Vineyard Haven Public Library

09/05/2026

Next Saturday, September 12th at 10:30 AM at our 200 Main Street Library!

Join Jonathan Herrick, LCSW, for another two-hour meditation workshop combining two powerful, pragmatic approaches that can reduce personal suffering and increase the capacity for happiness and love. This program will be held on Saturday, September 12th, from 10:30 am - 12:30 pm at the Vineyard Haven Public Library, located at 200 Main Street in Vineyard Haven. Free and open to the public. Interested patrons may register on the library’s event calendar here: https://engagedpatrons.org/EventsExtended.cfm?SiteID=6379&EventID=595592&PK=

Building on the concepts and practices introduced at his June workshop, Jonathan will continue his exploration into the nature of awareness, providing participants with practical skills that can benefit their lives. The workshop will cover four primary Zen meditation practices as well as Byron Katie’s four-step “CBT on steroids,” demonstrating the similarities, differences, and strengths of each practice in the process. Suitable for newcomers as well as those who may have participated in Jonathan's previous workshops. Ample time is included for questions and answers.

A Licensed Clinical Social Worker, Jonathan Herrick has been in private psychotherapy practice for over 40 years. After receiving his master’s degree from New York University, he trained extensively with some of the world’s foremost mentors and institutes, including a decade with Byron Katie, who asked him to write about her work's relationship to Zen Buddhism. Herrick also trained with leading Zen, Tibetan Buddhist, and Advaita Vedanta masters including Philip Kaplea, H.W.L. Poonja, Ramesh Balsekar, Jean Klein, and Anam Thubten. He has practiced and led workshops on the Psychology of Self in Westport, Park Slope, San Francisco, and now on Martha’s Vineyard.

09/05/2026

Save the date: Saturday, September 19th, at 11:00 AM at the 200 Main Street Library!

Join photographer and teacher Heather Pillar for a presentation about her photographic collaboration with Morrie Schwartz, subject of the best-selling memoir “Tuesdays with Morrie” by Mitch Albom.

In 1995, Heather Pillar collaborated with Morrie Schwartz to document Morrie during the last six months of his life struggling with ALS. The project illustrates Morrie's philosophies about death and dying through photographs Pillar made of him interacting with family, friends, and caregivers. Over a quarter-century later, Morrie's wisdom resonates with people around the world largely due to the best-selling memoir “Tuesdays with Morrie” by Mitch Albom. Morrie's warmth and vitality comes through in each photograph to illustrate love, loss and the power of community. Morrie taught people, including Heather, how to live fulfilling lives with love. “It is by facing fears of death that we learn how to live.”

"Memento Morrie: Images of Love and Loss" published by Daylight Books will be available for purchase before and after the talk. The book includes 44 duotones and four outstanding essays from professionals in their own fields plus short stories from interviews with Morrie’s friends and family. Some images are paired with Morrie’s now famous aphorisms giving imagery to the bittersweet themes of end-of-life: building a caring community; friends; family; caregiving; self-care; spirituality; and death and beyond.

Heather Pillar, photographer and teacher, has lived, taught and photographed in seven countries over four continents during the past 25 years. Her personal and collaborative photographic projects reveal her ongoing interest in women, girls' education, and aging. Heather's photographs have been exhibited internationally as well as published in numerous newspapers, magazines, and books. Her work has also appeared on television and online. She is the author of “Memento Morrie: Images of Love and Loss” (Daylight Books, July 2024).

Heather Pillar images

09/04/2026

09/04/2026

Today at 4:00 PM at our 200 Main Street Library!

Join Vineyard resident and professional forester Bob Perschel for a talk about his fifty-year quest in pursuit of something larger than all of us, a quest documented in his new book of essays, stories and poems, “Numinosity: A New England Forester’s Search for the Ineffable.” This event will be held at 4:00 PM on Friday, September 4th, at the Vineyard Haven Public Library, located at 200 Main Street in Vineyard Haven. Free and open to the public, no registration required.

“Numinosity: A New England Forester’s Search for the Ineffable” is a collection of stories and poems offering a rare and moving account of what happens when deep scientific knowledge of the forest meets a search for transcendence within it. Drawing on Jungian concepts of the numinous, those encounters with an awe-inspiring force that defies full articulation, Perschel’s poems emerge from the lived intimacy of forest work: marking timber alone in winter woods, listening to the life cycle of an ancient oak, and reckoning with the weight of human impact on a landscape. The result is a collection that is both deeply personal and urgently ecological.

