrition. Hear from other growers what these crops have brought to their business and their kitchens. For more information, contact Zoraia Barros at zbarros@psis.umass.edu.

By LYNNE IRONS

My greenhouse is bursting at the seams. Thankfully, I did not jump the gun (where did that expression come from?) and plant out the many peppers, tomatoes, squashes, watermelons and cucumbers. I did plant a test row of beans, a few tomatoes and a couple of zucchini. Even the double covering of Reemay could not save them. It froze two nights last week. My son Jeremiah lost all his tender vegetable starts — blackened the first morning. Mine, however, died that slow, lingering death which alternately gave hope and despair.