Alcoholics Anonymous

Information: 627-7084.

All meetings are nonsmoking.

Sunday, 6:45 a.m., open discussion meeting, First Baptist Church, William street, Vineyard Haven.

Sunday, 10 a.m., open discussion, State Beach, first bridge, Oak Bluffs, (weather permitting).

Sunday, 11 a.m., open discussion meeting at the Council on Aging on Wamsutta avenue in Oak Bluffs.

Sunday, 7 p.m., grapevine meeting at old Oak Bluffs School, School street, Oak Bluffs.

Guarding Beach Safety

The cliffs at Lucy Vincent Beach are collapsing due to coastal erosion, and of course nothing can be done to turn back the Atlantic Ocean’s constant assault on the shoreline; this is simply the natural process at work.

But public safety officials are wise to try to stay ahead of the game this year in being sure that they have clear access routes to Lucy Vincent and other remote up-Island beaches as the summer season begins.

There was a time when my husband and I drove to Squibnocket just to hear the pebbles. And then recently we tuned in to the BP oil disaster in the Gulf. We heard and read about the sightings of globs of oil in the Florida Keys, and the speculation that the oil could possibly reach the East Coast. Were the experts really saying our unique Squibnocket, the pristine beach we’ve exulted over for a quarter century, could be threatened?

Big Brothers Big Sisters of Martha’s Vineyard hosted a fund-raising breakfast Thursday morning, gathering together board members, current program participants and new volunteers at Farm Neck Golf Club for a hearty meal of scrambled eggs and sausage with a side of uplifting stories.

Edgartown leaders had no control over the paving project that caused a massive traffic backup on upper Main street last week, town administrator Pamela Dolby told the selectmen yesterday. In fact, no one in town even knew there would be a project until the police department received a call from the Massachusetts Department of Transportation the day before construction started.

Michael Beauboeuf, grandson of lifelong Chappy resident Jerry Jeffers, will attend Harvard University in the fall.

Michael is a member of the Wampanoag tribe of Aquinnah and a senior at the Mystic Valley Regional Charter High School in Malden.

West Tisbury student Molly Houghton knelt on the floor of the gymnasium of the Boys’ and Girls’ Club in Edgartown, head tilted to the side and nose less than an inch from the tiny solar-powered car in front of her.

There’s something romantic about hay bales dotting the rolling fields of the Vineyard at this time of year, those magical, large pillows that decorate the landscape. And then there’s the smell. Crisp, soft, sweet, it fills the senses (unless of course you are allergic).

It’s haying season again on Island farms.

Wearing a red T-shirt smeared with chunks of sandy clay, first-grader Elijah Dunn-Feiner stepped up on a stool mid-morning Saturday, the center of attention in a room full of clay-smeared adults, to lay the first handmade mud brick on the stick-and-stone skeleton of Flatbread Pizza Company’s new pizza oven in Edgartown.

By JIM HICKEY

A fast-moving, violent thunderstorm lashed the Island early Saturday morning, causing temporary flooding and traffic backups and setting off house and car alarms with deep thunder booms and bright lightning strikes, including one that hit the county communications center where the storm-related calls were pouring in.

A bolt of lightning is believed to have started a fire that destroyed a shed behind a home on the Edgartown-Vineyard Haven Road.