HOLLY NADLER

508-693-3880

(sunporch@vineyard.net)

Once again the Nobel Prize Committee has ignored the Oak Bluffs community. And what’s up with awarding the physics jackpot to those two microchip guys? We’ve got to start asking ourselves a key question, just as we do when we’re shopping in a frivolous manner: Do we really need this? Well, do we? Do we really need another microchip that helps us access information even quicker?

Here are some notions — especially applicable to the daily lives of Vineyarders — on which today’s geniuses should train their attention:

One: How about a skunk de-stinker? Obviously we can’t exterminate all the critters, but what about some kind of feed we scatter on the ground to neutralize the truly vicious smell? Maybe a combo of parsley, charcoal granules and Altoids? (I personally received a D in high school chemistry, but somebody ought to run with this.)

(Phew! In the time that it took me to finish the above paragraph, then take my dog for a 9 p.m. stroll around the Union Chapel, the pooch caught a squeeze from a skunk lurking underneath a car, but that’s another story.)

A load of laundry and one doggy bath later . . .

Two: Can someone please invent a house-cleaning mechanism that you activate the minute you leave the house? Some kind of particle decelerator that nukes the interior of all dust, grease, and germs? How hard can this be?

Three: We need to start vaporizing motorcyclists. Normally I’m not in favor of eliminating whole segments of the human population, but I’ve had it with these bikers’ throttles that explode over us like the roar of three cannons, one rocket launcher, and a dozen West Tisbury roosters.

Four: It would be wonderful to have some kind of brilliant economist find a way to turn back the calendar to the Middle Ages when something like 267 days a year were set aside as sacred holidays, as in a whole bunch of enforced days off. Once you calculate another 48 annual Sundays, these happy folk were left with roughly 50 days a year for work.

Admittedly, the medieval populace hardly enjoyed today’s GNP, and the occasional plague years were no fun, no fun at all. Otherwise, they had it all over us with their almost daily maypole celebrations, mead hall festivities, and noontime quadrilles on the village green. We’re very close to having this here, what with our eight or nine months of involuntary thumb-twiddling.

Five: On a higher technological level, how about a single-person propeller so we can go flying over parks, beaches and rooftops? This has been promised us since the comic books of the 1950s, but too many Nobel nerds have been wasting their time on computers and biological warfare to develop one of these fun air props.

Well, that’s enough for now, but you do see what I mean about quality-of-life issues over yet another better, faster, smaller microchip?

Tom Dresser, who along with Maureen Hourihan has already raised over $675 for the Miles for Memories Walk for Alzheimer’s, wants us to know about Ms. Hourihan’s play, Slow Train Coming, on Saturday, Oct. 13 at the Vineyard Playhouse at 7 p.m. The $20 tickets will go to Alzheimer’s Services of Cape Cod and the Islands.

Robert Iadicicco of the Oak Bluffs senior center has a bulletin about the upcoming Friday Conversation: On Oct. 19, the guest will be Mary Leddy of the Healthcare Access Program, a private partnership with Dukes County and Island Health, from 10 to 11:30 a.m.

The Oak Bluffs School reminds parents that Wednesday, Oct. 17 is a half-day, so come get those little cuties at noon.

Matthew Bose, also of library fame, says The Sustainable Book Club will meet on Tuesday, Oct. 23 at 6:30 p.m. but, hold on, if you can’t make it that evening, try the next morning, Thursday, Oct. 24 at 10:30 a.m. The book: Cod by Mark Kurlansky. The Sustainable Book Club is an Islandwide reading group that examines our relationship with nature (such as this correspondent enduring walking her dog the other night.)