Robert T. Perschel has helped conserve six million acres of New England’s forests during a four-decade career as a professional forester. He chaired the 53-member Northern Forest Alliance and co-founded the Forest Stewards Guild, a national organization of ecologically focused foresters. As Executive Director of the New England Forestry Foundation, he led the creation of Exemplary Forestry standards that use climate-smart management to offset significant regional carbon emissions. He holds a Psychology degree from Yale College (1973) and a Masters of Forestry Science from the Yale School of the Environment (1979). Bob lives in an oak forest on the north shore of Martha’s Vineyard.

09/04/2026

Next Thursday, September 10th, from 10:15 AM - 12:15 PM at our 200 Main Street Library!

Learn to play American Mah Jongg on Thursday mornings with Rosemary Chalk. Please bring your Mah Jongg card. Register on library event calendar.

09/03/2026

Today at 2:00 PM at our 200 Main Street Library!

Do you like reading, thinking, and sharing ideas about science and nature? If so, you'll love the Vineyard Haven Library's Science & Nature book group. This month, we’re reading “Entangled Life: How Fungi Make Our Worlds, Change Our Minds & Shape Our Futures” by Merlin Sheldrake.

The Science & Nature Book Club meets at 2:00 PM on the first Thursday of each month to discuss nonfiction books about science and nature. For more information and to be added to the email list, please contact [email protected] or (508) 696-4211. Everyone is welcome!

09/03/2026

Save the date: Thursday, September 17th, at 2:00 PM at the 200 Main Street Library and on Zoom!

Join the Vineyard Haven Public Library Book Club and the Aquinnah Cultural Center for a community discussion about the 2026 Massachusetts Great Reads title "Nothing More of This Land: Community, Power, and the Search for Indigenous Identity" by Joseph Lee. This program will be held at 2:00 PM on Thursday, September 17th, at the 200 Main Street Library or via Zoom. Participants may register on the library’s event calendar: https://forms.gle/Q4QPu8W68tPdhCRa6

This discussion series is part of the 2026 Great Reads MA program, sponsored by the Massachusetts Center for the Book. All registrants will be invited to the Vineyard Haven Library for a statewide, virtual Q&A with author Joseph Lee on September 29th at 6pm.

About the book: Before Martha’s Vineyard became one of the most iconic vacation destinations in the country, it was home to the Wampanoag people. Today, as tourists flock to the idyllic beaches, the island has become increasingly unaffordable for tribal members, with nearly three-quarters now living off-island. Growing up Aquinnah Wampanoag, journalist Joseph Lee grappled with what this situation meant for his tribe, how the community can continue to grow, and more broadly, what it means to be Indigenous.

About the author: Joseph Lee is an Aquinnah Wampanoag writer based in New York City. He has an MFA from Columbia University and teaches creative writing at Mercy University. His writing has been published in The Guardian, BuzzFeed News, Vox, Electric Literature, High Country News, and more. He was a Margins Fellow at the Asian American Writers’ Workshop and a Senior Indigenous Affairs Fellow at Grist. He has won multiple awards from the Indigenous Journalists Association for environmental coverage, and beat reporting and was awarded a 2024 Silvers Grant for Work in Progress.

09/02/2026

Save the date: Thursday. September 17th, at 6:00 PM at the 200 Main Street Library!

Do you dream of performing on stage? Join the Vineyard Haven Library and the Vineyard Haven Harbor Cultural District for Open Mic Night at 6:00 PM on the third Thursday of the month. Each performer may perform 1-2 songs or pieces in a genre of their choice, be it music, dance, drama, or the spoken word. Come to perform or sit back and enjoy the show. All are welcome! Sign up on arrival. Free and open to the public. No registration required.

The Open Mic Night will be held in the library’s new Community Room at 6:00 PM on the third Thursday of the month, beginning September 17th.

09/01/2026

TONIGHT at 6:00 PM at our 200 Main Street Library!

Join local and seasonal authors Bernice McIntyre, Connie Belton Green, Polly Simpkins, and Terri Potts-Chattaway for a reading and discussion from the latest volume of the literary anthology, the Washashores Review, featuring over thirty pieces of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry connected to the theme of “wanting.” Free and open to the public. No registration required.

“The Washashores Review, Volume 2” is a compilation of essays, short stories, and poems published by the Washashores Writers Collective, a diverse and vibrant sisterhood of Vineyard-connected writers, in partnership with the Featherstone Center for the Arts. Copies of the anthology will be available for purchase before and after the event, with proceeds supporting the Literary Arts Program at Featherstone.