Update on Neurocognitive Disorders and Alzheimer’s Disease with Dr. Nicole Absar

The Vineyard Haven Public Library is pleased to welcome back Dr. Nicole Absar, a specialist in Neurocognitive Disorders at the Martha’s Vineyard Hospital, for an update on neurocognitive disorders and Alzheimer’s disease. This event will be held on Tuesday, September 15th, at 6:00 PM at the Vineyard Haven Public Library, located at 200 Main Street in Vineyard Haven. Free and open to the public, no registration required.

In the lead to World Alzheimer's Day on September 21st, Dr. Absar's lecture will focus on the updated differential diagnosis of various forms of major neurocognitive disorders including Alzheimer’s disease, frontotemporal dementia, dementia with Lewy body, and other types of non-Alzheimer’s dementia. She will also cover recent updates on Alzheimer’s disease including molecular biomarker-focused early diagnosis and treatment. 

Dr. Nicole Absar is certified in Cognitive/Behavioral Neurology and Neuropsychiatry with a subspecialty in Neurocognitive Disorders. She has treated cognitive neurological disorders in Massachusetts, Maryland, and New York, and currently provides neurocognitive and Alzheimer's disease services to patients at the Martha’s Vineyard Hospital. She has served as teaching faculty at Harvard Medical School, the University of Massachusetts Medical School, Tufts Medical School, Johns Hopkins Medicine, and SUNY Stonybrook University Medical School. 

Dr Absar is an active member of the American Academy of Neurology as well as a Fellow of the American Psychiatric Association and a member of the American Medical Association. A registered yoga teacher, she believes in Integrated Neuroscience and utilizes yoga, mindfulness and brain health as a modality for Cognitive Rehabilitation. She is a National Yoga Alliance certified educational provider in specialty yoga therapy for brain disorders. 

For more information, please contact the library at vhpl_programs@clamsnet.org or (508) 696-4211.

Meditation Workshop: The Light of Awareness 2–The Ancient Art of Zen Meditation and the 21st-Century Work of Byron Katie

The Vineyard Haven Public Library is pleased to welcome back Jonathan Herrick, LCSW, for a second two-hour meditation workshop combining two powerful, pragmatic approaches that can reduce personal suffering and increase the capacity for happiness and love. This program will be held on Saturday, June 27th, from 10:00am-12:00pm at the Katharine Cornell Theatre, located at 51 Spring Street in Vineyard Haven (above Tisbury Town Hall). Free and open to the public. Interested patrons may register on the library’s event calendar. 

Building on the concepts and practices introduced at his June workshop, Jonathan will continue his exploration into the nature of awareness, providing participants with practical skills that can benefit their lives. The workshop will cover four primary Zen meditation practices as well as Byron Katie’s four-step “CBT on steroids,” demonstrating the similarities, differences, and strengths of each practice in the process. Suitable for newcomers as well as those who may have participated in Jonathan's previous workshops. Ample time is included for questions and answers.

Jonathan Herrick has been in private psychotherapy practice for over 40 years as a Licensed Clinical Social Worker. After receiving his master’s degree from New York University, he trained extensively with some of the world’s foremost mentors and institutes, including a decade with Byron Katie, who asked him to write about her work's relationship to Zen Buddhism. Herrick also trained with leading Zen, Tibetan Buddhist, and Advaita Vedanta masters including Philip Kaplea, H.W.L. Poonja, Ramesh Balsekar, Jean Klein, and Anam Thubten. He has practiced and led workshops on the Psychology of Self in Westport, Park Slope, San Francisco, and now on Martha’s Vineyard.

For more information, please contact the library at vhpl_programs@clamsnet.org or (508) 696-4211.

Live Music: The Johnson-Ostinato Duo at the Vineyard Haven Library!

Eric Johnson and Lucas Ostinato

The Vineyard Haven Public Library is pleased to welcome musicians Eric Johnson and Lucas Ostinato for an evening of melodic jazz, classical and Brazilian music. This concert will be held at 6:00 pm Thursday, September 10th, at the Vineyard Haven Public Library, located at 200 Main Street in Vineyard Haven. Free and open to the public, no registration required.

