Can you imagine explaining the contemporary garment known as a T-shirt to George Washington? Picture the guy dressed in layers of scratchy underwear, breeches, dress shirt, heavy jacket, tights, boots and a hat like a complicated folded napkin.

Alan M. Dershowitz will speak about his latest book, Is There a Right to Remain Silent? Coercive Interrogation and the Fifth Amendment After 9/11, at the Chilmark Public Library on Wednesday, July 9, at 5:30 p.m.

In this serialized novel set on the Vineyard in real time, a native Islander (“Call me Becca”) returns home after many years in Manhattan to help her eccentric Uncle Abe keep his landscaping business, Pequot, afloat. Through Mott (Pequot’s general manager) she’s met Quincas (a Brazilian laborer) and the rest of Pequot’s staff. Uncle Abe has an intense loathing of Richard Moby, the CEO of Broadway, an off-Island landscaping business.

The folk trio of Cindy Kallet, Ellen Epstein and Michael Cicone have emerged after a 15-year recording hiatus to release Heartwalk, a collection of original songs and folk favorites. While the three may have spent the past decade and a half on other projects, the warmth and sincerity on Heartwalk demonstrates they’ve lost none of the chemistry that earned them accolades on the New England folk circuit for their previous albums Angels in Daring (1988) and Only Human (1993).

The internationally acclaimed St. Petersburg Quartet opens the 38th summer season of the Martha’s Vineyard Chamber Music Society with performances at 8 p.m. on July 7 and 8 — Monday at the Old Whaling Church in Edgartown, Tuesday at the Chilmark Community Center.

The concert program includes Alexander Glazunov’s Three Novelettes, opus 15; the String Quartet in E-flat Major by Antonin Dvorák, and with the chamber society’s artistic director, Delores Stevens, joining the group on stage, the Piano Quintet by Dmitri Shostakovich.

Kim Nye bought an old hardware store on Uncas avenue in Oak Bluffs back in 2000, with an eye to opening an art gallery. She renovated it the following year but waited until now, a likely recession period, to open the gallery.

David Stanwood is back in business and invites his old friends and prospective customers to visit his piano shop off Lambert’s Cove Road this Sunday from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. for a get-reacquainted open house.

Mr. Stanwood, 57, runs Stanwood and Company, a piano restoration, piano tuning and repair operation that has been around for 30 years.

Elena De La Ville has just arrived home after a class at Featherstone Center for the Arts, still seemingly abuzz. You can hear the artist’s passion for teaching instantly as she describes the beeswax collage class as a complete success: “It was incredible!”

For those unfamiliar with the artistic capabilities of beeswax, she explains, “It sort of is using beeswax as glue, to be the medium for what you do, and using whatever people had to make a new piece in collage.”

The Granary Gallery at the Red Barn welcomes all to an artists’ reception on Sunday, July 6, from 5 to 7 p.m. for new works by Alison Shaw, Scott Terry and Carol Maguire.

Alison Shaw continues to pursue her “camera as paintbrush” notion and has created a variety of new images involving color, motion and composition. She will also unveil new photographs taken in Venice, Italy.

WOODEN BOATS OF MARTHA’S VINEYARD: The Photography of Louisa Gould. Text and photographs by Louisa Gould. Flat Hammock Press, 2008. 64 pages. $19.95, softcover.