HOLLY NADLER

508-274-9239

(hollynadler@gmail.com)

Steaming south by southwest into Vineyard Haven harbor a few weeks back, my eyes feasted on the lush and familiar littoral of Eastville Beach, but something new, humongous and screamingly yellow sprang into view. “Holy Mackerel!” I thought, or may have even said out loud, embarrassingly loud. My first notion was that Hollywood producer Aaron Spelling, he of the 30,000-quare foot mall/mansion in Holmby Hills, had built himself a pleasure palace on this quiet strip of shore whose biggest cottage thus far had been a gift to Gloria Swanson from Joseph Kennedy, or so the story goes . . .

I realized almost immediately that I was gazing at our emerging new hospital. The yellow that makes the yellow of a school bus look like a tortilla chip left out in the rain is, of course, insulation material, eventually to be bricked over. However, because the building is so huge, the display has a look of conceptual art to it, almost as if that Christo guy who hung big bolts of textiles in Central Park, might have had a hand in this thing.

A closer look shows a dandy design, with beautiful windows and interesting crenulations and indentations. And it’s going to look even better when completed, although I do believe that for the rest of our lives, we’ll pass this medical building wondering how anything so monumentally big got here.

The place has the look of the last days of Wine and Clintons, the Vineyard Belle Epoch of sudden new suburban-sized schools and libraries, of permits granted to folks whose summer homes had to be as large as their alternate vacation properties, including their castles on the Costa del Sol. I guess I’ve turned into a cranky old tightwad Yankee, but I miss our shabby old steamship terminal in Vineyard Haven, and our funky little airport that made you imagine you’d just flown into Patagonia. Which brilliant minds got together to decide we needed to change our gorgeous, rustic, unspoiled Island into the newer, fresher outskirts of Milwaukee?

At the Oak Bluffs School, kindergarten orientation and registration will take place on Wednesday, April 29, from 6:30 to 7:30 p.m. in the school library. Parents will get a chance to enjoy questions and answers with teachers and other staff.

Congratulations to Oak Bluffs School student Jack Sayre for winning the Super Saver Award, a national banking recognition for which young Jack will receive $25 from the Martha’s Vineyard Savings Bank. (Note to Jack: call the Treasury Department — there’s a job waiting for you there.)

Also kudos to another town student, Peter Tennant whose art was selected by the chamber of commerce to adorn its 2009-2010 Island Book. Peter will receive a $100 U.S. Savings Bond at an exhibit of the Island Book artwork at Featherstone on Sunday, May 3, from 1 to 3 p.m.

At the Oak Bluffs Library on April 30, at 6:30 p.m., author Joyce Salvo will discuss her book Simple Answers to the Questions. The questions concern “holistic views regarding essential life meanings” so presumably no one should even think of asking “What’s the capital of North Dakota?”