Virtual Tick Talk: Prevent the Bite!

View recording of this event:

https://vimeo.com/1109408521

The Vineyard Haven Library is pleased to welcome public health epidemiologists Lea Hamner and Stephanie Barth for a virtual tick talk entitled, “Prevent the Bite.” This virtual event will be held at 1:00 PM on Friday, August 8th via Zoom. This program is being held in collaboration with the Martha’s Vineyard Tick Program. Click here to register on Zoom.

“Prevent the Bite” will focus on how community members can protect themselves and their loved ones from tick bites and the diseases they can carry. Participants will learn how to identify local tick species, understand the risks, and get practical tips on prevention, from permethrin to repellents to tick checks. The presentation will be led by Lea Hamner and Stephanie Barth, public health epidemiologists working with local health departments across the Cape & Islands to prevent, track, and respond to tick-borne diseases.

Lea Hamner is an epidemiologist for the Inter-Island Public Health Excellence Collaborative. She focuses on infectious diseases of public health significance and supporting data-informed decision-making to support healthier communities. The Inter-Island Public Health Excellence Collaborative of Martha's Vineyard and Nantucket is a project funded by the Massachusetts Department of Health to fortify local public health monitoring and delivery. The initiative is led by the joint Boards of Health on Martha’s Vineyard along with Island Health Care and the Town of Nantucket.

Stephanie Barth holds both a Bachelor of Science in Public Health and a Master of Public Health with a concentration in Epidemiology from Old Dominion University. Before transitioning into public health, she worked as an oral surgery assistant, gaining valuable clinical experience. Originally from New Hampshire, Stephanie has lived in various regions across the United States and abroad, and she now resides in Cape Cod, Massachusetts. Her diverse background and passion for population health have helped guide her work and interest in communicable disease prevention and surveillance, including a focus on vector-borne illnesses such as tick-borne diseases.

This event will be held via Zoom. Interested patrons may register on the library’s event calendar at www.vhlibrary.org to receive the Zoom link. For more information, please contact the library at vhpl_programs@clamsnet.org or (508) 696-4211.

“Free”: A Reading by Professor Philip Weinstein

View the recording of this event:

https://vimeo.com/1113388331

The Vineyard Haven Library is pleased to welcome Professor Philip Weinstein for reading from his forthcoming book, “Time’s Bounty: Rethinking Aging” to be released on November 11, 2025. This event will be held at 6:00 PM on Tuesday, August 26th at the Katharine Cornell Theatre, located at 51 Spring Street in Vineyard Haven (above Tisbury Town Hall). Free and open to the public. No registration required.

Professor Weinstein will read from the final chapter of “Time’s Bounty,” entitled “Free,” in which he reflects on a peculiar kind of freedom that arises for the elderly—one in which commonplace daily rituals have the potential to be remarkable, perhaps even blessed. The idea for “Time’s Bounty” grew out of Weinstein’s realization that much of his experience of aging differed provocatively from stereotypes about old age. “But interesting things are going on in this wintry season: it is a dramatic time of life!” insists Weinstein.

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 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 offered several series of literary lectures for adult learners through the Vineyard Haven Library, Swarthmore Lifelong Learning, and the 92nd Street Y, New York.  

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

Complimentary Tickets for Film Screening of THE LIBRARIANS, at the Martha’s Vineyard Film Center

The Friends of the Vineyard Haven Library have made available a limited number of complimentary tickets for interested patrons to attend a film screening of the award-winning documentary feature, THE LIBRARIANS, followed by an in-person discussion with director Kim Snyder and producer Maria Cuomo Cole. This event will be held at 7:30 pm on Thursday, August 7th at the Martha’s Vineyard Film Center, located at 79 Beach Rd in Vineyard Haven. Interested patrons may collect their tickets at the library’s new satellite location at 15 Church Street. Tickets are free but pre-registration is required. 

Librarians emerge as first responders in the fight for democracy and our First Amendment Rights. As they well know, controlling the flow of ideas means control over communities. In Texas, the Krause List targets 850 books focused on race and LGBTQia+ stories – triggering sweeping book bans across the U.S. at an unprecedented rate. As tensions escalate, librarians connect the dots from heated school and library board meetings nationwide to lay bare the underpinnings of White Christian Nationalism fueling the censorship efforts. Despite facing harassment, threats, and laws aimed at criminalizing their work – the librarians’ rallying cry for freedom to read is a chilling cautionary tale. 

