Senior White House aides and Secret Service are now considering three Vineyard properties for a planned holiday by President Obama and his family next month.

With little fanfare, President Obama landed at the Martha’s Vineyard Airport yesterday afternoon to begin a 10-day Vineyard vacation as planned. Like last year, the arrival was completely closed to the public. The President traveled with the family dog, Bo, and a small group that included his close friend and senior advisor Valerie Jarrett and her daughter.

For the past week, President Obama has been my neighbor on Martha’s Vineyard. He’s not what you call a cheek-by-jowl neighbor. Although we are both living in the same area of the Vineyard — Chilmark — we are separated by the Atlantic Ocean, Chilmark Pond, Tisbury Great Pont, South Road and legions of Secret Service.

In the late summer of 2004, Barack Obama agreed to participate in a forum on race relations held at the Old Whaling Church in Edgartown.

The worst-kept secret of the summer is out: the first family will return to Martha’s Vineyard to vacation at the end of August.

The White House confirmed on Friday what Islanders in the know have been whispering for weeks now: a year after their much-hyped and ultimately anticlimactic first presidential visit, the Obamas will return to the Vineyard on August 19 for a 10-day vacation. The current plan calls for the Obamas to leave the Island on August 29.

From a podium bearing the presidential seal set up before a grove on Blue Heron Farm, President Obama spoke to the people of Libya yesterday, saying, “An ocean divides us, but we are joined in the basic human longing for freedom, for justice and for dignity.”

President Obama and his family quietly left the Vineyard late Friday night, curtailing their vacation in anticipation of Hurricane Irene.

A temporary flight restriction plan devised by Vineyard airport officials for President Obama’s summer vacation is being hailed as a model for airports across the country to use during future visits by the President and his traveling entourage.

Faraway, tectonic plates clenched uneasily, brutal regimes held on tenuously and a hurricane gathered confidence, but on Martha’s Vineyard it was still vacation for President Obama and his family.

President Obama made a brief appearance Saturday evening at the home of his former law school professor, Dr. Charles J. Ogletree Jr., for what was described by the White House as a social event.

About a hundred people attended the event, according to pool reports, and small crowds waved flags along nearby streets as the President’s motorcade drove to Oak Bluffs.