Eric and Lucas are year-round musicians on the Vineyard. Both are multi-instrumentalists with diverse musical interests and backgrounds. Over the past couple years they've developed a repertoire drawing from modern melodic jazz, classical, and Brazilian traditions. A performance can include anything from original material to compositions by Egberto Gismonti and Pat Metheny. 

For more information, please contact the library at vhpl_programs@clamsnet.org or (508) 696-4211.

Book Talk: Washashores Review, Volume 2

The Vineyard Haven Public Library is pleased to welcome local authors Bernice McIntyre, Constance Belton Green, and Terri Potts-Chattaway for a reading and discussion from the “Washashores Review, Volume 2,” a literary anthology featuring over thirty pieces of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry connected to the theme of “wanting.” This event will be held at 6:00 pm on Tuesday, September 1st, at the Vineyard Haven Public Library, located at 200 Main Street in Vineyard Haven. Free and open to the public, no registration required. 

 The “Washashores Review,” is a compilation of essays, short stories, and poems written by members of the Washashores Writers Collective, a diverse and vibrant sisterhood of Vineyard-connected writers. The anthology is published by the Washashores Writers Collective in partnership with the Featherstone Center for the Arts. Copies of the anthology will be available for purchase before and after the event, with proceeds supporting the Literary Arts Program at Featherstone.

Bernice K McIntyre is a retired attorney living on Martha’s Vineyard year-round since 2021. She has journaled since her teenage years and has written creative pieces. She previously served in numerous senior corporate legal and regulatory positions. Early in her legal career she served as commissioner, then chairperson of the Massachusetts Public Utility Commission. She was the first African American and first woman chairperson of this Commission. During her lengthy career as an environmental and energy lawyer she wrote numerous articles for publication in business journals. She received her Bachelor of Arts from Oberlin College and her juris doctor from Boston University School of Law.

Constance Belton Green is an essayist. She is a former practicing attorney and college administrator. Her publications include “Still We Rise: African Americans at the University of Connecticut School of Law” and “The Trailblazing Bessye Bennett.” She is a contributing writer for the 2025 and 2026 Washashores Reviews. Green spends her time between Martha’s Vineyard, Connecticut and the New York City/ New Jersey areas. “Holding On and Letting Go,” Green's contribution to the Review, is a story about life transitions.

Terri Potts-Chattaway spent 20 years in the television industry which led to her writing and publishing her first book, “Journey to the Inner Light: The Life and Musical Voyage of Jay Chattaway, Star Trek, Jazz and Film Composer.” Terri is honored to be a member of the Washashores Writers Collective which has published two anthologies. Both her essay, “The Love of Catboats” and her poetry have been included in the Washashores Review, Volumes 1 and 2. She has also written for several international periodicals and has a sailing blog on her website, www.terripotts-chattaway.com. She is currently writing her memoir. 

For more information, please contact the library at vhpl_programs@clamsnet.org or (508) 696-4211.

Virtual Literary Lecture Series: "Gender Dramas" with Professor Philip Weinstein

 Professor Philip Weinstein, the Alexander Griswold Cummins Professor Emeritus of English at Swarthmore College

The Vineyard Haven Public Library is pleased to announce "Gender Dramas," a seven-part virtual lecture series with Professor Philip Weinstein, the Alexander Griswold Cummins Professor Emeritus of English at Swarthmore College. Beginning September 8th, Professor Weinstein will explore dramas of yearning and desire in three remarkable novels of the 19th and early 20th century: Flaubert’s Madame Bovary (1851), Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina (1878), and Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway (1925). This virtual lecture series will be held via Zoom from 7:00 - 8:30 pm on the following Tuesdays: Sept. 8, Sept. 22, Oct. 6, Oct. 27, Nov. 10, Dec. 1, and Dec. 15. 

Gender Dramas will be hosted on Zoom by Lifelong Learning Swarthmore. Professor Weinstein and Lifelong Learning Swarthmore have generously arranged for Martha’s Vineyard library patrons to participate in this program at no charge. To sign up for complimentary access, patrons may register here. Login instructions will be sent to registered library participants prior to the first session. 

