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.

In early October 2008 I was invited to Chicago to sit in the Family and Friends Tent in Bryant Park and witness the possible election of our nation’s 44th President, Barack Hussein Obama.

President Barack Obama and the First Family will rent the bucolic Blue Heron Farm off South Road in Chilmark for their vacation during the last week of August.

The 28.5-acre property some five hundred yards down Cobb’s Hill Road, spans the Chilmark and West Tisbury town line and overlooks Town Cove, the westernmost finger of the Tisbury Great Pond.

Knowing of course that he is on vacation, what would you say to Barack Obama if you had a moment to speak with him? At the Inkwell Beach in Oak Bluffs, Squid Row in Menemsha and the front porch of the Chilmark Store, the Gazette found a variety of lively responses.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.