When Patricia Nanon founded the Yard in 1973, she may not have known that forty years later we would be celebrating the Island’s history through its dancers, but perhaps she did. Nanon said, “For me, this ‘yard’ would be a playground without walls, a place to explore, experiment, and construct. A place of possibility, joy, love, anger, frustration; a place of mutual stimulation, sharing, testing; a space in which to come together and to be alone.”
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What’s so funny about Puccini? Well, except for the immediate fun of saying his name, not much. Take La Boheme: heroine dies of consumption. Or Madama Butterfly: heroine stabs herself dead. And of course Tosca: heroine stabs the dirty rotten baritone (he deserves it) and flings herself out the window. There it is. Puccini. Death, murder, suicide. Not funny.
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By Jenna Bernstein and Lily Cronig
As top predators sharks play a crucial role in the ocean’s ecosystem. They preserve the ocean’s delicate ecological balance. Once a fear of the unknown can be replaced by affinity and knowledge we can venture into their interconnected world with a greater measure of understanding.
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From my perspective the ideas of imagination and resilience come with a question: How do we as individuals and a community imagine and create new things, and how do we respond to shock? This summer we won't so much try to answer these questions as we will share the evidence of imagination and resilience found here. This evidence is in each of us: In the life of a ninety-year-old. In the loss of a loved one. In an innovative response to the cost of fossil fuel. In imagining geologic time and glaciers. And, of course in imagination made evident in full through the arts.
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Among the hundreds of items that are available are clothing, furniture, books, dishes, glassware, small electrical appliances, vases, in addition to an especially welcoming sense of warmth, friendship and pride.
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By Amelia Smith in Collaboration With Patrick Phillips
One hundred thirty years ago, in September of 1882, Thomas Edison switched on the world's first electrical supply network. It carried direct current electricity to 59 customers in Lower Manhattan. Today, here on Martha’s Vineyard, a new solar energy economy is emerging.
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Our moods can be altered simply by sunlight, and I found that having cared for primates, giraffes, and big cats in the circus made it easier to meander almost anywhere. Few people were scarier than a tiger, or lovelier than a striding giraffe, or more poignant than our brethren, the chimps and orangutans, and you can often disarm an adversary if you recognize the poignancy in him.
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Years ago, with my children still fast asleep, I would sneak out into the early morning, climb into our old canoe and paddle slowly and silently as possible around Tashmoo pond. Passing over the thick eelgrass beds that crowded the shoreline an intriguing company appeared. As I waved my hands just above the surface of the water tiny baby scallops clapped their fluted shells and headed up the water column toward me, as if on cue. Their beautiful rows of bright blue eyes flashed as they made their way towards my shadow. We were fascinated with each other’s company.
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“Why have you not included Martha’s Vineyard in the Lyme disease vaccine trial?” No greeting, no social niceties, just an irate Burton Engley at the other end of the telephone on a winter day in 1993. I had just started the process of recruiting subjects for the SmithKline Lymerix Phase II vaccine trial on Nantucket and Block Island. Our laboratory at the Harvard School of Public Health had not been conducting research on the Vineyard, focusing instead on her two neighbors.
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What begins as a single artist’s imagination becomes something shared. We become part of a web of imaginative people who share an understanding about creating a life here.
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