HOLLY NADLER

508-274-2329

(hollynadler@gmail.com)

Okay, we get it: Dogs are awful on the beach. All the recent new rulings have made that crystal clear. No sooner have you opened your tuna sandwich to add the salt and pepper your mate has considerately placed in the picnic basket, when a Bernese mountain dog comes along and kicks sand right in the center. A border collie herds all the tots into two square feet of the high tide mark. Your three-year-old son who’s the next Pablo Picasso has just finished designing a sand castle and a yellow Lab looking suspiciously like Marley from the movie comes along and sits on it.

Here’s the good news: This problem can be rectified! I remember years ago visiting Paris and thinking it could be a pretty nice town if people picked up after their dogs.

Mention poop-scooping to Parisians and they gave you one of those Gallic chuckles and said, “Oo-la-la, you Americans, you ’ave such ’ang-ups about bodily functions.”

They laughed, but now those French folk are poop-scooping as if they finally get it.

So here’s where this argument is going: If we dog owners promise, scout’s honor, to pick up after our dogs on the shore (and everywhere else, of course), couldn’t we please have a small doggy beach of our own? One suggested locale would be that underused portion between the Steamship wharf and the first set of steps leading down from the boardwalk. Or how about the harbor side of the shore that runs adjacent to the East Chop Beach Club, known colloquially as the Linda Marinelli Beach since it was she who looked it up in the town records and found out those sands were ours. I’m not talking about horning in on the families who open towels and umbrellas on the Sound side. I’m saying let’s give a little splash time to our dogs in the water facing town.

If we could dedicate a doggy beach, we’d need one amenity in return: More trash bins, for crying out loud! I know we’re having budget crunches, but Oak Bluffs is more parsimonious with its garbage cans than, well, parsons are said to be parsimonious with everything. I mean, I’ve walked for two miles with a plastic bag in my hand without a refuse container in sight. And don’t get me started on Sunday mornings after Saturday night rioters have tossed soda cans, pizza boxes, and cast-off items of clothing everywhere. It’s not just because these people were badly raised. It’s because a garbage can in Oak Bluffs is as hard to find as a collection of Wordsworth’s poems in an airport paperback rack.

Here is a fun news item: The Oak Bluffs fire department museum is open most Saturdays from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m., and Wednesdays from 1 to 4 p.m. If you stop by on July 4, you’ll be able to wish museum director Donald Billings a happy 80th birthday!

The Oak Bluffs Public Library will have new hours of operation for July and August. Starting July 7 and continuing through August, the library will be open on Thursdays from 2 to 8 p.m. Hours on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Fridays are the same at 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., and Saturdays from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.

The library is closed on Sundays and Mondays.