Island of Women

An Island of Women, an original musical, looks at life on the Vineyard between 1850 and 1852 when much of the male population was off whaling. It was created by Island historian and director E. St. John Villard. It’s music was composed by retired Methodist minister of music Phil Dietterich, who is well know to Vineyard audiences for his original compositions for many local groups, as well as his work for the Scottish Society.

Guests swarmed to Mediterranean restaurant early Saturday afternoon to honor Empowered Woman of the Year Cindy Doyle and to observe the passing of the torch from former Women Empowered executive director Kaye Flathers to successor Sheila Bracy.

“We were thrilled with the turnout,” said Ms. Bracy. She attributes the success of the brunch to the volunteers who dedicated their time to organizing the event.

If there’s to be a central tragedy in one’s life, odds-on it’s bound up in the heartbreak of an unhappy family. In Athol Fugard’s seminal play, Master Harold and the Boys, which premiered in 1982 at the Yale Repertory Theatre before going on to an extended run at the Lyceum on Broadway, the playwright depicts a family’s dysfunction for the specific and fascinating angst all of its own, and also as a microcosm for the dark heart of the Family of Man as it rolled out in the decades of apartheid in South Africa.

Is the Vineyard poised to become the launch point for the next American Great Awakening?

Ask Squire Rushnell and Louise DuArt, the celebrity entertainers and authors who are the masterminds behind Inspiration Weekend 2009, which runs this weekend (June 5 to June 7), at the Tabernacle in Oak Bluffs, and they’ll tell you it just might be.

“We’re gonna light that fire again,” says Ms. DuArt, a well-known comedic impressionist who appears on national television as everyone from Judge Judy to George Burns.

Honors Graduate

Mr. and Mrs. Paul L. Conroy of Edgartown proudly announce the graduation with honors of Paul Xavier Conroy from Wyotech of Daytona, Fla., in marine mechanics, on June 18, 2009.

The Whippoorwill Farm community supported agriculture program is still accepting members for the coming season, after a wobbly financial year.

The CSA, which serves between 300 to 400 families each summer, moved in 2004 from Thimble Farm to a 43-acre lot of farm land off the Vineyard ­Haven-Edgartown Road.

The space has better potential, according to farm manager Andrew Woodruff, but it has presented more problems, from poor irrigation to a lack of capital and, last year, a bad growing season.

After the long, cold winter we spent indoors, spring has arrived to push us outside to collect new green leaves and dig up fat roots. This is the time, according to tradition, for spring cleaning – and we don’t mean the house. We’re referring to an ancient folk belief about cleaning the blood, renewing the spirit, and energizing the body.

You almost have to be in a bank vault not to hear the volume of eager bird song these days. From goldfinches to mourning doves, catbirds to cuckoos, just about all of the nesting species which annually choose the Vineyard as a seasonal home announce themselves with some sort of call. Woodpeckers use a favorite sounding board to resonate their presence, while shorebirds, terns and gulls are more apt to utter cries or whistles.

Energetic dancers of all ages lit up the stage on Sunday evening for the 14th annual Kaleidoscope Dance spring concert, the first to be held at the Performing Arts Center at the Martha’s Vineyard Regional High School. Kaleidoscope Dance, under the direction of extraordinary choreographer Laura Sargent Hall, displayed a wide variety of dance, ranging from exquisite ballet pieces to eclectic gymnastics-inspired sequences. All came under the theme of the recital: School Days.

UP AND DOWN

Editors, Vineyard Gazette:

While enjoying the excerpt from David Kinney’s book The Big One on your op-ed page, May 22, I tripped over the preposterous theory, blandly presented as fact, that the terms up-Island” and “down-Island are based on longitude.