HOLLY NADLER

508-274-2329

(hollynadler@gmail.com)

After another summer of hearing visitors to the Island utter the dreaded words “Oaks Bluff,” I’m beginning to think we should just throw in the towel and change our town’s name. This is not an attempt to capitulate to the tourists any more than we’d like to enact any law or cultural change that would enable anyone to claim, “If we do this-that-or-the-other, the terrorists have won.”

Rather I wonder if the time has come to ask ourselves if our newcomers haven’t stumbled onto the superior name.

The following are the talking points for essentially moving an “s” from one word to another in altering our town’s name:

Point One: Oaks Bluff runs, as Hamlet would have put it, trippingly from the tongue. Go ahead, try it. Say Oaks Bluff five times in a row and then do the same for Oak Bluffs. My own anecdotal report from a study of two people — myself and my boyfriend, Jack — has shown that the tongue trip thing works better with Oaks Bluff.

Point Two: In a further exploration of sound production, it’s extremely difficult to pronounce an “s” succeeding two “f”s, especially over the phone. Wouldn’t it be nice, from now on, when giving your address to your Comcast representative to avoid having to say “B-L-U, F as in Frank, another F as in Frank and S as in Sam?”

Point Three: Where are these blasted oaks on bluffs anyway? Maybe there used to be some prehistoric oaks on East Chop Drive and along the boardwalk of Ocean Park, but the minute developers started climbing all over those seaside lots, the saws came out because a square foot of water view is worth more than an acre of oak trees. So the oaks are departed from anything you could denominate as a bluff, which in itself is a good argument for keeping the Oak in our town name singular as there is certainly no plurality of oaks anywhere along the shore. On the other hand, who can spot even a solitary oak anywhere within 10 yards of the sea? And why be so literal, anyway? What does Edgartown mean, anyway? A village of men named Edgar? And was Chilmark a place where a person named Mark once froze to death? And Vineyard Haven doesn’t even allow wine.

A quick vote at the next town meeting could enact this new name in a snap. We wouldn’t even need to re-do previous maps and other printed materials. If visitors ask, we could say they’re typos. And it won’t be as major a switch as learning to say Aquinnah after decades of Gay Head. Most of us already say Oaks Bluff just to be silly, and being silly is something at which a good number of us are proficient. Enough said.

Sara Crafts is organizing a farewell dinner for Linda Marinelli to be held at the P.A. Club on Friday, Nov. 13, with a tentative time of 5:30 to 8:30 to allow, as Sara put it, “us old geezers to get home and to bed early.” More will be known in the near future but in the meantime, please call Sara at 693-2381 with input and offers of help.

The all-important annual Crop Walk will take place this Sunday, Oct. 18, beginning at 2 p.m. from St. Augustine’s Church in Vineyard Haven and heading to Trinity Church Parish House in Oak Bluffs, then back again. Armen Hanjian, director of the Food Pantry (which receives one-quarter of the money raised) will be walking with other dedicated Crop Walkers, so scavenge your closet for your best hiking shoes and join them.

On the O.B. Library front, on Nov. 3 the library will be changing its hours to be Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.; Thursday from 10 a.m. to 8 p.m., and Saturday from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Proposed by the town as a cost-saving measure, the new hours have been approved by the library’s board of trustees.

Also, the library will be re-inaugurating its Saturday Scrabble and chess group tourneys from 10 a.m. to noon. Attendees of all playing levels are welcome. Refreshments served when possible.

The Martha’s Vineyard Public Charter School is sponsoring a presentation by Teresa LaSala, Parenting with Positive Discipline, on Tuesday, Oct. 20, from 6:30 to 8 p.m. The charter school is located on State Road in West Tisbury and the public is welcome to attend the free talk.