HOLLY NADLER

508-274-2329

(hollynadler@gmail.com)

It doesn’t take much in our wee community for us to receive a huge charge out of a relatively small (in the global scheme of things) event. By now most of us have probably felt the rush of driving over the new drawbridge. “Omigod, they’ve finally finished, and I’m zooming over it!” must be the general reaction.

Now, we all know the new bridge is actually the new temporary bridge and that for another few years more men in orange jackets and cops freezing their keisters off will be working on the old bridge, so that in time it will become the new new and permanent bridge.

Despite all the articles written over the past couple of years about the new-temp-old-new-perm plan, I still don’t get why this latest bridge, with its own shiny bright pale chartreuse drawbridge, can’t be the one and only and forever bridge. It would take a panel of 10 engineers, seven science teachers who are good at deconstructing confusing stuff, six honest politicians, two Methodist ministers, and a rabbi seated in my living room to explain to me why we need to span the waters this way. I bet I still wouldn’t get it. And it’s probably not the fault of the bridge that I’m so baffled. I’m pretty certain that if I submitted to an MRI, I’d hear the clinicians in the booth shouting “The whole left hemisphere of her brain is missing! It’s like a geode without the crystals!”

I’ve received a lot of great feedback for a recent column about my new marriage to journalist Jack Shea, and his proposal, after seven days of dating, under the glare of his Subaru interior light. We’re now in our, what, 75th day of matrimony, and my biggest challenge is to get this guy to eat his veggies. This must be endemic to men who’ve been bach-ing it up for umpteen years: A single male’s notion of a healthy dinner starts with a sprawl in an easy chair, switching on a ballgame, unwrapping a meatball sub, wolfing it down, then wadding up the wrapper and sending it across the floor where a proper cleanup can take place the next morning. Or the next month when the pileup takes on a reproachful look.

A half-addled vegetarian myself, I’ve served up veggies in every which way, but I can only sneak them past Jack’s flight-or-fight response if they’re immersed in a stick of butter and fistfuls of salt, pepper and other flavorings. Whenever I whip up an amusing salad full of crispy veggies, I hit the will of an obstinate four-year-old.

Last night I combined lettuce, carrots, radishes, pea shoots and green beans with some of the above-mentioned incentive ingredients, and placed an admittedly too-large portion at Jack’s end of the table. But there was something wrong with this picture: my beloved husband was eating the salad standing up. When I questioned him about this novel way of sharing a romantic meal, he placed a hand over his throat, made a gulping noise and said, “It gets it past the taste system more quickly.”

He tried to palm off the pea shoots on the dogs, complaining that the stringy greens feel like worms sliding down his esophagus. Then he swallowed a tall glass of water to clear his palette for the mac’n cheese warming in the oven.

Is there any culinary hope for this marriage? Or, more accurately, is there a sub shop open on the Island?

Dates to remember at the Oak Bluffs School are, most importantly for the students, no school on Jan. 15 and no school once more on Jan. 18 (Dr. King’s birthday). The talent show will be held on Feb. 5.

Heard from Sissy Biggers who, along with her husband, Kelsey, have joined the lucky few home owners on Ocean Park whose manor-sized cottages are winterized. Over the holidays the Biggerses tested their new heating system and insulation against the Arctic Express, and they couldn’t have been happier or cozier.

It’s not too late to sign up for adult education classes. Organizer Lynn Ditchfield has put together a creative and enlivening blend of classes, including Cooking Frugal Soups with chef Marvin Jones, Ceramics with Scott Carroll, Blogging 1 with BZ Riger, Hula Hoop Dance/Work with Keren Tonnesen and, as advertising geniuses have been declaring for decades, “Much Much More!!” To find out more about ACE MV Adult and Community Education, contact 508-693-1033, extension 240 or write lynn@acemy.org.

Oak Bluffs musician Phil daRosa, along with Pinto Abrams on bass guitar and Matty Rosenthal on drums, flute and whatever else he decides to play, are slated on Jan. 21, 9:30 p.m. for their first New York gig at Sullivan Hall. They performed Thanksgiving weekend on the Vineyard, the last show of the year at Nectar’s and, according to eyewitnesses, “rocked the house.”

Okay, I’m off to shop for salad ingredients. And maybe I should add some of those nice-looking mushrooms poking up in the yard?