On Tuesday at a benefit night for Lila Fischer and Hannah Kahl’s coming trip to Africa to work for Earth Birth, Ms. Fischer held up a jar she planned to pass around throughout the evening for contributions. There would be a prize each hour, she said to the packed house at Flatbread/Nectar’s, for the largest contribution.
Nineteen years ago, Eleanor Hubbard adopted a calico cat from the Edgartown animal shelter. Tonight, in New York city, that cat is about to get her closeup.
The cat’s name is Ulla, a Norwegian name. Her actual pedigree is unclear, perhaps French, based on her inclination towards the arts and painting. Over the years Ulla has become Ms. Hubbard’s muse and model in the studio.
My daughter Pickle, age three and half, has been talking a lot about death lately. The other night at dinner she turned to her mother, Cathlin, and said, "Babu and Babshi died." She was referring to the nicknames of my wife's parents who both died before Pickle was born.
"Yes," Cathlin said. "They did."
"A lot of people die," Pickle said. She pursed her small lips and folded her hands one over the other. "Like eight people," she added.
Last spring Betty Burton received a call from a producer for Sesame Street. One of the most respected television programs for children had been branching out recently, from singing songs and learning how to count with fuzzy Muppet friends, to producing shows that educate kids about some of the bigger, more tragic issues kids face today. A new episode in the works was to be about poverty, specifically the issue of kids in America going hungry.
For more than 20 years Dr. Elliott Dacher practiced medicine. He was an internist going about his rounds of helping patients with their physical ailments. Over the years, however, he began to sense that something was missing. He didn’t know exactly what it was, but he felt an inner longing, both for himself and for his patients, whom he felt were not receiving the entire package.
Last winter, Jennifer Sanford was sitting at her desk at MassMutual in Springfield where she works as a trader, when an e-mail message came across her screen. The message gave the details of an upcoming triathlon to be held later that summer on Martha’s Vineyard. Ms. Sanford had never entered a triathlon or a race really of any kind before and so it wasn’t the competition that first caught her eye. It was the date of the race: Sept. 11, 2011.
I have mixed feelings about going to the Agricultural Fair. This has nothing to do with the fair itself, which at 150-years-old has aged exceptionally well, maintaining its links to the past without a hint of mustiness. It is very much a thing of the present and this weekend I will bring my children to the fair many times.
On Wednesday, August 10, at 5 p.m. there will be a screening of the short film The Barber of Birmingham at the Katharine Cornell Theatre in Vineyard Haven. The film is part of the ninth annual Martha’s Vineyard African-American Film Festival taking place here on the Island, beginning today, August 9, and running through Saturday, August 13.
The other day, on a wet and chilly morning, I suggested to my daughter Pickle, recently turned three, that she wear a coat for going outside. Giving my children suggestions about what clothes to wear has been an ongoing battle for me ever since I became a parent. That at age eight I chose to wear the same green T-shirt every day for an entire summer mocks me from my past.