Lectures will be held from 7:00 - 8:30 pm on the following Tuesdays as follows:

Tuesday, Sept. 8, 7:00 - 8:30 PM: Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert

Tuesday, Sept. 22, 7:00 - 8:30 PM: Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert

Tuesday, Oct 6, 7:00 - 8:30 PM: Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy

Tuesday, Oct 27, 7:00 - 8:30 PM: Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy

Tuesday, Nov 10, 7:00 - 8:30 PM: Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy

Tuesday, Dec 1, 7:00 - 8:30 PM: Mrs Dalloway by Virginia Woolf

Tuesday, Dec 15, 7:00 - 8:30 PM: Mrs Dalloway by Virginia Woolf

“What does a woman want?” Freud’s famous question has been asked — and in strikingly different ways illuminated — by writers well before and after Freud. We shall explore dramas of yearning and desire in three remarkable novels of the 19th and early 20th century: Flaubert’s Madame Bovary (1851), Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina (1878), and Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway (1925). The heroines in these novels memorably confront and engage gender norms operative in their culture. What light does each novel shed on the struggles engaged? How do the novels’ embodied stance toward such gender arrangements affect that light? Perhaps a third question as well: how does their way of dramatizing these issues provoke questions of your own? “Gender” serves as the fulcrum in this course description, but our aim goes beyond any set of “prescriptions” or “proscriptions.” Rather, it is to do justice to each writer’s creative take on the drama of yearning and desire.

Philip Weinstein earned his PhD in English from Harvard University, staying on to teach at Harvard for the next 3 years. He then accepted a position at Swarthmore, where he remained for over 40 years, becoming the Alexander Griswold Cummins Professor of English. He has written several books of literary criticism, many focused on Faulkner, including “Becoming Faulkner: The Art and Life of William Faulkner,” which won the Hugh Holman Award for the best book of literary scholarship or literary criticism in the field of southern literature published in 2010. In 2015, Weinstein retired from Swarthmore and moved to Martha’s Vineyard full-time. Since then, he’s gone on to write three more books and to continue teaching adults through the Vineyard Haven Public Library, Swarthmore Lifelong Learning, and the 92nd Street Y in New York.

Author Talk - “Numinosity: A New England Forester’s Search for the Ineffable” by Bob Perschel

The Vineyard Haven Public Library is pleased to welcome Vineyard resident and professional forester Bob Perschel for a talk about his fifty-year quest in pursuit of something larger than all of us, a quest documented in his new book, “Numinosity: A New England Forester’s Search for the Ineffable.” This event will be held at 4:00 PM on Friday, September 4th, at the Vineyard Haven Public Library, located at 200 Main Street in Vineyard Haven. Free and open to the public, no registration required.

“Numinosity: A New England Forester’s Search for the Ineffable” is a collection of stories and poems offering a rare and moving account of what happens when deep scientific knowledge of the forest meets a search for transcendence within it. Drawing on Jungian concepts of the numinous, those encounters with an awe-inspiring force that defies full articulation, Perschel’s poems emerge from the lived intimacy of forest work: marking timber alone in winter woods, listening to the life cycle of an ancient oak, and reckoning with the weight of human impact on a landscape. The result is a collection that is both deeply personal and urgently ecological.

The collection is organized into three thematic sections. The first, Forestry, explores the spiritual and ethical dimensions of forest stewardship through poems including “Marking Timber,” “Lie Down: A Forester’s Directive,” and “The Last Twitch.”  The second section, Life, reveals how the natural world can provide meaning and weave its influence through our lives with poems such as “Meeting the Green Lady”, “The Place Where Life Begins”, and “Snake River Bar.”   The third section, Climate Change, confronts the moral stakes of the current environmental crisis with poems such as “Epistle to Left on the Earth,” “J.D. Skis Ukraine,” and “Memo to a Prospective Leader.”

Robert T. Perschel has helped conserve six million acres of New England’s forests during a four-decade career as a professional forester. He chaired the 53-member Northern Forest Alliance and co-founded the Forest Stewards Guild, a national organization of ecologically focused foresters. As Executive Director of the New England Forestry Foundation, he led the creation of Exemplary Forestry standards that use climate-smart management to offset significant regional carbon emissions. He holds a Psychology degree from Yale College (1973) and a Masters of Forestry Science from the Yale School of the Environment (1979). Bob lives in an oak forest on the north shore of Martha’s Vineyard.

