MV Library Association and MV Book Festival Event with Author Eric Klinenberg

The Martha's Vineyard Library Association invites you to join us at the Chilmark Library on Friday, August 2nd, at 3pm for a special event with author Eric Klinenberg in honor of his newest book, Palaces for the People: How Social Infrastructure Can Help Fight Inequality, Polarization, and the Decline of Civic Life. The talk, moderated by former president of the American Library Association Maureen Sullivan, will cover how shared spaces, including libraries, play a crucial role in bridging societal divides. Books will be available for purchase and signing, and refreshments will be served. This event is free, open to the public, and presented by the Martha’s Vineyard Library Association in collaboration with the Martha’s Vineyard Book Festival. For more information about the book, please visit ericklinenberg.com.

Eric Klinenberg is Professor of Sociology and Director of the Institute for Public Knowledge at New York University. He is the author of Palaces for the People: How Social Infrastructure Can Help Fight Inequality, Polarization, and the Decline of Civic Life (Crown, 2018), Going Solo: The Extraordinary Rise and Surprising Appeal of Living Alone (The Penguin Press, 2012), Fighting for Air: The Battle to Control America’s Media (Metropolitan Books, 2007), and Heat Wave: A Social Autopsy of Disaster in Chicago (University of Chicago Press, 2002), as well as the editor of Cultural Production in a Digital Age and of the journal Public Culture. His scholarly work has been published in journals including the American Sociological Review, Theory and Society, and Ethnography, and he has contributed to The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, Rolling Stone, Time Magazine, Fortune, The Wall Street Journal, The Nation, The Washington Post, Slate, Le Monde Diplomatique, The London Review of Books, and the radio program This American Life.

Discover the Owls of New England

On Tuesday, July 30th at 7 PM, Vineyard Haven Public Library presents "Discover the Owls of New England," a program by well-known photographer and wildlife advocate Peter Christoph. In this captivating presentation, Peter delivers stunning photographs of his favorite owls combined with stories that entertain, educate and inspire the audience.

You’ll learn the secrets Peter uses to find and photograph these same owls in the wild in their natural habitat! Eight species of expected owls in New England include: Great Horned, Barred, and Eastern Screech – all year-round residents and fairly easy to spot. Long-eared, Short-eared, and Snowy are winter migrants and breed far north of us. Northern Saw-whet Owls do breed in New England but are quite small and rarely seen. Barn Owls have bred in New England but are the toughest of all to find. He’ll wrap up this exceptional wildlife program with beautiful images of a vagrant migrant--a rare visitor called the Great Gray Owl.

Peter Christoph has presented at photography groups nationally and locally, including the Photographic Society of America (PSA), New England Camera Club Council (NECCC,) and several camera clubs throughout New England. He has been the recipient of many prestigious national and international awards and gold medals recognizing his photographic talent. Peter has published three bird photography books, including his latest “The Art of Bird Photography.”

Explore Peter’s work at http://peterchristoph.com/

Register for Fall Literature Seminar with Phil Weinstein: "Fictions of the Law"

 

Register online

Philip Weinstein, the Alexander Griswold Cummins Professor of English Emeritus at Swarthmore College, will present the next in the ongoing program series "Islanders Read the Classics", with a six-part seminar "Fictions of the Law". This free seminar will be held on Wednesday evenings at the Katharine Cornell Theater, 51 Spring Street, Vineyard Haven.

"Fictions of the Law" will study three classic novels: Charles Dickens's Bleak House (1852), Fyodor Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment (1866), and Franz Kafka's The Trial (1925). Participants are encouraged to read the books in advance, however it is not required. Copies of the books may be requested through your local CLAMS library.

According to Professor Weinstein, the series' title--"Fictions of the Law"--should be understood in at least two ways. "On the one hand, we are reading three classic novels that circulate obsessively around the concept of the law (both criminal and civil). But each novel does this in its own ways, and the three of them differ starkly in approach, implication, and resonance. The other way to understand "Fictions of the Law" is to grasp that "law" itself is held up to an imaginative probing (is shown to be in disturbing ways fictional) in all three novels.  You may come away from each novel wondering, afresh, what is law?"

In order to allow the library to prepare class materials and communicate with students, participants are encouraged to sign up in advance at the library, or register online.

