TURBINES NOW

Editors, Vineyard Gazette:

From Gazette editions of August, 1935:

The dividing line of the summer season has been crossed. The largest half is here, for August is traditionally the apogee of summer, the fulfillment and culmination of the collective Island vacation. The greatest vacation for the greatest number comes in August, and from a business standpoint a big August is always expected to redeem an only medium July.

Race, Religion and Reason is the title for the forum on Wednesday, August 18, hosted and organized by seasonal resident and Harvard professor Charles Ogletree at the Performing Arts Center of the Martha’s Vineyard Regional High School in Oak Bluffs. The event is free and open to all.

Rising Tide Benefit

Cocktails, hors d’oeuvre, and live and silent auctions are featured at the fourth annual summer cocktail party to benefit Rising Tide Therapeutic Equestrian Center on Thursday, August 19 from 5:30 to 8:30 p.m.

Held at the home of Rose Styron (53 High Hedge Lane in Vineyard Haven), the party will feature a selection of appetizers prepared by some of the Island’s favorite chefs. Admission is $60 at the door.

Anna Sylvia tends to her draft horse Virgil every day at Sweetened Water barn in Edgartown. Whether after work at the SBS Grain store or after school during the winter, Anna takes at least an hour of her day to clean out Virgil’s stall, bathe and ride him. Yes, Anna rides her draft horse.

Rev. Raphael Warnock returns to the pulpit at the First Congregational Church in West Tisbury as guest minister on Sunday, August 15. He has served as the senior pastor of the Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, Ga., since 2005. Rev. Warnock graduated from Morehouse College cum laude in 1991, and holds a master of divinity degree, a master of philosophy degree, and a doctor of philosophy degree from Union Theological Seminary in New York city.

The late Patricia Neal, at some point in her dazzling half-century run as a Broadway and Hollywood actress, said “A strong, positive mental attitude will create more miracles than any wonder drug.” But it’s not so important that she said it. After all, an actor is excellent at reciting empty lines; they make whole careers out of the practice. What’s more important is that she lived it, despite all the deep valleys and dark corners she faced along the way.

The working title of Peter Beinart’s forthcoming book, The Crisis in Liberal Zionism, puts it nicely in a nutshell.

The problem: how do American Jews, who are traditionally overwhelmingly liberal, respond to an Israel which is steadily growing more illiberal and increasingly inclined to pursue policies which many, including Mr. Beinart, believes to be morally indefensible?

As wind power development looms over the Island, planning agencies and other organizations are beginning to come to terms with what that will mean visually. The Martha’s Vineyard Commission and Vineyard Power have each developed visual simulations to show what Vineyard horizons will look like dotted with wind farms.

And depending on your persuasion, the altered seascapes represent either a pristine panorama blighted by industrial machinery or a stirring reminder of the Island’s potential energy independence.

Carlin Hart is already settling into his new job as principal of the Oak Bluffs School. In an interview at his office on Wednesday this week, he took a seat among boxes and books, some of them his, some belonging to outgoing principal Laury Binney.