The Honorable L. Douglas Wilder will be the featured speaker at the Taste of Road Scholar event on Tuesday, August 16 at Shearer Cottage in Oak Bluffs.

Mr. Wilder’s career in public service spans 40 years. As a state senator representing Richmond from 1969 to 1985, he became the first African American state senator in Virginia since the Reconstruction. He was also the first African American to be elected governor in the U.S., leading the Commonwealth of Virginia from 1990 to 1994. He later served as mayor of Richmond from 2005 until 2009.

Change Is Coming

West Tisbury summer resident Jill Shaw Ruddock’s new best-selling book The Second Half of Your Life is part self-help book, part scientific treatise. It takes readers into the world of menopause and afterwards and argues successfully, in case anyone actually wondered, that there is indeed life after “the change.” But see for yourself.

Trophy Is Future, Ice Rink Is Present

Almost everyone around these parts, save the occasional hermit living off the grid, knows the Bruins won the Stanley Cup this year. It’s easy to marvel at the skills of those players and rejoice, but it’s also important to take a moment and wonder just where those players came from.

The answer is, for the most part, public ice rinks, those breeding grounds for many a rink rat with dreams of professional hockey glory.

On Saturday, August 13, from 4 to 7 p.m. the Oak Bluffs Arts District will host a gallery stroll which includes galleries along Dukes County avenue and nearby. Enjoy art, music and refreshments all served up in a casual summer evening manner.

Allright everyone, time to put down the golf clubs, set aside the tennis racquets, becalm the wind and kite surfing equipment, dock the surfboard and sheath the lion taming whip. The time has come for more manly pursuits, women may apply too, and children, if up to muster, are also invited.

And what you ask, gentle reader, could be so dangerous an activity and yet include such a wide swath of the vacationing public? Well, ping-pong of course.

The Christina Gallery is hosting an art opening on Thursday, August 11 from 6 to 9 p.m. for Sandi Blandi and Marjorie Mason

Chicken Alley Art Show Arrives

In this age of free range chicken-raising, throw an egg in the air anywhere on this Island and odds are you’ll hit a fellow chicken farmer, one might think a reference to a place called Chicken Alley speaks of some storied Shangri-la where golden eggs roll freely from the barnyard.

Reality, however, speaks to a place of no chickens but plenty of golden eggs, metaphorically at least.

The Martha’s Vineyard Chamber Music Society summer program this year has strayed from some of the more traditional offerings.

“The whole business of going to a chamber music concert — well, we’ve really given that a shake-up,” declared Nora Nevin, the society’s director of publicity.

It’s fair to say millions, possibly even billions, more people have heard Arnold McCuller than have heard of Arnold McCuller.

If you’ve heard the music of Phil Collins, or Bonnie Raitt, Lyle Lovett, Aretha Franklin, Diana Ross, Bette Midler, Beck — the list goes on and on — you’ve heard Mr. McCuller.

Even for an established weaver with 45 years of experience, it seems the essence of tapestry art is best explained by the reaction of an outsider to the art. While at a tapestry show in Philadelphia, Julia Mitchell witnessed the raw and pure reaction to her craft. A man passing by stopped in front of one of her woven linen tapestries and gawked momentarily before approaching the piece. Then he took the cloth in his hands, thrust it to his nose and sniffed deeply.