KATHIE CASE

508-627-5349

(kathleencase@comcast.net)

Well, Memorial Day weekend has now come and gone, and I guess summer is officially on. It was a week early but someone forgot to tell Mother Nature, as instead of the weather getting warmer, it got colder. I can not remember the last time I actually turned the heat up in the house at the end of May.

Notice to our readers: the Gazette begins its twice-weekly publication this week, so watch for the Tuesday edition, beginning June 2. Summer is certain to follow. See you Tuesday.

With a quiet, unerring regularity, two groups of life drawing artists have congregated at Featherstone Center for the Arts in Oak Bluffs each and every week for years, slowly improving their ability to conjure living, breathing images out of flat white paper.

The best work from members of both the Tom Maley and the Firehouse figure drawing groups will go on display this Sunday, May 31, in Faces and Figures, an exhibition at Featherstone’s Virginia Weston Gallery.

The opening reception is Sunday from 4 to 6 p.m. All are welcome.

Kaleidescope Dance will make school more fun (and inspiring) than you ever imagined, when it presents the 14th annual spring show on Sunday, May 31, from 6 to 7:30 p.m. at the performing arts center at the regional high school.

This Saturday, May 30, The Grocer’s Son screens at the Katharine Cornell Theatre at 8 p.m. This 2008 film from France, starring Nicolas Cazale as Antoine, retells the fable of the prodigal son with modern updates. The Martha’s Vineyard Film Society’s Richard Paradise summarizes, “Antoine reluctantly returns to his rural hometown after 10 years in the big city when his father (Daniel Duval) has a heart attack.

Children’s Ballet

No June Kids Programs

The youth programs at the Vineyard Haven Public Library will be on hiatus for the month of June. They resume July 2 and continue throughout the summer. The hiatus will allow librarians to plan and organize a full Summer Reading Program, with many exciting events including a visit by Curious George, authentic moon rock specimens from NASA, music, authors, illustrators, a film festival, crafts, songs, rhymes and more. The library thanks its young patrons for their patience.

Prosperity Gardening at the Native Earth Teaching Farm, located at 94 North Road in Chilmark, begins Sunday, May 31, from 3:30 to 5 p.m., and continues weekly throughout the summer.

Grace Church welcomes the Wes Nagy Jazz Ensemble at their 11 a.m. Worship service on the Day of Pentecost: Sunday, May 31. Under the leadership of keyboardist Wes Nagy (who also happens to be the Director of Music at Grace Church), the ensemble will perform a medley of jazz music and will also accompany the congregational singing that day, which will feature hymns from Lift Every Voice and Sing, an African-American hymnal of the Episcopal Church.

Late spring can be an interesting time for Vineyard birders. Although the migration of dicky-birds as well as shore birds, waterfowl and hawks has finished for the season, there are always surprises. The sandhill crane that appeared last week isn’t a bird one would expect to see during a normal Vineyard spring migration. The return of the nesting pair of merlins on Chappaquiddick, which were reported by Rob Bierregaard and Dick Jennings on May 14, is an ornithological dividend. Lanny McDowell, Allan Keith, Pete Gilmore and I saw one of the merlins on May 23 and located the nest following Rob and Dick’s directions. The merlins are quite defensive and are probably already on eggs. These will take around a month to hatch and then the young merlins will need a month to mature enough to take wing. It is interesting that these merlins returned to the same area where Mary Adelstein and Margaret Fowle first saw them in early June 2008. We are still the only location for nesting merlins in Massachusetts! We hope our merlins will be as successful as last year.