Lanny McDowell is having an opening this week that can take place in anyone’s home or office. He has opened a gallery on the Internet showing his fine art avian photographs. Anyone can go there by pressing a few buttons on the computer.

Most Vineyard artists have openings at galleries. They schedule a day in the height of summer to roll out their work, send out a box full of invitations and wait for the crowds to come. A reception usually includes wine and cheese and then after a week or so, the work comes down.

It’s time for old-time fiddle music tonight, when The Flying Elbows Fiddle Band performs at 8 p.m. at the Katharine Cornell Theatre.

Known to deliver light-hearted, high-energy performances, the Flying Elbows will present both original and traditional songs with humor and three-part harmony in addition to their familiar fiddle material.

Plein Air Registration

Register now to take part in the third annual Open Call Vineyard Plein Air Painter’s Show. Forms are available from noon to 7 p.m. daily at the Dragonfly Gallery on Dukes County avenue in Oak Bluffs. The fee to enter is $30 and the deadline to register is Sept. 6. Show opens Sept. 20 to Oct. 6. For details, call Marjorie Mason at 508-645-7965 or e-mail mmasonart@comcast.net.

Lagoon Music

Jazz pianist John Alaimo will give a sunset serenade on Sunday, August 31, when Pam and Jim Butterick open their home at 359 Barnes Road for a benefit evening of music on the Lagoon. From 6:30 to 10 p.m., there will be great music and light refreshment and, with luck, a lovely sunset over the lagoon.

A donation of $50 will be taken at the door to benefit the Steeple Fund of the Federated Church in Edgartown. For details, call the church office at 508-627-4421 or the Buttericks at 508-693-6871.

The Aquinnah Public Library will be host to a community celebration on Saturday, August 30, from noon to 3 p.m. The event is free and will be held on the grounds of the library on State Road in Aquinnah. In case of rain, the event will be held inside the old town hall across State Road.

Two musical guests will perform: the Wampanoag tribe’s own Black Brook Drummers will perform at noon and Sol y Canto, a popular Latin music group from Cambridge at 2 p.m.

Kenny Lockwood and Red Road are making a rare appearance on the Island at the Old Whaling Church in Edgartown, Saturday, August 30, at 8 p.m.

It’s a whole new, clean green spin on trashy books: on Saturday, August 30, Island author Mathea Levine will sign copies of her new definitely not trashy book I’m Lucy: A Day in the Life of a Young Bonobo at Riley’s Reads in Vineyard Haven — but kids will receive a 20 per cent discount on copies of the book if they bring three or more pieces of beach trash they’ve collected.

For four years, Salvatore Scibona has been shepherding new writers at the Fine Arts Workshop in Provincetown through readings of their work at local libraries and other cultural venues.

Saturday at 5:30 p.m., at the West Tisbury library, Mr. Scibona will read from The End, his own first novel, that already has generated luxurious reviews prior to its release this week. Responsible reviewers have compared him with Saul Bellow, Virginia Woolf and Graham Greene.

Verdi on Middle Road? You wouldn’t think anything almost subversively original in the arts could possibly be percolating up this country road. You think you might come upon a corn patch or a pen of prized goats, but not a synthesis of dance, theatre and opera combining Broadway actors, celebrated choreographers and, well, Verdi.

Experts are mystified by the bloom of an unknown type of algae this summer on the Edgartown Great Pond that has covered acres of the pond’s surface, choking out light to eelgrass beds and then sinking onto shellfish beds.

A sample of the algae was sent this week to the Smithsonian Institution after attempts to positively identify it through records at the Polly Hill Arboretum and through the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution were inconclusive.