By JEANNE HEWETT

It has long been evident that we need a new national anthem. The Star-Spangled Banner is tough to memorize and tougher to sing, and it celebrates a war we didn’t even win!

My candidate for a quintessentially American song, one that acknowledges pain as well as pride in our history, is City of New Orleans. Composed by the late Steve Goodman, who also wrote A Dying Cubs Fan’s Last Request, this bittersweet folk song grew out of a train ride from Chicago to New Orleans that Goodman and his wife took to visit his wife’s family.

PROTECT HISTORIC DISTRICT

Editors, Vineyard Gazette:

From a 1952 Gazette edition:

Since Thursday, when the Coast Guard building, three stories high, came towing into Menemsha Creek on a scow after crossing Vineyard Sound from Cuttyhunk . . . people have exclaimed: “How unusual!”

But here on the Vineyard the moving of buildings by water is an old story. Not too many men are now living who have engaged in such undertakings, but there are many familiar with the history of similar movings who can point out houses and other structures that floated alongshore to their present destinations.

Chiddy Bang, the rap duo currently in possession of a Guinness Book World Record for the longest freestyle rap coming in at nine hours, 15 minutes and 15 seconds, played, alas, a somewhat shorter set at the Stars and Stripes festival held at Nectar’s on Saturday night.

The event was a benefit for the YMCA and produced by Neon Gold Records, a record company run by Chilmark summer residents Derek Davies and Lizzy Plapinger. The evening also featured The Knocks, French Horn Rebellion and Savoir Adore.

Each week the folks at Cinema Circus show a series of short films on Wednesday evenings at the Chilmark Community Center. The films begin at 6 p.m. but at 5 p.m. the circus — complete with jugglers, face painters, stilt walkers, food and music — gets underway.

As for the movies, each week an advanced screening of the films is arranged with a young Island cineaste; in a world with few certainties, the kid critic is the critic to trust.

A recent painting by Ovid Osborn Ward entitled Windswept has been accepted in the National Exhibit, hosted by the Cape Cod Art Association located at 3480 Route 6A in Barnstable, Mass. The show is a juried exhibit of works in various mediums created by artists from across the United States. It runs from July 14 through August 15. The opening reception is July 9 from 5 to 7 p.m.

James Lapine (pictured) has won the Tony Award three times for the best book of a musical, for Into the Woods, Passion and Falsettos. His list of other Broadway and Hollywood credits is long and illustrious.

Mandy Hackett is the associate artistic director of the Public Theatre in New York city, one of the most vibrant and important performance spaces in New York city and therefore, by extension, the world.

Fifty years ago they rocked. Today they, well, you judge whether they still got the beat.

The Bodes are reuniting and playing the Edgartown Lighthouse from 6 to 8 p.m. on Wednesday, July 6.

And who are the Bodes, you ask? Four Island men who during their high school days back in the 1960’s formed a band. They are Rick Convery on drums and vocals, Charlie Leighton on bass and vocals, Jack Mayhew on guitar, and Peter Valenti on guitar and vocals.

All-Star Athletes

Six players on the Martha’s Vineyard Regional High School tennis team received All-Star honors in the Eastern Athletic Conference, a record number of players from a single team according to head coach Ned Fennessy.

Senior Reid Yennie and sophomore Kent Leonard, the team’s number one and two singles players, were selected, as were doubles players Jackson McBride, Patrick McCarthy, Ryan Sawyer and Justin Smith.