Dates and reading assignments:

Wednesday, September 18th, 7pm
Charles Dickens, Bleak House

Wednesday, October 2nd, 7pm
Charles Dickens, Bleak House

Wednesday, October 23rd, 7pm
Fyodor Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment

Wednesday, November 6th, 7pm
Crime and Punishment

Wednesday, November 20th, 7pm
Franz Kafka, The Trial

Wednesday, December 4th, 7pm
Franz Kafka, The Trial

Bright Star Theatre Family Performance of "One Small Step"

On Wednesday, July 24th at 3:30 pm, the Vineyard Haven Library presents a free, family-friendly performance by Bright Star Theatre. This program is made possible by the generous donations by the Friends of the Vineyard Haven Library and the Anderson Foundation, and all ages are welcome.

Bright Star Theatre will perform "One Small Step...The Real Life Journey to Outer Space." Few events in human history have captured the imagination quite like the journey that humankind took to the moon! This tale marks the history of flight and space travel from the ancient tale of Icarus, to the first flights of the Wright Brothers on the beaches at Kitty Hawk, to the Great Space Race of the 1960s and beyond! Your young pilots and astronauts will be thrilled to learn about the real life characters that took One Small Step!

Bright Star Theatre  is one of the largest professional touring theatre companies in the country, now in their 16th season. Based in Asheville, North Carolina; Bright Star Touring Theatre proudly serves around 1800 audiences from Tacoma to Moscow with over 56 shows a season.

Soul-Error: Philip Weinstein Talk and Reading

On Tuesday, July 23rd at 5 PM, Philip Weinstein will give a talk and reading at Vineyard Haven Public Library, based on his forthcoming manuscript, Soul-Error. Professor Weinstein describes Soul-Error as "a mix of essays about childhood, autumnal ruminations about the teaching profession, and speculative explorations about how we (the smartest species around) tend to get things wrong, and thus go through our lives mis-taking (and revising) our sense of how things are and what really matters."

Professor Weinstein will read from his essay "Vannie," named for the maid who helped to bring him up in the South in the 1940s and 1950s. The talk will explore what Vannie meant to the author and his family then, before setting forth what he has come to understand, years later, about those same social arrangements. It is a study in contrasts--experienced by the author and by countless other Americans as well. This event is free and refreshments will be served.

Philip Weinstein is Alexander Griswold Cummins Professor of English Emeritus at Swarthmore College.  He has been offering literary courses sponsored by the Vineyard Haven Library every autumn. His publications include Henry James and the Requirements of the Imagination (1971), The Semantics of Desire: Changing Models of Identity from Dickens to Joyce (1984), Faulkner’s Subject: A Cosmos No One Owns (1992), What Else But Love? The Ordeal of Race in Faulkner and Morrison (1996), Unknowing: The Work of Modernist Fiction (2005), Becoming Faulkner(2009), and Jonathan Franzen: The Comedy of Rage (2015). 

Playful Engineers at the Vineyard Haven Public Library

 

Please join us at The Vineyard Haven Public Library on Friday July 19th from 3:30-5:00 pm for a very special visit from Jay Mankita of Playful Engineers. This free program is best for children ages 8 and up.

Jay Mankita has worked with kids and families for over 30 years. He is a longtime musical activist in ecology, nutrition, and education. He has a strong passion for engineering and making things move, and teaches how he learns - with patience, humor, and lots of room for mistakes! In this hands-on, STEM focused workshop, participants design, build, test, and play with Rube Goldberg "machines”, plus domino constructions, exploding popsicle-stick snakes, and other awesome engineering explorations.

This exciting and educational hands-on program is made possible by a gift to the Friends of the Library from the Anderson Foundation.

Family Friendly Concert with Rolie Polie Guacamole

The Vineyard Haven Library presents a family-friendly concert with Brooklyn's "kindie" rock band Rolie Polie Guacamole, at 4:00 p.m. Wednesday, July 17th at the bandstand in Owen Park. Rolie Polie Guacamole's high energy, interactive shows are a mix of funk, rock, and folk music mashed into original tunes about natural living, eating healthy, and staying active. This free event is made possible by a generous contribution from The Anderson Foundation and the Friends of the Vineyard Haven Public Library.

Rolie Polie Guacamole lays claim to being the one of the hardest working bands in kids’ music, and that just might be true. They’ve released six albums and played well over 2,000 shows nationwide since hitting the boards with their first performance in 2007, receiving top picks from Boston.com, Time Out NY Kids, and Time Out Chicago.

Winner of the prestigious Parents’ Choice® and NAPPA Awards, Rolie Polie Guacamole has developed a smart, parent-friendly musical style that dresses up original tunes and classic covers with vibrant harmonies and deft instrumental layers, plugging in a sizzling electric current of rhythm that lights up lyrics humming with relevance and humor.