Many threads have woven through history to shape the Valentine’s Day we celebrate today into admittedly a rather commercial holiday. But it’s been industrialized since the mid-1800s when an enterprising Boston artist, Esther Howland, picked up on the popularity amongst wealthy Europeans of exchanging intricately designed Valentine’s cards. Ms. Howland started the first Valentine’s Day card company in the United States, handcrafting cards with ribbons and paper lace imported from England.

The tap shoes are on, the ballet slippers tied and the members of the chorus line are ready to kick their heels high.

And on Thursday night, they will do so as the curtain rises at the Martha’s Vineyard Regional High School Performing Arts Center for the opening performance of A Chorus Line, the longest-running American musical on Broadway.

Movie About Windsurfing

Will Benefit Sailing Team

Travel the world with four of its best windsurfers today, Friday, Feb. 8 in The Windsurfing Movie, which will be shown at 7 p.m. at the Katharine Cornell Theatre in Vineyard Haven to support the Martha’s Vineyard Regional High School sailing team.

Public Speaking Workshop

Susan Klein and Charlie Esposito will offer a workshop in March and April on effective public speaking and microphone use.

The workshop will meet four consecutive Thursday afternoons, March 13, 20, 27 and April 3 from 1:30 to 4 p.m. at the Tisbury Senior Center on Pine street in Vineyard Haven.

The fee is $275. The class maximum is 10. More information is available by calling 508-693-4140.

Edgartown School Theatre

Celebrates Science Fiction

Starting tonight, Friday, Feb. 8 and running through Sunday, the Edgartown School Theatre Department will present Starmites, a musical science fiction adventure.

Directed by Donna Swift and Beth Carr, the show is about a girl who is transported into one of her favorite comic books to help battle evil and restore order to Earth and Innerspace.

The holidays are over, the snow has blown in and the slow crawl to Memorial Day has begun. There is less work available and fewer options for weekend fun.

Rather than fall victim to the winter blues, however, Islanders from Edgartown to Aquinnah are starting to plan their warm-weather getaways.

“It’s nice to break up the winter, to get an infusion of sun,” said Clarissa Allen of the Allen Sheep Farm in Chilmark.

There are at least five good reasons to read Bound, a new novel by Brewster resident Sally Gunning set for release in the spring.

The story of a 15-year-old British girl indentured in the New World of the 1750s is a captivating read, written by an author well-trained in taut storytelling and well-versed in the pre-Revolutionary War period of Britain’s Massachusetts Bay colony, including Cape Cod.

Conservation Society Walk

Explores Seven Gates Farm

The Vineyard Conservation Society winter walks program, focusing on the Island’s agricultural heritage, will continue on Sunday, Feb. 10, beginning at 1:30 p.m., with a guided walk at the 1,100 acres of protected open space at Seven Gates Farm.

By LYNNE IRONS

I am a slave to tradition. For starters, I hate to shop so when I find an article of clothing that I like, I buy four or five so I do not have to buy it again for years. I am a uniform dresser (as was Albert Einstein.) I eat the same foods . . . eggs for breakfast, supper leftovers for lunch, and a chicken or pork roast for supper that lasts the week ending with some sort of soup or gruel. I have a rotary phone, hang my laundry outside, and like only the old hymns at church. I plant seeds from the same place every year.

The Vineyard bird hot line received a fascinating report from Edo Potter, out on Chappy, who noticed a rowdy mob of crows outside her house around dawn last Friday.

The crows were ganging up on something they had pinned to the ground — just what wasn’t clear, but it was large and, when Edo’s husband Bob flushed the crows, it flew off to some nearby bushes.