The daffodils are fading. The redbud is blooming. The outdoor shower is hooked up. Outdoor spaces are calling for visits, music, and dancing.
This season has been rugged, and the cleanup from the winter storms is a lot, along with necessary upgrades because what were once considered luxuries are necessities — dryers, larger refrigerators, and washing machines, personal electrical appliances, indoor showers, high-speed internet, cell phones, and constant connection. It is hard to compete. There is something valuable about checking in with neighbors, the tide, the weather, and the library. Our community is made up of incredible individuals.
Magical Fairy Sculpture Trail, created by ceramic artists Bill O’Callaghan and Heather Goff, is open for the season from 9 am to dusk. The Pottery Shop is open Monday, Thursday, Friday, and Saturday, 11 am to 5 pm, and Sunday afternoons, 2 to 5 pm.
Nothing can replicate the connection that comes from a book that draws you in, and our library is an incredible resource. Through the interlibrary loan program, it is able to get publications and books from libraries across the country, including universities.
The Chilmark library started in 1882 as a book rental in the Mayhew Bros.’ store in Quitsa, with 33 books donated by the prominent journalist, suffragette, and socialist Alice Stone Blackwell and her cousin Florence Blackwell Mayhew (Mrs. E. Eliot Mayhew). The fee was 3¢ a week.
In 1890, Massachusetts committed to encouraging towns to establish free public libraries, and gave Chilmark 171 books. By then the store and rental library had grown, and was where the Chilmark Store stands. On August 15, 1891, with a collection of 263 volumes, “the library moved into the new part of E. Eliot Mayhew’s store.”
“The Devil Wears Prada 2” is brilliant and fun, something to see with friends. I’m wondering if my favorite quote from the movie, “May the bridges I burn light my ways,” delivered by Emily Blunt’s character, Emily Charlton, is in the book. I’ve requested “Revenge Wears Prada: The Devil Returns” through interlibrary loan.
The family of William (“Will”) P. Steranka invites us to an informal celebration of his life at the Chilmark Community Center, 520 South Road, on Sunday, May 31, from noon to 2 pm. Come out and share your stories, smiles, and your memories of Will. Open to all who knew him.
Colin Ruel’s exhibit reception at the M.V. Museum is May 15, from 5:30 to 7 pm. Ruel writes, “This exhibition places my life and work beside that of my grandfather, Capt. James Douglas Morgan — a family man, fisherman, and folk artist. He went to sea at 13, harpooned swordfish, and later owned and fished the dragger Mary & Verna out of Menemsha. He worked as a commercial fisherman until he was 81, and continued to carve, draw, and paint long after … Today … housing is unattainable for working families. Rural identity is aestheticized and sold, while the people who formed it are displaced. What once required endurance and community now requires capital.
The exhibit does not romanticize the past, it does not offer nostalgia as a remedy. Instead, it insists on attention to the present, to community, to labor, to memory, to inequity, to inheritance.”