Family Alzheimer's Movie Touches Deep
Bill Eville

In 2008 Pamela White began writing a book about her mother, Marian Steele who had died in 2001 of Alzheimers Disease. The project was both a tribute to the beloved matriarch of the family and to a celebrated artist. However, early in the project Pamela began having memory difficulties of her own and at the age of 61 was diagnosed with early onset Alzheimers.

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A Life Still Lived at Two Speeds; Wow! and What Was That?
Bill Eville

It began with Yogi Bear and Boo Boo. Scooby-Doo helped, too.

The year was 1977 and Andy Heyward was in his early 20s working his first real job. Never mind that the job consisted entirely of sweeping out a warehouse and getting his boss sandwiches at the nearby deli. His boss was Joseph Barbera who with William Hanna was essentially the entire cartoon industry at the time.

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Kids Get Rich Rewards from Life Lessons
Bill Eville

As chairman and CEO of Berkshire Hathaway, Warren Buffett is widely considered the most successful investor of the last century. Less well known is the fact that he impersonates super heroes such as Batman and Spiderman in his spare time.

He has Andy Heyward, a seasonal resident of Katama and the creator of Inspector Gadget, to thank for this.

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Martha's Vineyard Book Festival: Weekend of Words Arrives
Bill Eville

For some it began with Go Dog Go, Busy, Busy Town or Green Eggs and Ham. The tears may have started with the dogs, Old Yeller, Sounder and Where the Red Fern Grows.

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My Baby and Me, Riding to Preschool
Bill Eville

On Wednesday for her last day of
preschool, my daughter Pickle and I discuss what music to play on the drive from West Tisbury to Chilmark. The drive takes about 15 minutes and over the last two years we have enjoyed a long musical journey together. It is just the two of us and so I have had no censors or suggestions of what is appropriate or even good.

Pickle fell in step with my groove early on, leaning heavily toward men of the late 1970s. In our hermetically-sealed musical education chamber, a Honda Fit, one could say she had no choice.

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Festival Promoter Travels Around the World for Wine
Bill Eville

John Clift has been the sommelier and beverage director at Atria in Edgartown for nine years. For six months of the year he works every single day at the restaurant, and now at Hooked, too. For the rest of the year he travels for both business and pleasure, which in his case amounts to the same activity. He visits wineries all over the world. This past winter he visited California, Australia, New Zealand, Indonesia, Malaysia, Italy, Egypt and Abu Dhabi.

This description of Mr. Clift’s off-season lifestyle is not intended to generate envy, although it certainly could.

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A Grand Honor for a Creative Life
Bill Eville

The American Academy of Arts and Letters was established in 1898. There are 250 members in the organization, never more or less. To be inducted into the Academy, one of its members must die. In other words, it is very selective. It is also rather mind-boggling to think of the backlog of talent to choose from when an opening does arise.

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Restored Mural Reveals Form And Function at Whaling Church
Bill Eville

When artist Margot Datz begins a new project she finds it hard to stop. “Until someone rips me off the wall I’m there,” she said on Wednesday morning at the Old Whaling Church in Edgartown. Although no one is coming to rip Ms. Datz off the wall, her brother Stephen Datz is on hand to “help her out the door,” he said. Good thing, too, as this weekend there will be a wedding held at the church. Scaffolding and bridal gowns do not really mix. But magnificently-restored murals serving as a backdrop for wedded bliss definitely do.

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Four Years On, Shaggy Puppy Still A Cut Above
Bill Eville

Ron (Puppy) Cavallo is one of Jane Leaf’s best customers. Puppy, as everyone calls him, has been getting his hair cut by Jane for nearly 30 years, long before she opened Wavelengths Hair Salon in 1989.

And yet he’s also one of her worst customers. In the last 12 years he’s been to the salon only three times.

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Home Is Where the Flu Flows Freely
Bill Eville

In the middle of the night my son Hardy yells for me. He is eight, and usually at least one of his parents immediately appears by his bedside if he whimpers in the dark. But tonight I move slowly. After all I am weighed down under three blankets and wearing a sweatshirt, sweatpants, hat and mittens. And yet I am still shivering. Cathlin is already occupied with Pickle, age four. Cathlin doesn’t have the bone-rattling chills like I do. Her symptoms are exhaustion and an overt phlegminess that makes lying down to sleep futile.

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