Academy Award nominee & Peabody Award-winner Kim A. Snyder’s latest feature documentary, THE LIBRARIANS made its World Premiere at the 2025 Sundance Film Festival, and has already garnered multiple festival awards  (Best Doc Sarasota and Dallas and Audience Award Milwaukee). Her most recent short, DEATH BY NUMBERS was nominated in 2025 for an Academy Award, and has received multiple festival awards. DEATH BY NUMBERS is the first Oscar Nominated film about gun-violence to be co-created by a gun-violence survivor, writer Sam Fuentes. Snyder’s documentary, US KIDS premiered at the 2020 Sundance Film Festival, winning 14 subsequent festival awards. Her short film, LESSONS FROM A SCHOOL SHOOTING: NOTES FROM DUNBLANE, premiered at the 2018 Tribeca Film Festival and was awarded Best Documentary Short followed by the DocDispatch Award at the 2018 Sheffield DocFest and a Grierson Award nomination. LESSONS is a Netflix Original.

Prior, Snyder directed the Peabody award-winning documentary NEWTOWN, which premiered at Sundance 2016.  NEWTOWN screened at premiere festivals worldwide and was theatrically released followed by a national broadcast on PBS’s Independent Lens and Netflix. Snyder’s other works include the feature documentary, WELCOME TO SHELBYVILLE, nationally broadcast on PBS’s Independent Lens in 2011, and over a dozen short documentaries. Kim’s award-winning directorial debut feature documentary, I REMEMBER ME was theatrically distributed by Zeitgeist Films. In 1994, she Associate Produced the Academy Award-winning short film TREVOR, which spawned The Trevor Project, a leading national not-for-profit addressing LGBTQ teen suicide. Kim graduated with a Masters in International Affairs from the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies and resides in New York City.

Maria Cuomo Cole is the Peabody and Emmy award winning producer recognized for making social impact on highly relevant issues with compelling artful storytelling. She has most recently produced the Academy Award® nominated DEATH BY NUMBERS documentary short film, THE LIBRARIANS (Sundance 2025, PBS/Independent Lens) feature documentary, and US KIDS (Sundance 2025) feature documentary — all in collaboration with Director / Producer Kim A. Snyder. The film team partnered on LESSONS FROM A SCHOOL SHOOTING: NOTES FROM DUNBLANE and NEWTOWN, which premiered at the 2016 Sundance Film Festival, also directed by Kim A. Snyder. Filmed over the course of nearly three years, NEWTOWN documents a traumatized community fractured by grief and driven toward a sense of purpose. After broadcast on PBS, the film was theatrically distributed across the country, and later by Netflix International. 

In 2015, Cole executive produced THE HUNTING GROUND, directed by Kirby Dick, which investigates the epidemic of sexual assaults on college campuses. This Emmy and Peabody Award-winning film premiered at the 2015 Sundance Film Festival, aired on CNN and was released on Netflix in 2016. Cuomo Cole worked with the same team as an executive producer of the 2014 Oscar®- nominated, THE INVISIBLE WAR, about the epidemic of rape and sexual violence in the U.S. military and served as a catalyst for federal policy reforms. THE INVISIBLE WAR won two Emmy® awards and a Peabody. Cuomo Cole’s 2010 documentary, LIVING FOR 32, about the tragic gun shooting on the Virginia Tech University Campus, was short-listed for an Academy Award®, aired on Showtime and was distributed by BBC Worldwide. The film achieved significant social impact at screenings in numerous festivals, and on The National College Campaign to End Gun Violence.

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

Friends of the Library Virtual 5k Fundraiser

 

Registration is now open for the Friends of Vineyard Haven Public Library's 28th annual 5k Run/Walk to benefit the library! Due to the library renovation project underway, this year will be a virtual, run anytime, run anywhere, event. The suggested donation of $25 will help the Friends continue to support library programs and services in the coming year.

Virtual participants can run or walk a 5k anytime between July 26th, 2025 and September 30th, 2025. Participants can run or walk the traditional 5k route from the library at 200 Main Street to the West Chop Lighthouse and back, or on any 5k course of their choosing. 

Register today on RunSignUp.com!

Why Local News Matters with Charlie Sennott

Join MV Times publisher Charles Sennott for a conversation about the national crisis in local news, and how it has everything to do with the crisis in our democracy. This event will be held at 6:00 PM on Tuesday, August 5th at the Katharine Cornell Theatre, located at 51 Spring Street in Vineyard Haven (above Tisbury Town Hall). Free and open to the public. No registration required.

Sennott, who took on the role as a local news publisher in January of 2024, is the founder of the national, non-profit GroundTruth, which launched Report for America, a service program that has been featured on CBS News' 60 Minutes and applauded nationally for its pioneering approach to addressing the spread of "news deserts." Since 2018, Report for America has placed more than 700 reporters in more than 300 newsrooms across all 50 states. 