For more information, please contact the library at vhpl_programs@clamsnet.org or (508) 696-4211.

One Bad Crab: Screening, Discussion & Green Crab Tasting!

Nelson Sigelman, writer and narrator of One Bad Crab, with the subject of the film

The Vineyard Haven Public Library is pleased to welcome environmental filmmaker Sandy Cannon-Brown, along with members of the MV Shellfish community, for a screening and discussion of the film, One Bad Crab, followed by a green crab appetizer prepared by Chef Galen of the Lambert's Cove Inn. Speakers to include: MV Shellfish Group Executive Director Emma Green-Beach, MV Shellfish Group Founder Rick Karney, GreenCrab.org Executive Director Mary Parks, and Tisbury Shellfish Constable Danielle Ewart. This event will be held at 4:00 pm on Friday, August 28th, at the Vineyard Haven Public Library, located at 200 Main Street in Vineyard Haven. Free and open to the public, no registration required.

One Bad Crab is a 38-minute documentary film by environmental filmmaker Sandy Cannon-Brown, narrated by Nelson Sigelman. The Latin name for the European green crab, Carcinus maenas, translates as “raving mad crab", which gives some insight into the personality of this invasive crustacean with a voracious appetite that undermines valuable shellfish resources here on the Island. It's impossible to eliminate this fecund critter, but we can take advantage of its presence as a savory menu item. Chef Galen of the Lambert's Cove Inn will treat attendees to a green crab appetizer following the screening. 

Sandy Cannon-Brown, founder (1985) and president (1985-present) of VideoTakes, Inc., is an award-winning environmental filmmaker. Before moving to Martha's Vineyard in 2020, she lived in DC and St. Michaels, MD and made nine documentaries about subjects important to the Chesapeake Bay with writer Tom Horton and photographer Dave Harp. In 2025 the team was honored by the Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum with the prestigious Bay Heritage Award. Sandy was also an associate director for the Center for Environmental Filmmaking at American University, honored as CEF’s first senior scholar in 2013, and named AU’s adjunct professor of the year in 2011. Among her many other honors, Women in Film Video DC honored Sandy as a Woman of Vision in 1998. She served as WIFV’s president 2011-2012.

Emma Green-Beach is Executive Director of the MV Shellfish Group. Emma grew up in Oak Bluffs and fondly remembers gathering shellfish from Sengekontacket, Edgartown Great Pond and Wasque. She started with the MV Shellfish Group as seasonal staff in 2006 after receiving her B.S. in Biology at U Mass Dartmouth. She went on to earn a M.S. in Ecology and Evolution from Rutgers University in 2011. She joined MV Shellfish Group full-time in 2014 and became the Executive Director in 2017.

Rick Karney is Founder and Director Emeritus of the MV Shellfish Group. Rick came to the Island in the 1970s to create a shellfish management program that focuses on aquaculture to enhance public shellfish stock propagation. He also helped start the MV Shellfish Group, which celebrates its 50th year in 2026. His work with MVSG earned him the Gulf of Maine Visionary Award in 2001 for demonstrating "that shellfish aquaculture can be an environmentally and economically sustainable activity for coastal communities." Rick graduated from Rutgers University in 1972 with a B.S. in Biological Sciences.

Mary Parks is Executive Director of GreenCrab.org. Mary grew up in Penobscot Bay and first learned about the green crab's invasive impact from the surrounding lobstering and clamming community. After working in traceability for a commercial fish wholesaler in Boston, and learning more about bait markets for green crabs, she started asking what needed to be done to build a culinary market. In 2020, she went on to found GreenCrab.org: a nonprofit dedicated to building culinary markets for European green crab and spreading awareness of its invasive impact.

Danielle Ewart is the Tisbury Shellfish Constable. During the summer of 2004, between her freshman and sophomore years of college, Danielle worked as a summer deputy for the Town of Oak Bluffs and part-time at Martha's Vineyard Shellfish Group. After graduating, she rose in the ranks to full-time deputy for the Town of Oak Bluffs. She became the Shellfish Constable for the neighboring Town of Tisbury in 2010.

For more information, please contact the library at vhpl_programs@clamsnet.org or (508) 696-4211.