The recipient of the 2024 World Press Freedom Award for his work locally and globally as the head of GroundTruth, Sennott brings lessons learned from Report for America newsrooms across the country here to the Island where he lives year round with his family. He will share details of an approach that he calls "a hybrid" business model through memberships which call the community together to join in support of local news gathering as a public service.

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

Free Beach Parking and Museum Passes

 

This summer the Trustees have partnered with Martha's Vineyard Libraries to offer free access to library patrons. Each pass provides one-day free parking and admission for Long Point Wildlife Refuge, or Wasque on Chappaquiddick. The library has one pass for each property for each day of the week. Passes may be checked out for three days and must be returned to the library.

For visits to other Trustees properties statewide, the library also has coupons for free or reduced admission that can be used anytime. For more information about these passes as well as museum passes sponsored by the Friends of the Library, visit: www.vhlibrary.org/passes.shtml

Butterflies of Martha's Vineyard with Matt Pelikan

The Vineyard Haven Library is pleased to welcome community naturalist Matt Pelikan of BiodiversityWorks for a presentation on the various species of butterflies found on Martha’s Vineyard. This event will be held at 6:00 PM on Tuesday, August 19th at the Katharine Cornell Theatre, located at 51 Spring Street in Vineyard Haven (above Tisbury Town Hall). Free and open to the public. No registration required.

Beautiful, easily studied, and ecologically important, butterflies may be the most universally loved group of insects. Naturalist and photographer Matt Pelikan will introduce us to the surprising diversity of these creatures on Martha’s Vineyard: their ecology, their identification, their changes over time, and how we can help conserve them. 

Naturalist and freelance writer Matt Pelikan has studied wildlife on Martha’s Vineyard since he moved to Oak Bluffs in 1997. Matt has photographed nearly all of the butterfly species that occur on the Vineyard and maintains detailed records of abundance and seasonality. Currently the community naturalist for BiodiversityWorks, Matt has worked or volunteered for most of the conservation organizations on the Vineyard and has written extensively about Island wildlife, ecology, and environmental affairs.

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

 

An Evening with Nicole Galland, NYT Bestselling Author of "Boy: A Novel"

The Vineyard Haven Library is pleased to welcome critically-acclaimed local author Nicole Galland for a conversation about her latest historical novel, Boy, set in Elizabethan England. Nicole will be in conversation with Scott Barrow. This event will be held at 6:00 PM on Tuesday, August 12th at the Katharine Cornell Theatre, located at 51 Spring Street in Vineyard Haven (above the Tisbury Town Hall). Books will be available for on-site purchase through Bunch of Grapes. Free and open to the public. No registration required.

Sander Cooke is the most celebrated “boy player” in William Shakespeare’s theatre company. Indeed, Sander’s androgynous beauty and deft portrayal of female roles have made him the toast of London, and his companionship is sought by noblewomen and -men alike. But now at the height of his fame, he teeters on the cusp of adulthood, his future uncertain. Often, he wishes he could stop time and remain a boy forever.

Joan Buckler, Sander’s best friend, also has a wish. Though unschooled, she is whip-smart and fascinated by the snippets of natural philosophy to which she’s been exposed. As a woman, she has no place in the intellectual salons and cultural community of the day; only disguised as a boy can she learn to her heart’s content.

Joan’s covert intellectual endeavors attract the attention of Francis Bacon: natural philosopher and trusted adviser to Queen Elizabeth. It is through their connection with Bacon—one of the greatest minds of their time—that they will be changed forever as they become embroiled in an intricate game of political intrigue that threatens their very lives.

Nicole Galland is a proud graduate of the West Tisbury Elementary School and MVRHS. She's the author of 7 historical novels, several of them Shakespeare-themed, and co-author of the NY Times bestseller The Rise and Fall of DODO. Her contemporary work includes On The Same Page, about two newspapers on Martha's Vineyard. She has recently become an editor at one of these papers in real life. With Chelsea McCarthy, she co-created the popular off-season "Shakespeare for the Masses" series, and also directs plays off-Island.

Scott Barrow is Company member of Tectonic Theater Project where he is part of the team creating and performing in the Pulitzer Prize Finalist Here There are Blueberries. He is a contributing author of the company’s devising methodology book: Moment Work, and was part of the creative team on broadway’s Tony award-winning 33 Variations starring Jane Fonda. On island Scott's favorite credits include Hamlet and Every Brilliant Thing, Much Ado about Nothing and a dozen Shakespeare for the Masses directed by Nicole at the MV Playhouse and the sinister Square Master under MVFF’s Cinema Circus's big top.

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